Exam 2 Cognitive Psychology

The theory of unconscious inference includes the

likelihood principle.

Semantic regularity refers to the _____.

meaning between properties of an object

The term semantics, when applied to perception, means the

meaning of a scene, often related to what is happening within the scene.

People perceive vertical and horizontal orientations more easily than other orientations according to the

oblique effect.

Which of the following is NOT an example of a physical regularity in your text?

. Angled orientation

Which of the following options would NOT be an important factor in automatic processing?

Close attention

Illusory conjunctions

Combinations of features from different stimuli

Saliency map

Combinding the values of characteristics such as color, orientation, and intensity at each location in a scene.

The technique where the participant's task is to focus on the message in one ear, called the attended ear, and to repeat what he or she is hearing out loud is known as

dichotic listening.

Gestalt

the whole is different than the sum of its parts

Distraction

One stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus

Divided attention

Paying attention to more than one thing at a time

Which of the following attention model components produces two levels of output?

Treisman's attenuator

light-from-above assumption

assume this placement of light due to sun and most artificial light

In which concept is an individual's knowledge most important?

schema

difficulties creating a perceiving machine

stimulus on receptors is ambiguous, objects can be hidden or blurred, objects look different from different viewpoints

inverse projection problem

task of determining the object that caused a particular image on the retina

The Stroop effect occurs when participants

try to name colors and ignore words.

Saccadic eye movement is a ______________.

reaction to physical properties of stimulus

Which of the following is most closely associated with Treisman's attenuation theory of selective attention?

Dictionary unit

Sensory Memory

Holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second. Transfers all information to next stage.

Processing Capacity

How much information a person can handle at any given moment.

Theory of Natural Selection

Idea, first proposed by Charles Darwin, that species survive due to favorable characteristics

Change Blindness

If shown two versions of a picture, differences between them are not immediately apparent.

Which of the following is an example of unconscious inference?

Perceiving that a partially covered automobile continues beneath the cover

Helmholtz theory of unconscious inference (likelihood principle, unconscious inference)

Perception depends on knowledge.. We perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received. our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions, or inferences, that we make about the environment

How does perceptual load differ from processing capacity?

Perceptual load is individual and processing capacity is universal.

Detector

Processes all information to determine higher level characteristics of the message.

Short-term Memory

Receives output of detector. Only lasts for 10-15 seconds and may transfer to long-term memory.

Which of the following is an example of an effect of top-down processing?

Recognizing a crying friend's sounds as words in a sentence

Binding

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

speech segmentation

The process of perceiving individual words within the continuous flow of the speech signal.

Late selection models of attention

The proposal that most of the incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before the message to be further processed is selected

Taking regularities into the environment into account

There are 2 types of regularities: physical regularities and semantic regularities

High-load tasks

Use more of a persons processing capacity

Low-load tasks

Use up only a small amount of the persons processing capacity

Eye tracking studies investigating attention as we carry out actions such as making a peanut butter sandwich found that a person's eye movements

are determined primarily by the task.

A person with strong ________ would likely have a deeper experience of Bayesian influence.

beliefs

During a visit to the local museum, you appreciate the incredible beauty of the paintings displayed. Your ability to see the paintings as complete pictures rather than individual, disconnected dots of color, texture, and location occurs through a process called __________.

binding

semantic regularities

characteristics associated with the functions carried out in different types of scenes

regularities of the environment

characteristics of the physical environment that occur frequently

Which of the following adjectives has the LEAST connection to perception?

conscious

Colin Cherry's experiment in which participants listened to two different messages, one presented to each ear, found that people

could focus on one message and ignore the other one at the same time.

speech segmentation

determining where one word ends and another begins, requires knowledge of language

Proponents of multitasking would note ________ to support their opinion, whereas opponents of multitasking would point to ________ to justify their perspective.

divided attention; distraction

Which of the following word strings all refer to the same pathway?

dorsal, where, action

Which of the following best describes the result of attention in the context of perception?

enhancement

Bayesian inference

estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by two factors: the prior (our initial belief about the probability of an outcome), and the likelihood (the extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the outcome)

law of pragnaz (principle of good figure or simplicity)

every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible

perception

experiences resulting from the stimulation of the senses. rules based on experience, occurs much more rapidly than reasoning, occurs in conjunction with action

principles of perception

explain the way elements are grouped together to create larger objects

Each time you briefly pause on one face, you are making a(n) ______________.

fixation

A bottom-up process is involved in fixating on an area of a scene that

has high stimulus salience.

