Chapter 2

Question 1

ventral pathway

Answer 1

processes information that leads to the recognition and identification of objects.

Question 2

critical periods

Answer 2

animals must develop particular responses. e.g. you must have both eyes uncovered during a critical period if you want to use both eyes properly in the future.

Question 3

visual field

Answer 3

portion of the world is visible at the present moment.

Question 4

receptive field

Answer 4

area of the visual field in which a stimulus will affect the activity of a cell. If we are talking about a cell that responds to touch, the receptive field would be a patch of skin.

Question 5

tilt afterafffect

Answer 5

visual illusion in which prolonged adaptation to an oriented stimulus causes shifts in subsequent perceived orientations.

Question 6

akinetopsia

Answer 6

motion blindness

Question 7

achromatopsia

Answer 7

cortical colorblindness

Question 8

gestalt grouping principles

Answer 8

guide the visual system and produce our perception of what goes with what. proximity, uniform connectedness, similarity, proximity, colinearity, reliability, putting parts together.

Question 9

subjective or illusory contour

Answer 9

a stimulus that is not physically present but is filled in by the visual system.

Question 10

binding problem

Answer 10

how we associate different features, say, shape, color, and orientation, so that we perceive a single object?

Question 11

recognition

Answer 11

matching representations of organized sensory input to stored representations in memory.

Question 12

agnosia

Answer 12

“without knowledge” comes from damage to the brain, not sensory organs.

Question 13

viewpoint dependence

Answer 13

an object can be viewed from an infinite combination of possible angles and possible distances, each of which projects a slightly different two-dimensional on a plane and on the retina.

Question 14

template

Answer 14

pattern, like a cookie cutter, or stencil.

Question 15

geons

Answer 15

simple 2D and 3D forms such as cylinders, cones, and the like.

Question 16

priming

Answer 16

occurs when a stimulus or task facilitates processing a subsequent stimulus or task - “greases the skids”

Question 17

face superiority

Answer 17

demonstrates that the parts of an upright face are not processed independently, but rather are recognized in the context of the whole face.

Question 18

bistable perception

Answer 18

we can perceive both interpretations, but only one at a time.

Question 19

binocular rivalry

Answer 19

a state in which individual images to each eye compete.

Question 20

apraxia

Answer 20

inability to make voluntary movements even though there is no paralysis.