Chapter 3: Perception

Question 1

Experiences resulting from stimulation of the senses

Answer 1

Perception

Question 2

What are the four challenges of perception?

Answer 2

Ambiguous stimuli on the receptors
Objects can be hidden or blurred
Objects look different from different viewpoints
Scenes contain high-level information

Question 3

The task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on the retina

Answer 3

Inverse projection problem

Question 4

Ability to recognize an object when seen from different viewpoints

Answer 4

Viewpoint invariance

Question 5

what are the two types of information used by the human perceptual system?

Answer 5

1. Environmental
2. Knowledge and expectations

Question 6

Explain bottom-up processing

Answer 6

Starts at the beginning of a system, environmental energy stimulates

Question 7

Explain top-down processing

Answer 7

Processing that originates in the brain

Question 8

The ability to tell when one word ends and another begins

Answer 8

Speech segmentation

Question 9

The likelihood that one sound will follow another in a word

Answer 9

Transitional probabilities

Question 10

The process of learning about transitional probabilities and other characteristics of language

Answer 10

Statistical learning

Question 11

We perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli

Answer 11

Helmholtz’s likelihood principle

Question 12

Our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions

Answer 12

Unconscious inference (Helmholtz)

Question 13

Name the Gestalt principles of organization

Answer 13

Good continuation: Points that, when connected, result in continuous lines are seen as belonging together and objects that are overlapped by other objects are seen as continuing behind the overlapping object (ex. cut rope)

Pragnanz: AKA good figure or simplicity, every stimulus pattern is seen in a way such that the resulting structure is as simple as possible (ex. Olympic symbol shapes)

Similarity: Similar things appear to be grouped together (ex. Photo with similar colour clothing as background)

Question 14

Regularly occurring physical properties of the environment

Answer 14

Physical regularities

Question 15

People can perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations

Answer 15

Oblique effect

Question 16

We usually perceive light as coming from above

Answer 16

Light-from-above assumption

Question 17

Characteristics associated with the functions carried out in different types of scenes

Answer 17

Semantic regularities

Question 18

Knowledge of what a given scene contains

Answer 18

Scene schema

Question 19

What are the two components of Bayesian inference?

Answer 19

1. Prior probability
2. Liklihood of the outcome

Question 20

What is the mathematical procedure of Bayesian inference?

Answer 20

Prior x likelihood

Question 21

The study of the effect of removing parts of the brain of animals

Answer 21

Brain ablation

Question 22

Explain Ungerleider and Mishkin’s monkey experiments

Answer 22

Monkeys were presented with an object discrimination and a landmark discrimination task. Object discrimination became difficult for monkeys without a temporal lobe (ventral - what pathway). Landmark discrimination was difficult for monkeys without a parietal lobe (dorsal - where pathway).

Question 23

Neurons that respond when something is observed or performed

Answer 23

Mirror neurons

Question 23

Pathway from the visual cortex to the temporal lobe

Answer 23

Perception pathway (what - ventral)

Question 23

Pathway from the visual cortex to the parietal lobe

Answer 23

Action pathway (where - dorsal)

Question 24

What is a suggestion regarding the purpose of mirror neurons?

Answer 24

Involved in determining the goal/intention behind an action using expectations and likelihoods.

Question 25

When a person is presented with two similar objects that are the same weight but different sizes, the larger seems lighter

Answer 25

Size-weight illusion (prediction)

Question 26

Predicts how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation

Answer 26

Signal detection theory

Question 27

How likely you are to truly detect the targets, regardless of how liberal or conservative you are (SDT)

Answer 27

Sensitivity

Question 28

How liberal or conservative you are, regardless of how likely you are to truly detect the targets (SDT)

Answer 28

Bias

Question 29

How do you calculate accuracy with a SDT light test?

Answer 29

Hit rate minus false alarm rate
Correct rejection minus miss rate