Cognitive Psychology Lecture 1 Flashcards
(23 cards)
What is cognitive psychology?
The study of mental processes
Define perception in cognitive psychology.
The study of processes involved in perceiving and interpreting the signals from our senses.
What are the three characteristics of perception mentioned in the notes?
Something you experience all the time, 2) Seems effortless, 3) Analogous to a dish; we experience only the end product.
How does the brain construct visual information?
The brain constructs the best and consistent information, given the input, making assumptions based on implicit understanding of physics and using contextual cues.
What are the four fundamental properties of object recognition?
1) Invariance or tolerance, 2) Specificity, 3) Range and generality, 4) Fast recognition without requiring attention.
What is visual agnosia?
A selective inability to identify objects visually, despite normal vision and ability to describe objects from memory or recognize them through other senses.
What causes visual agnosia?
A lesion in the lateral occipital cortex (LOC).
Name three figure-ground principles mentioned in the notes.
Law of simplicity, Relatability, and Surroundedness.
: List at least five grouping principles
Proximity, similarity, connectivity, good communication, closure, common region, synchrony, symmetry, and common fate.
What are the two types of photoreceptor cells in the human eye?
Rod cells and cone cells
What is trichromatic vision?
The ability to detect three ‘primary’ colors - red, green, and blue.
How has vision evolved in different species?
Vision has evolved differently in various species to help their fitness, closely connected to where animals live, what eats them, and what they eat.
Why is visual recognition complex?
Visual recognition is the transformation of visual signals into a coherent, meaningful interpretation. It is a construction based on previous experience, probabilities, context, influences, assumptions - individual experience.
what are main neuropsychological evidence of cognitive psych?
- Recording of single neurons in the inferior temporal cortex of Macaques (Desimone et al., 1984).
- Neurons in IT respond to complex objects such as hands in different positions, but weakly for a hand with no defining fingers.
Case study - patient S; a young man who suffered accidental carbon monoxide poisoning (Benson and Greenberg, 1969).
Somatosensory or tactile agnosia:
inability to recognise objects by touch
Auditory agnosia:
inability to recognise music, or speech from non-speech, despite normal hearing
How does the brain ‘create’ objects? OBJECT RECOGNITION
Objects are seen in context, not isolated. Before we can recognise an object, we need to know that it forms an object.
Where do grouping features come from?
The building blocks of visual perception: simple features - ‘the ingredients’.
Simple features processes in the occipital cortex. - primary visual cortex.
features of rod cells
very sensitive, respond at low light levels
features of cone cells
colour vision ; short middle long wavelength pigment
what is red-green colour blindness
no or shortage of cones to perceive red or green.
why can snakes can detect infrared radiation outside the range of human vision
- Infrared radiation is emitted as heat by warm-blooded animals so snakes can use their infrared receptors to detect possible prey even in pitch blackness
