As you sit here in front of this computer monitor, taking the Psy 1001 exam, the light from the monitor is being converted by light receptors in your eyes to nerve impulses that will communicate the words that you are reading to the brain. The term that describes this process--when a sensory organ such as the eyes, converts physical energy into a nerve impulse--is _______________.

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

In this question, we’re asked to identify the term for the process by which a sensory organ, such as the eyes, converts physical energy (light) into a nerve impulse that can be interpreted by the brain.
Option 1: fixation. This term refers to the eye's preliminary stage of focusing on a location or object, not the conversion of energy into neural signals. It’s a misfit for the described process.
Option 2: feature detection. This describes how the brain analyzes basic visual features (lines, edges, orientations) after initial reception, not the initial transduction of energy into neural signals.
Option 3: transduction. This is the correct concept: sensory transduction is the process by which sensory receptors convert physical energy from the environment (like light) into neural signals that the brain can interpret. This directly matches the description in the stem.
Option 4: perception. Perception refers to the conscious interpretation and organization of sensory information by the brain, which occurs after transduction. It is the outcome, not the mechanism of energy-to-neural-signal conversion.
Thus, the process described—converting light into nerve impulses via receptors—best matches transduction, while the other options describe related but distinct stages or concepts in vision anatomy and psychology.

PSY 1001 (001) Final Exam/Exam 4

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