Exam 1 Review Questions

feature integration theory

An approach to object perception, developed by Anne Treisman, that proposes a sequence of stages in which features are first analyzed and then combined to result in perception of an object.

perceptual load

Related to the difficulty of a task. Low-load tasks use only a small amount of a person's processing capacity. High-load tasks use more of the processing capacity.

illusory conjunction

a perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined

saccadic eye movement

a rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next

Overt Attention

attention that involves looking directly at the attended object

When viewers miss small changes in a movie scene, e.g. an actor is holding a different glass from one shot to the next, this is an example of _____.

change blindness

Palmer's experiment, in which he asked people to identify objects in a kitchen, showed how _______ can affect perception.

context

Broca's area

controls language expression - an area, usually in the left frontal lobe, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke's area

controls language reception - a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

True or False: A saccadic eye movement is a slow, sweeping eye movement that covers an entire area uninterrupted

false

True or False: Behaviorists believe that invisible mental processes should be studied

false

True or False: The dependent variable in the inhibition of return demonstration was the frequency of detecting the target.

false

True or False: The fact that patient Tan informed where language production is localized in the brain is an example of a double dissociation.

false

hyperopia

farsightedness; light rays focus behind the retina

Distractors affect one's reaction time in a feature present search in the same way they affect one's reaction time in a ________ search.

feature absent

The grandmother cell is an example of what variety of neural coding?

specificity coding

Rapid Eye Movement

stage of sleep in which the eyes move rapidly under the eyelids and the person is typically experiencing a dream

Task Demands

stressors arising from the tasks required of a person holding a particular job

Which region of the brain is Wernicke's area located in?

temporal lobe

True or False: Gestalt Laws are intrinsic.

true

True or False: In Strayer and Johnson's simulated driving test, they found that participants on hands-free cell phones had equal performance than participants on traditional cell phones.

true

True or false: The fovea has the highest concentration of receptor cells.

true

Helmholtz's theory of unconscious inference

- Top-down Theory - Some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions we make about environment - we use prior experiences to resolve ambiguities in our retinal images

What is the approximate charge of the resting potential in a neuron?

-70 mV

The inhibition of return effect is a difference in response time to the target at a cue to target onset asynchrony (CTOA)

300 ms

saliency map

A "map" of a visual display that takes into account characteristics of the display such as color, contrast, and orientation that are associated with capturing attention.

principle of good continuation

A Gestalt principle of perceptual organization that states that points that, when connected, result in straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together, and that lines tend to be seen in such a way as to follow the smoothest path.

Balint's syndrome

A condition caused by brain damage in which a person has difficulty focusing attention on individual objects.

grandmother cell

A hypothesized type of neuron that responds only to a very specific stimulus, such as a person's grandmother.

temporal lobe

A region of the cerebral cortex responsible for hearing and language.

frontal lobe

A region of the cerebral cortex that has specialized areas for movement, abstract thinking, planning, memory, and judgement

occipital lobe

A region of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information

parietal lobe

A region of the cerebral cortex whose functions include processing information about touch.

Bayesian inference

A statistical approach to perception in which perception is determined by taking probabilities into account. These probabilities are based on past experiences in perceiving properties of objects and scenes.

visual search

A task in which participants are asked to determine whether a specified target is present within a field of stimuli.

B.F. Skinner

Behaviorist that developed the theory of operant conditioning by training pigeons and rats

Patient Tan

Damage to Broca's area disrupted speech production

Stroop Effect

Explains the decreased speed of naming the color of ink used to print words when the color of ink and the word itself are of different colors.

True or False: Language production is impaired by damage to Wernicke's area.

False

True or False: Participants responding faster to a light at an expected location than an unexpected location is an example of overt attention.

False

True or False: The availability of the digital computer led to research that resulted in Tolman's cognitive map.

False

The ________ has the most receptive cells on the retina which consist only of cone receptive cells, whereas the _________ has both cones and rods.

Fovea; Periphery

Out of the four approaches to object perception (Helmholtz's theory of unconscious inference, Gestalt's principles, regularities in the environment, and Bayesian Influence), which approach relies more on bottom-up processing than the others? a) Helmholtz's theory of unconscious inference b) Gestalt's principles of organization c) taking regularities in the environment into account d) Bayesian Influence

Gestalt's principles of organization

Which American psychologist proposed of a new approach called behaviorism?

John Watson

Retina

Light sensitive layer of the eye; contains rods and cones

Shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes is ..... Visual Search Overt Attention Covert Attention Rapid Eye Movement

Overt Attention

Which of the following is not in the Gestalt principles of organization?