The task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on one's retina is called the

inverse projection problem.

A high threshold in Treisman's model of attention implies that

it takes a strong signal to cause activation.

Scene schema is

knowledge about what is contained in a typical scene.

scene schema

knowledge of what a given scene typically contains

where pathway

leads from sriate cortex to parietal lobe. determine's object's location (landmark problem solving)

what pathway

leads from sriate cortex to temporal lobe. ablading causes problems with object discrimination.

apparent movement

movement (light in stroboscope) is perceived but nothing actually moving

The "filter model" proposes that the filter identifies the attended message based on

physical characteristics.

brain ablation

removing part of the brain by lesioning

As the ________ of a stimulus increases, ________ tends to ________.

salience; fixation; increase

The notion that faster responding occurs when enhancement spreads within an object is called

same-object advantage.

Entering a church service and seeing someone selling hot dogs and cotton candy from a cart near the altar would be perceived as a violation of

scene schema.

When Sam listens to his girlfriend Susan in the restaurant and ignores other people's conversations, he is engaged in the process of __________ attention.

selective

The demonstration in your text that asks you to visualize scenes such as an office, a department store clothing section, a lion, and a microscope often results in more details in the scene of the office or department store than the scene with the lion or microscope. The latter two tend to have fewer details because most individuals from modern society have less knowledge of _____ in those scenes.

semantic regularities

Strayer and Johnston's (2001) experiment involving simulated driving and the use of "hands-free" versus "handheld" cell phones found that

talking on either kind of phone impairs driving performance significantly and to the same extent.

According to your text, the ability to divide attention depends on all of the following EXCEPT

task cueing.

inverse projection problem

task of determining the object responsible for a particular retinal image...involves starting with retinal image and extending rays out from the eye

viewpoint invariance

the ability to recognize an object seen from different viewpoints

If a Gestalt psychologist was baking a cake for an event, what would they be most focused on?

the cake

With the Stroop effect, you would expect to find longest response times when

the color and the name differed.

Broadbent's model is called an early selection model because

the filter eliminates unattended information at the beginning of the information flow.

Placing tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice into a blender and turning it on to produce salsa is similar to which of the following?

the focused attention stage of feature integration theory

Research on the use of cell phones while driving indicates that

the main effect of cell phone use on driving safety can be attributed to the fact that attention is used up by the cognitive task of talking on the phone

Perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information: can change based on added information, involve process, occur in conjunction with actions, involve processes similar to reasoning Starts with bottom-up processing (stimulation of receptors, creating electrical signals that reach the visual receiving area of the brain) Also involves top-down processing = knowledge stored in the brain.

experience-dependent plasticity

the process through which neural connections are created and reorganized throughout life as a function of an individual's experiences

What differentiates bottom-up processing from top-down processing?

the source of information

Which of the following is NOT considered a starting point for perception?

thinking

If a word is identified more easily when it is in a sentence than when it is presented alone, this would be an example of _____ processing.

top-down

Filter

Identifies attended message based on physical characteristics.

Change blindness

Difficulty in detecting changes in scenes

Dichotic listening

Presenting different stimuli to the left and right ear

Why do computers have problems perceiving at a level to humans:

1. the stimulus on the receptors is ambiguous 2. objects in a scene can be hidden or blurred 3. objects look different from different viewpoints 4. scenes contain high-level information

law of pragnanz/principle of good figure/principle of simplicity

A Gestalt principle of perceptual organization that states that every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible. Also called the principle of pragnanz or the principle of simplicity. (half a cup doesn't have a massive square coming off it - the ability to form something as a whole)

Balint's syndrome

A patient who had parietal lobe damage causing the inability to focus attention on individual objects

brain ablation

A procedure in which a specific area is removed from an animal's brain. It is usually done to determine the function of this area by assessing the effect on the animal's behavior.

