Ch 3 Perception - Cognition

Principle of good continuation

Things that form continuous lines are grouped together

Associative agnosia

A form of visual agnosia marked by a difficulty in naming objects (can draw them)

Apperceptive agnosia

A form of visual agnosia marked by a difficulty matching or categorizing objects

Gestalt psychology

A branch of psychology that focuses on dealing with whole rather than parts

Feature

A component or characteristic of a stimulus

Capgras syndrome

A condition marked by the belief that significant others have been replaced by imposters, doubles, robots or aliens

Visual agnosia

A deficiency in the ability to recognize visual information despite being able to see

Cognitive demon

A feature detector in the pandemonium model that decides whether the stimulus matches its pattern

Decision demon

A feature detector in the pandemonium model that determines which pattern is being recognized

Ceteris paribus

A latin term that means 'when all is equal'

Template

A model against which a stimulus is compared to determine whether it belongs to a particular category

Pandemonium

A model of pattern recognition consisting of three levels: data, cognitive demons and decision demons

Recognition by components (RBC)

A model of perception based on subdividing objects into a basic set of geometric shapes

Parallel distributed processing (PDP)

A model of perception that proposes that different features are process at the same time by different units connected together in a network (Connectionists)

Prototype

A model that possesses all the typical characteristics of its class

Optic ataxia

A neural deficit in which the patient can identify objects but is unable to accurately interact with them manually

Principle of experience

A principle of Gestalt organization stating that elements are grouped based on the prior experience and knowledge of the observer

Blind spot

A region in the eye where the optic nerve leaves the retina; it does not contain any photoreceptors

Angle-of-regard theory

A theory developed to explain the moon illusion, which states that the zenith moon appears smaller than the horizon moon because a person has to raise his or her eyes or head to view it

Ambient optical array

All the visual information that is present at a particular point of view

Stimulus

An entity in the external environment that can be perceived by an observer

Apparent-distance theory

An explanation for the moon illusion; it posits that the moon on the horizon appears larger because 'distance' cues lead the observers to perceive it as being nearer than the zenith moon.

Prosopagnosia

An impairment in the ability to recognize faces despite intact recognition of other objects

Preattentive processing

Automatic extraction of features before an object can be perceived (FIT)

Feature integration theory

Before we can attend to objects in the world we must extract the features that make up these objects (Treisman)

Template matching theory

Comparing a stimulus with templates; when they match, the stimulus is recognized as belonging to that category

Attentive processing

Combining features into a whole object through attention (FIT)

Feature detection theory

Detecting patterns on the basis of their individual features

Atomistic

Focusing on the features or components of objects

Holistic

Focusing on the whole configuration of an object

Pop-out

Grab attention

Texture gradients

Gradual changes in the pattern of a surface that is normally assumed to be uniform, which provides information about surface characteristics such as whether the surface is receding or curved

Bi-stable figures

Images from which two separate percepts can be formed

Transformation

In the theory proposed by Gibson, the change of optical information hitting the eye when the observer moves through the environment (lead to the idea of optic flow field)

Principle of proximity

Things that are near one another are grouped together

Word Superiority effect

It is easier to identify a letter if it appears in a word than if it appears alone

Percept

Meaningful interpretation of sensory information

Figure-ground segmentation

Perceptual organization of a scene such that one element becomes the foreground and the other elements becomes the background

Perception

Processing sensory information such that it produces a meaningful understanding of the information

Principle of closure

Things that form closed shapes are grouped together

Probe

Secondary memory can be activated by means of a probe from primary memory

Jumbled word effect

The ability to read wdors in stenntnces dsepite havinag mexid-upltteers in teh mlidde of smoe of the wrods

Pattern recognition

The ability to recognize an event as an instance of a particular category of event

Gestaltist's error

The assumption that whole objects should always dominate over the elements of an image

McGurk Effect

The auditory experience of the syllable 'da' when seeing a mouth wilently saying 'ga' while at the same time hearing a voice say 'ba'

Geons

The basic geometric shapes that comprise objects (36)

Feature binding

The combining of visual features by attention to form whole objects (FIT)

Change blindness

The common failure of people to notice changes to an object or scene

Contrast energy

The degree of contrast between letters in a word and the background they appear on leading to the relative ease with which a stimulus can be discriminated from the background against which it is displayed

Denotivity

The degree to which an object is meaningful and familiar to an individual

Recoverability

The degree to which geons can be made out in a degraded image of an object

Scatter-reflection

The degree to which light scatters when reflected from a surface. Indicates the nature of the object's surface

Topological breakage

The discontinuity created by the intersection of two texture gradients. Indicates edges

Grand illusion of perception

The experience of a clear and detailed picture of the world in one's visual field

Perceptual completion (filling-in)

The experience that something is present in part of a visual scene when actually it is absent from that spot, but is present in the surrounding region (compensation for blind spot)

Context effects

The influence that the situation plays on the perception of a stimulus (connected to top-down processing)

Optic flow field

The movement of objects or of the observer through the environment produces changes in what is seen

Time spaces

The perceptual experience of time units such as days of the week or months of the year as occupying spatial locations outside of the body (occur automatically)

Empirical theory of colour vision

The proposal that colour perception involves not only the processing of wavelengths of light but also the influence of prior experiences about how different lighting conditions affect the appearance of the colour of objects

Theory of ecological optics

The proposal that perception involves directly absorbing the visual information present in the environment (Gibson)

Organizational principles

The rules that explain the ways in which people are able to perceive whole objects or events from individual parts

Skin conductance response

The small increase in the conductivity of the surface of the skin when an individual is aroused by seeing a familiar object or person

Moon illusion

The tendency for the moon to appear larger when on the horizone than when high in the sky

Squelching

The tendency of the nervous system to inhibit the processing of unclear features

Memory trace

The trace that an experience leaves in the brain

Group

The way in which individual parts are combined to form a whole

Principle of common fate

Things that are moving in the same direction are grouped together

Multiple trace memory model

Traces of each individual experience are recorded in memory. No matter how often a particular kind of event is experienced, a memory trace of the event is recorded each time

Echo

When a probe goes out from primary to secondary memory, memory traces are activated to the extent that they are similar to the probe

Hoffding function

When an experience makes contact with memory trace, resulting in recognition

Top-down processing

When perception (or other cognitive processes) is driven by expectations and prior knowledge

Bottom-up processing

When perception (or other cognitive processes) results from the combination of individual pieces of sensory information