Principle of symmetry.

Gestalt Principles of Organization

Principles that determine how a scene is organized into components. The principles include proximity, similarity, good continuation, closure, and good form.

The amount of information people can handle and sets a limit on their ability to process incoming information refers to ________.

Processing Capacity

principle of perceptual organization

Rules proposed by the Gestalt psychologists to explain how small elements of a scene or a display become perceptually grouped to form larger units. These "laws" are described as "heuristics" in this book.

Which piece of evidence supports the Feature Integration Theory?

Single Case Studies of Balint's Syndrome

Which early cognitive scientist was interesting in operant conditioning?

Skinner

Which defintion would properly define the aspect of "savings" in regards to Ebbinghaus' experiment conducted on himself?

The difference in the amount of time between learning the list originally and relearning the list after a given amount of time

sparse coding

The idea that a particular object is represented by the firing of a relatively small number of neurons.

Neuron Doctrine

The idea that individual cells called neurons transmit signals in the nervous system, and that these cells are not continuous with other cells as proposed by nerve net theory.

Nerve Net Theory

The idea that the nervous system consists of a network of connected nerves.

Law of Pragnanz

The most general Gestalt principle, which states that the simplest organization, requiring the least cognitive effort, will emerge as the figure.

double dissociation

The phenomenon in which one of two functions, such as hearing and sight, can be damaged without harm to the other, and vice versa.

Why was Tolman's rat in maze experiment different from what behaviorists would predict?

The rat created a cognitive map to locate the food no matter where he was relocated on the maze

inhibition of return

The relative difficulty in getting attention (or the eyes) to move back to a recently attended (or fixated) location. recently checked locations are mentally marked by attention as places that the search would not return to

-40 mV

Threshold voltage of the SA node

True or False: Palmer's experiment, where he asked people to identify objects in a kitchen, showed how context can affect perception

True

True or False: Ramon y Cajal's research resulted in the abandonment of the neural net theory in favor of the neuron doctrine.

True

True or False: The Purkinje shift is the enhanced reliance on rods in dark or low light conditions.

True

information load

amount of info to be processed per unit of time

An illusory conjunction refers to features from two distinct objects being reported to be part of the same object. For example, subjects shown a blue square and a red circle may sometimes report seeing a blue circle. What aspect of neural processing is this a failure of?

binding

Optic nerve

carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain

Ramon y Cajal

discovered the direction of travel for nerve impulses neuron doctrine

population coding scheme

each receptor cell expresses one olfactory receptor protein; different receptor cells are scattered within olfactory epithelium each cell responds to different odors with different preferences

conjunctive search

find the conjunction of 2 or more features together (find a red Z in a field of red and blue Zs and Ms)

William James

founder of functionalism; studied how humans use perception to function in our environment

Which region of the brain is Broca's area located in?

frontal lobe

Prosopagnosia

inability to recognize faces

Wernicke's area

language comprehension controls language reception - a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

When certain neurons specifically prefer and best respond to specific features of a stimulus, a(n) _________ occurs.

more rapid firing of the neuron

population coding hypothesis

movement in a particular direction is directed by the firing of a relatively large number of broadly tuned M1 neurons

population coding

multiple receptors functioning together representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons

myopia

nearsightedness; light focuses in front of the retina

One example of a physical regularity is the _________ effect which describes how people perceive vertical and horizontal lines more easily than other orientations.

oblique

Covert Attention

occurs when attention is shifted without moving the eyes, commonly referred to as seeing something "out of the corner of one's eye"

pupil

opening in the center of the iris

oblique effect

people can perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations

feature-present/feature-absent effect

people can typically locate a feature that is present more quickly than a feature that is absent (this is the case in our coglab for conjunctive present and absent, but lesser so for feature present/absent

Edward Tolman

researched rats' use of "cognitive maps" cognitive psychologist; latent learning and cognitive map

overt attention

shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes

covert attention

shifting attention from one place to another while keeping the eyes stationary

The brain asymmetry demonstration predicts that right handed participants will have a higher hit rate for words shown in the right visual field...

than in the left visual field

specificity coding

the idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object

Prosopagnosia is ____.

the inability to perceive faces

In a conjunctive search, reaction time increases as the number of distractors increases because ...

the items in the display are searched item by item.

binding

the process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object

Purkinje shift

the shift from cone spectral sensitivity to rod spectral sensitivity that takes place during dark adaptation

lens

the transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina

behaviorists

the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes

neural coding

the way the nervous system converts information into a meaningful pattern of action potentials

change blindness

when people fail to detect changes to the visual details of a scene