Attentional capture

A rapid shifting of attention usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement

Sccadic eye movement

A rapid, jerky movement form one fixation to the next

Inattentional Blindness

A stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be looking directly at it.

Selective attention

Attending to one thing while ignoring others

Attenuation model of attention

Attenuator > Dictionary unit > memory

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

Binding

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

Binding

Bottleneck model

Broadbents filter model of attention: Sensory memory > Filter > Detector > Memory

object discrimination problem

Differentiate between: what / ventral pathway - object discriminations - occipital to temporal lobe) perception pathway - visual to temporal = pathway allows you to define and understand objects, ----------- where / dorsal pathway - landmark discriminations - occipital to parietal how / action pathway - visual to parietal = where something is and then taking action on the object

Pre cueing

Directing attention without moving the eyes.

Fixation

Each time you briefly pause on one face

According to your textbook, perception goes beyond the simple receipt of sensory information. It is involved in many different cognitive skills. Which of the following is NOT one of those skills as noted by the chapter?

Experiencing neuromodulation

Early selection model

Filter that eliminates the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information

transitional probabilities

In language, the chances that one sound will follow another sound. Every language has transitional probabilities for different sounds. Part of learning a language involves learning about the transitional probabilities in that language.

Which of the following illustrates how we can miss things even if they are clearly visible?

Inattentional blindness

size-weight illusion

Inferring the weight of an object based on its size

Which of the following is true about perception?

It involves rapid processes.

What is a scene schema?

Knowledge of what a scene typically contains

Suppose you are in your kitchen writing a grocery list, while your roommate is watching TV in the next room. A commercial for spaghetti sauce comes on TV. Although you are not paying attention to the TV, you "suddenly" remember that you need to pick up spaghetti sauce and add it to the list. Your behavior is best predicted by which of the following models of attention?

Late selection

principle of good continuation

Law of perceptual organization stating that points that, when connected, result in straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together. In addition, lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path. (rope going around a person and knowing that the rope is still a whole)

Load theory of attention

Low load tasks use few cognitive resources may leave resources available for processing unattended task-irrelevant stimuli, whereas high load tasks that use all a persons cognitive resources don't leave any resources to process unattended task irrelevant stimuli

Visual scanning

Movements of the eyes from one location or object to another

Inattentional blindness

Not attending to something that is clearly visible

Conjunction search

Searching for a combination of two or more features (A Green Line)

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

Focused attention stage

The "free-floating" features are combined in the second stage of Treismans model thus perceiving the object

Cocktail party effect

The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli

Attention

The ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations

Which stage in Treisman's attenuation model has a threshold component?

The dictionary unit

Perceptual Load

The difficulty of a given task.

Same object advantage

The faster responding that occurs when enhancement spreads within an object

Preattentive stage

The first step in processing an image of an object

Bayesian inference

The idea that our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by the prior probability (our initial belief) and the likelihood (the extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the outcome).

How does the phenomenon of apparent movement work?

The perceptual system creates the perception of movement from stationary images.

Stimulus salience

The physical properties of the stimulus, such as color, contrast, or movement.

Members of a security team are stationed on rooftops surrounding a large city plaza before a scheduled rally. Suddenly, three team members in different locations radio in to the command center, each stating that they have spotted a suspicious box on the ground with a pipe coming from the top. What enables the security team members to report seeing the same object despite being stationed on different rooftops?

Viewpoint invariance

Which term best reflects what we do with an image projected onto our retina?

We interpret it.

What is the process of unconscious inference?

When our perceptions are the result of inferences that we make about the environment

Evidence for the role of top-down processing in perception is shown by which of the following examples?

When someone accurately identifies a word in a song on a radio broadcast despite static interfering with reception

Imagine that lawmakers are considering changing the driving laws and that you have been consulted as an attention expert. Given the principles of divided attention, in which of the following conditions would a person have the most difficulty with driving and therefore pose the biggest safety risk on the road?

