Form Perception

Question 1

What are the Gestalt Principles?

Answer 1

Laws that describe how we organize visual input (believed to be innate, acquired rapidly after birth)

Question 2

Figure-ground principle

Answer 2

ability to distinguish an object from its background in a visual scene (ie. seeing a vase of flowers against a background of flowers)

Question 3

Proximity

Answer 3

tendency to group elements that are close together in space

Question 4

Closure

Answer 4

tendency to fill in gaps in a contour to perceive a whole object (we automatically fill in the parts we can’t see to perceive a single object)

Question 5

Similarity

Answer 5

tendency to group together elements that are physically similar

Question 6

Continuity

Answer 6

ability to perceive a simple, continuous form rather than a combination of awkward forms

Question 7

Common fate

Answer 7

tendency to group together elements that change in the same way (why we can see a camouflage animal once it moves)

Question 8

Bottom up processing

Answer 8

object recognition is guided by the features that are present in the stimulus; compares every feature to memory

Question 9

Top-down processing

Answer 9

guided by own beliefs or expectations

Question 10

Priming effect

Answer 10

experimenter tests how fast subject can read a word when its flashed on the screen, if you tell the participant the next word is an animal, you will see priming effect (word would be recognized faster)

Question 11

Geon theory

Answer 11

suggests we have representative geons stored in memory (36 different ones)

Question 12

How does brain injury affect recognition of geons?

Answer 12

brain injury can affect recognition for only certain types of objects (ie. unable to recognize fruits but can recognize tools); if geons were at play, should be able to recognize all types of objects, and not specific category; could be because geons are processed at a different level of neural signaling separate from the area of brain damage

Question 13

Template theory

Answer 13

suggests we compare objects to templates in memory (similar to exemplar theory); need exact match in order for the connection to occur; otherwise object is stored as another template

Question 14

Prototype theory

Answer 14

suggests we compare objects to our idea prototype (internal best)

Question 15

Perceptual Constancy

Answer 15

ability to perceive an object as unchanging even though the visual image produced by the object is constantly changing

Question 16

Shape constancy

Answer 16

an object is perceived to have a constant shape despite the shape of its retinal image changing with shifts in point of view or change in object position (ie. a door is perceived as rectangular despite its visual change when opening)

Question 17

Location Constancy

Answer 17

an object is perceive to be stationary despite changing location on our retina due to body movements

Question 18

Size constancy

Answer 18

object is perceived to be the same size despite the size of its retinal image varying with distance (ie. a friend walking away is not perceived as shrinking in size)

Question 19

Brightness constancy

Answer 19

an object is perceived to be the same brightness despite reflecting more or less light onto our retina (objects have same brightness whether outside or inside)

Question 20

Colour constancy

Answer 20

an object is perceived to have a constant colour despite different illumination conditions

Question 21

Depth cues

Answer 21

indicate the size of an object relative to its distance

Question 22

Colour cues

Answer 22

indicate the influence of light on an object’s colour

Question 23

Ames room

Answer 23

illusion that manipulates distance to trick size constancy (that room in niagara falls that makes one person look smaller than the other)

Question 24

Ponzo illusion

Answer 24

manipulates depth cues to trick size constancy (drawing a triangle/cone to make it look like a road is going straight)

Question 25

What do visual illusions indicate?

Answer 25

that perception is an active process

Question 26

Huble and Wiesel Cat Experiment

Answer 26

wanted to see what type of stimuli individual cortical cells responded to; put micro-electrodes into cortex of a cat to record the electrical activity of individual neurons as it shows different things like flashes of light; neurons must respond to stimuli that are more complex than diffused flashes of light; receptive field of simple cells is organized in opponent fashion

Question 27

Complex cell

Answer 27

responds maximally to a bar of a certain orientation regardless of location; some also respond to specific direction of movement; complex cells are indifferent to the position of light on its receptive field

Question 28

Hypercomplex cell

Answer 28

responds maximally to a bar of a particular orientation and direction of movement, ending at specific points within the receptive field

Question 29

Where is topographic organization presevered?

Answer 29

In the visual cortex; neighboring objects in visual field are processed by neighboring areas of brain; not exact because largest amount of cortex is devoted to processing information from the central part of the visual field, which projects onto the fovea; each region of the cortex received some input from a small piece of the visual field, within each region there are cells that analyze specific features of the scene

Question 30

Where does visual integration begin?

Answer 30

in the extrastriate cortex

Question 31

When can infants begin focusing on whole objects?

Answer 31

after 2 months of age

Question 32

When can infants perceive partial forms as whole forms?

Answer 32

3 months of age

Question 33

What can infants identify at 3 months?

Answer 33

separate objects if objects move independently of one another

Question 34

What can infants achieve at 5 months old?

Answer 34

they begin to uses cues like colour or texture to distinguish objects

Question 35

When can infants demonstrate size constancy?

Answer 35

by 4 to 5 months

Question 36

Critical development periods in kittens

Answer 36

1 month old kittens kept in dark for 3-4 days experience visual degeneration; 1 month old kittens kept in the dark for an entire week or longer suffer severe and permanent visual degeneration