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Fill in the Blank Questions
1. The ________ pathway is responsible for assigning meaning to an object.
ventral or “what” (p. 54)
2. The auditory experience of the syllable “da” when seeing a mouth silently saying “ga” while at the same time hearing a voice say “ba” is called the ________.
McGurk effect (p. 80)
3. Damage to the FFA to leads to a condition known as ________, in which an individual has an impairment in face recognition.
prosopagnosia (p. 56)
4. Gestalt psychology focuses on the ________ rather than the ________.
whole; parts or features (p. 62)
5. The Gestalt organizational principle of ________ states that the grouping visual elements within a scene are guided in part by the prior knowledge of an observer.
experience (p. 62)
6. ________ is a condition in which an individual is unable to perceive the motion of objects.
Akinetopsia (p. 64)
7. Prosopagnosia is a result of damage to the ________ in the temporal cortex.
fusiform face area (p. 56)
8. The detection of a pattern in the pandemonium model is accomplished by the ________.
cognitive demons (p. 57)
9. The basic components in recognition by components theory are known as ________.
geons (p. 58)
10. When an observer, or object, moves through the environment the continual change of information provided by a pattern is known as the ________.
optic field flow (p. 72)
Short Answer Questions
1. What is meant by the Höffding function and how does it contribute to the process of recognition?
The Höffding function describes how an emerging percept makes contact with a prior memory trace, resulting in the recognition of the percept as the object previously stored in memory. For this contact to occur the object must have been previously perceived and a trace of that experience must have been left in memory (memory trace). To recognize the object again, the new emerging percept must make contact with the previous memory trace. (p. 56)
2. How does the template-matching theory envision object recognition, and what is the major weakness of this theory?
According to template-matching theory, we store “templates” of objects (or letters) in our memory. The process of recognition then involves matching the object we see with our stored representations to find a “match.” The major weakness of this theory is that it is difficult to account for how recognition can occur for objects that are only similar (and not identical) to a given template. (pp. 59–60).
3. According to Hintzman (1986), how is secondary memory activated through primary memory?
Primary memory activates a probe, which is then sent to secondary memory. Within secondary memory this probe activates memory traces which are similar to the probe. These memory traces are then relayed back to the primary memory in the form of an echo. (p. 60)
4. Describe Biederman’s (1986) theory of recognition by components (RBC).
RBC is a theory which assumes that any perceivable object can be broken down into fundamental building blocks, for which the term “geons” (geometric ions) was coined. It further states that only a few geons from any given object need to be discernible for that object to be correctly identified. (pp. 58–59)
5. What is the word superiority effect?
The word superiority effect is the observation that people more easily recognize a letter when it appears in the meaningful context of a word rather than when it appears alone or in a nonsense word. (p. 67)
6. What is the intentional binding effect and what does it suggest in terms of how perception influences our conscious experience of objects?
The intentional binding effect states that events that take place after we have taken some action are perceived as occurring sooner than they actually did. This effect suggests that our interaction with objects in the world can influence our perception of those objects. As noted in the study by Haggard et al. (2002), pressing a button led to a perception that a tone was presented earlier than was actually the case. (p. 78)
7. Describe the main idea of Gestalt psychology in relation to perception.
Gestalt psychology advocates that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; that is, that we actively organize parts into more meaningful wholes. For example, when looking at the painting “Vertumnus” we perceive a face based on our past experiences with faces even though the painting is composed of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. (pp. 62–64)
8. What is the main difference between bottom-up and top down influences?
Bottom-up influences involves only the influence of the stimulus on the resulting perceptual experience while top-down influences accounts for context and an observer’s knowledge and expectations on perception. (p. 55).
9. What is a visual agnosia?
Visual agnosia refers to the inability to identify objects visually even though they can be success-fully identified through other senses. (p. 52)
10. What is topological breakage and why might it be useful?
Topological breakage is a term coined by J.J. Gibson which means a discontinuity created by the intersection of two different textures. Topological breakage is useful because it provides us with information about the edges of objects which may save us from a potentially painful experience of walking on a child’s metal toy truck left lying on a carpet. (pp. 73–74)
11. What is scatter-reflection and what information did J.J. Gibson suggest that it provides for us?
Scatter-reflection refers to how widely light reflects off a surface. Scatter-reflection can provide us with information about the smoothness of a surface. If the reflected light scatters widely off the surface it is likely rough in texture, whereas smooth surfaces do not reflect light widely. (p.76)
12. Outline the general flow of light energy through the eye to the primary visual cortex.
Light first enters the eye by passing through the cornea, and then it passes through the pupil. The size of the pupil is controlled by the iris, and the light then passes through the lens, which focuses it on the retina at the back of the eye. Photoreceptors on the retina transduce the light energy into neural signals through a chemical process, and the neural signals are sent along the optic nerve to the primary visual cortex. (p. 53)
13. The physiology of vision is said to be bi-directional. What is meant by this and what is the implication of this bi-directionality for perception?
This means that visual information flows from the primary visual cortex to areas along the dorsal and ventral pathways and this is known as a feedforward sweep. The visual information also flows from these respective pathways back to the primary visual cortex in what is known as re-entrant (feedback) connections. The implication of this is that the re-entrant connections can allow top-down influences (i.e., knowledge and expectations) to influence what we ultimately perceive. In other words, top-down influences (feedback connections) can have an effect on bottom-up influences (feedforward sweep) in determining what we perceive. (p. 55)