When the person is driving an unfamiliar vehicle that is more difficult to operate.

Visual search

When we look for an object among a number of other objects ( Wheres waldo)

Feature search

When you look for a single feature (A line)

Which of the following would have the most semantic regularities?

a shopping mall

viewpoint invariance

ability to recognize an object from different viewpoints

bottom-up processing

analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information (information stimulating the receptors)

The existence of transitional probabilities adds a(n) ________ quality to learning and using language.

anticipatory

If you stand very close to a pointillist painting, all you will see are tiny colored dots. But as you step away from the painting, larger areas of color become noticeable and eventually become recognizable objects such as flowers or clouds. This is similar to which of the following?

binding

The sequence of steps that includes the image on the retina, changing the image into electrical signals, and neural processing is an example of _____ processing.

bottom-up

statistical learning

certain sounds (making words) are more likely to occur together and babies are sensitive to those probabilities

The difficulty we have in recognizing even an obvious alteration in a scene is called __________ blindness.

change

When we search a scene, initial fixations are most likely to occur on __________ areas.

high-saliency

Perception is NOT essential for

improving empathy.

top-down processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations (information based on knowledge) Examples = multiple personalities of a blob, how language makes it possible to perceive individual words, Saffran's experiment showing 8 month old infants are sensitive to translational probabilities in language.

The saying, "If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all" best reflects which of the following?

likelihood principle

If you are folding towels while watching television, you may find that you don't have to pay much attention to the act of folding while keeping up with the storyline on the TV show. Folding the towels would be an example of a(n) ________ task.

low-load

The Stroop effect demonstrates people's inability to ignore the __________ of words.

meaning

Suppose twin teenagers are vying for their mother's attention. The mother is trying to pay attention to one of her daughters, though both girls are talking (one about her boyfriend, one about a school project). According to the operating characteristics of Treisman's attenuator, it is most likely the attenuator is analyzing the incoming messages in terms of

meaning.

experience-dependent plasticity

mechanism through which the structure of the brain is changed by experience

Lan has no idea what she just read in her text because she was thinking about how hungry she is and what she is going to have for dinner. This is a real-world example of

mind wandering.

In Schneider and Shiffrin's experiment, in which participants were asked to indicate whether a target stimulus was present in a series of rapidly presented "frames," divided attention was easier

once processing had become automatic.

The process by which small objects become perceptually grouped to form larger objects is the principle of perceptual

organization.

perceptual organization (Gestalt)

organize sensations into meaningful perceptions based on Gestalt such as (the whole is different than the sum of its parts); like items are grouped together figure ground closure proximity similarity continuity Phil phenomenon

Speech segmentation is defined as

organizing the sounds of speech into individual words.

prior probability

our initial belief about the probability of an outcome

unconscious inference

our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions, or inferences, that we make about the environment

The use of a machine that tracks the movement of one's eyes can help reveal the shifting of one's __________ attention.

overt

The landmark discrimination problem is more difficult to do if you have damage to your _____ lobe.

parietal

The Gestalt psychologists believe that _____.

perception is affected by experience, but built-in principles can override experience

Taking regularities of the environment into account

physical regularities and semantic regularities - oblique effect ( no coincidence that people can perceive horizontal lines and vertical lines more easily than other orientations) - light from above (assuming that light comes from above)

The fact that trees are more likely to be vertical or horizontal than slanted is an example of ____.

physical regularity

placebo

pill patients believe contains painkillers but contains no active ingredient. can relieve pathological pain, leading to placebo effect. pain is influenced by expectation, attention, and distracting stimuli

principle of good continuation

points that, when connected, result in straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together, and the lines tend to be seen in such a way to follow that smoothest path. objects that are overlapped are perceived as continuing behind the overlapping object

The notion that every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible is called the law of

pragnanz.

