Chapter 2

Question 1

One of two types of photoreceptors in the eye; functions at low light levels, poor resolution, black and white, most concentrated in the periphery of the visual field

Answer 1

Rods

Question 2

One of two types of photoreceptors in the eye; functions best at light levels, high resolution, color, most concentrated in the center of the visual field (fovea).

Answer 2

Cones

Question 3

Neurons leading from the eye to the superior colliculus and the lateral geniculate nucleus; axons make up the optic nerve.

Answer 3

Ganglion Cells

Question 4

The area of the visual field to which a given cell (e.g., in the optic nerve or visual cortex) responds; stimulating some parts of this area may cause an inhibitory response while stimulating other parts may cause an excitatory response.

Answer 4

Receptive Fields

Question 5

Located in the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex; contains many modules, each of which codes a variety of information (depth, orientation, color, etc.) about a specific location on the visual field.

Answer 5

Primary Visual Cortex

Question 6

Refers to the topographic organization of the primary visual cortex, in which adjacent areas of the cortex respond to adjacent locations of the visual field.

Answer 6

Retinotopic Organization

Question 7

Processes a specific type of information (e.g., shape, movement, color) over the entire visual field.

Answer 7

Secondary Visual Cortex

Question 8

A theory of pattern recognition that claims that people recognize objects by first extracting their simple or basic properties (edges, corners, etc.) and relationships among these properties.

Answer 8

Feature Analysis

Question 9

Short for “recognition-by-components”; a theory of visual pattern recognition that assumes that objects are analyzed and represented in terms of simple 3D geometrical shapes.

Answer 9

RBC Theory

Question 10

3D geometrical forms such as cones, cylinders, spheres, and so on; a small vocabulary of such forms could be used to represent the shapes of many familiar objects.

Answer 10

Geons

Question 11

Views at which objects are most easily recognized, typically those which reveal the most information about an object’s features or component shapes.

Answer 11

canonical perspective

Question 12

Context-, expectation-, or theory-based processing, e.g., using knowledge of the context in which a stimulus occurs to help recognize it.

Answer 12

top-down

Question 13

Data-driven processing, e.g., recognizing a stimulus based only on the physical information it contains.

Answer 13

bottom-up

Question 14

Better visual recognition of letters when they are presented in a word context, compared to when a single letter is presented alone.

Answer 14

word superiority effect

Question 15

A connectionist model of visual pattern recognition that features both excitatory and inhibitory connections, and in which activation can flow from the top down (word level to letter level) as well as from the bottom up (features to letters, letters to words).

Answer 15

interactive activation model