2480 - Final - 1 Flashcards
Prosopagnosia:
Inability to recognize faces
(otherwise normal vision)
Faces show a powerful
Inversion effect
the reduction in
recognition (or increase in errors) for upside-down stimuli
Fusiform face area (FFA)
is particularly responsive to faces, but high levels of activation can also be produced by tasks requiring subtle distinctions.
Face perception seems to rely on
Holistic
perception.
Holistic perception
perception of the
overall configuration rather than an assemblage of parts
Familiar faces:
relationships among the internal features of the face.
Unfamiliar faces
the face’s outer parts (e.g., hair, shape of head)
Patients who suffer from
Unilateral neglect syndrome
are
unable to attend to inputs coming from one side of the body.
Attention:
A concentration of mental activity.
Selective attention:
processing one source of information at
the expense of other sources of information.
Divided attention:
Processing multiple sources of information simultaneously.
Spatial attention is sometimes thought of as a
Spotlight beam
The beam marks the region of space for which you are prepared, so inputs within the beam are processed more efficiently.
“All is Vanity” illusion
As you shift from one perception to the other, you need to adjust your spotlight beam of attention
narrow beam to see details (e.g., to see the woman) or to a wider beam to see the whole scene (e.g., to see the skull).
The control system for attention includes:
- Orienting system
- Alerting system
- Executive system
Which factors influence what people attend to?
- Visual prominence
- Level of interest
- Importance (determined by context)
- Beliefs and expectations
Ultra-rare item effect
(you are unlikely to focus on
and notice aspects of a scene that are totally unexpected)
e.g., security inspections at airports
Endogenous control of attention
Deliberately choosing what to pay attention to.
Exogenous control of attention
an element of the scene
“seizes” your attention whether you like it or not
* Example: ambulance sirens
Given neglect patients ignore all inputs form one side of the body, suggests a
Spaced-based account
of attention.
Object-based
attention
neglect patients have a strong initial bias to attend to the right visual field, however, once their attention has locked onto an object, it is the object that is the target of attention, not space.
Evidence that attention is BOTH
Object-based and space based
Not all aspects of the unattended channel are ignored,
- Physical attributes
E.g., speech versus music - Personally important semantic content
(e.g., your name)
The “cocktail party effect”
Attention is needed for
Conscious perception
Inattentional deafness
the failure to hear a prominent stimulus,
even though can hear it perfectly fine
Dr. Maria Chait
Inattentional numbness
the failure to detect a somatosensory feeling (i.e., a feeling of ‘touch)
Inattentional blindness:
the failure to see a prominent stimulus, even if one is staring right at it
Perception requires you to
Organize and interpret incoming stimuli - but this activity requires some initiative and resources.
E.g., we don’t typically notice the gradual change of daylight.
Can’t find the mushrooms in the fridge.
Change blindness:
the inability to detect changes in a scene despite looking at it directly
expectation-driven priming
Perceiver anticipates the attended channel.
* Detectors that are needed for the (now expected) input are primed.
* Primed detectors fire more readily/easily
Biased competition theory
attention creates a temporary bias in neuron
sensitivity
Spatial Attention
Perception is facilitated by priming detectors. Priming can be
stimulus-driven or expectation driven.
Repetition priming
priming produced by a prior encounter
with the stimulus
* Stimulus-driven
* Requires no effort or cognitive resources
Expectation-driven priming
detectors for inputs you think
are upcoming are deliberately primed.
Effortful
Not done for unexpected inputs or inputs in which you
have no interest
Spatial attention:
your ability to focus attention on a specific location in space