According to Treisman's feature integration theory, the first stage of perception is called the __________ stage.

preattentive

physical regularities

regularly occurring physical properties of the environment

principle of similarity

similar things appear to be grouped together

Principle of similarity

similar things appear to be grouped together (Olympic symbol)

You are at a parade where there are a number of marching bands. You perceive the bands that are all in the same uniforms as being grouped together. The red uniforms are one band, the green uniforms another, and so forth. You have this perceptual experience because of the law of

similarity.

When Carlos moved to the United States, he did not understand any English. Phrases like "Anna Mary Can Pi and I Scream Class Hick" didn't make any sense to him. Now that Carlos has been learning English, he recognizes this phrase as "An American Pie and Ice Cream Classic." This example illustrates that Carlos was not capable of ____ in English

speech segmentation

top-down processing

starts in brain, top of perceptual system, involves factors like prior knowledge, expectations, attention

Maria took a drink from a container marked "milk." Surprised, she quickly spit out the liquid because it turned out that the container was filled with orange juice instead. Maria likes orange juice, so why did she have such a negative reaction to it? Her response was most affected by

top-down processing.

Helmholtz's theory of unconscious inference

uses the likelihood principle (that we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused that stimuli we received). perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions that we make about the environment

oblique effect

verticals and horizontals more easily perceived than other orientations

action pathway

visual cortex to parietal lobe

perception pathway

visual cortex to temporal lobe

likelihood principle

we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received

liklihood principle

we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received (blob experiment)

The likelihood principle states that

we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received.

Gestalt principles of organization (apparent movement, perceptual organization, principles of good continuation, principle of good figure, principle of simplicity, principle of similarity)

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

landmark discrimination problem

Problem in which the task is to remember an object's location and to choose that location after a delay. Associated with research on the where processing stream.

Saccades

Rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another.

semantic regularities

what would you expect to occur in a certain place (room, event, area) - scene schema

Stroop Effect

Name of the word interferes with the ability to name the ink color. Cannot avoid attention to the meanings of the words.

Viewpoint ________ is the ability to recognize the same object even if it is seen from different perspectives.

invariance

direct pathway model

model of pain experience. popular in 1950s and 60s. path occurs when nociceptors are stimulated and send signals in a direct pathway from skin to brain. bottom-up.

bottom-up processing

sequence of events form eye to brain, starts at the bottom/beginning of system when environmental energy stimulates the receptors

Automatic processing

A type of processing that occurs without intention and at a cost of only some of a persons cognitive rescoures

Binding problem

The question of how an objects individual features become bound together

Attenuator

First stage of Treisman's model: Analyzes the incoming message in the terms of it's physical characteristics, it's language, and it's meaning

Shadowing

Focusing your attention on the words in one ear and repeat the words you hear out load.

mirror neurons

Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation, language learning, and empathy. (temporal lobe, frontal lobe and the parietal lobe) think, theory of mind

4 Concepts of Object Perception

Helmholtz Theory of Unconscious Interference (top-down) Gestalt Principles of Organization (bottom-up) Taking Regularities of the Environment into Account (top-down) Bayesian Inference (top-down)

Feature integration theory

The question of how we perceive individual features as part of the same object by proposing a two-stage process.

Dictionary unit

The second stage of Treisman's model: Contains words stored in the memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated.

According to Treisman's attenuation model, which of the following would you expect to have the highest threshold for most people?

The word "platypus"

apparent movement

An illusion of movement perception that occurs when stimuli in different locations are flashed one after another with the proper timing. 1) one light flashes on and off; 2) there is a period of darkness lasting a fraction of a second; 3) the second light flashes on and off

Perceiving machines are used by the U.S. Postal Service to "read" the addresses on letters and sort them quickly to their correct destinations. Sometimes, these machines cannot read an address because the writing on the envelope is not sufficiently clear for the machine to match the writing to an example it has stored in memory. Human postal workers are much more successful at reading unclear addresses, most likely because of

top-down processing.

The perception pathway corresponds to the _____ pathway, while the action pathway corresponds to the _____ pathway.

what; where

Anne Treisman's attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of all of the following EXCEPT

whether the perceptual load is low or high.