Chapter 2 Flashcards
Perception
The use of previous knowledge to gather and interpret stimuli registered by the senses. Perception requires both bottom-up and top-down processing.
Object recognition or pattern recognition
you identify a complex arrangement of sensory stimuli, and you perceive that this pattern is separate from its background.
When you recognize an object, your sensory processes transform and organize raw information provided by your sensory receptors. You also compare the sensory stimuli with information that you have stored in your memory.
distal stimulus
is the actual object that is “ out there” in the environment - for example, the pen on your desk.
proximal stimulus
is the information registered on your sensory receptors - for example, the image that your pen creates on your retina.
retina
covers the inside back portion of your eye; it contains millions of neurons that register and transmit visual information from the outside world.
sensory memory
is a large-capacity storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy.
iconic memory or visual sensory memory
preserves an image of a visual stimulus for a brief period after the stimulus has disappeared
Primary Visual Cortex
is located in the occipital lobe of the brain; it is the portion of your cerebral cortex that is concerned with basic processing of visual stimuli.
Gestalt psychology - One Important Principle
Humans have basic tendencies to organize what they see; without any effort, we see patterns rather than random arrangements. For example, when two areas share a common boundary, the figure has a distinct shape with clearly defined edges.
figure
has a distinct shape with clearly defined efges
ground
is the refion that is “ left over”, forming the background.
Ambiguous figure-ground relationship
the figure and the ground reverse from time to time, so that the figure becomes the ground and then becomes the figure again.
illusory contours or subjective contours
we see edges even though they are not physically present in the stimulus.
templates
specific patterns that you have stored in memory
feature-analysis theories
propose a relatively flexible approach in which a visual stimulus is composed of a small number of characteristics or components
distinct feature
each visual characteristic
recognition-by-components theory
In visual perception, a theory proposing that people can recognize three-dimensional shapes, in terms of an arrangement of simple 3D shapes called geons. Geons can be combined to form meaningful objects.
Geons
In recognition-by-components theory, the simple 2D shapes that people use in order to recognize visual objects
viewer-centered approach
this approach proposes that we store a small number of views of the three-dimensional objects rather than just one view.
Bottom-up processing
emphasizes that the stimulus characteristics are important when you recognize an object. Specifically, the physical stimuli from the environment are registered on the sensory receptors.
Top-down processing
emphasizes how a person’s concepts, expectations and memory can influence object recognition.
word superiority effect
we can identify a single letter more accurately and more rapidly when it appears in a meaningful word than when it appears alone or in a meaningless string of unrelated letters.
change blindness
fail to detect a change in an object or scene
inattentional blindness
when we are paying attention to some events in a scene, we may fail to notice when a unexpected but completely visible object suddenly appears/
ecological validity
studies are high in ecological validity if the conditions in which the research is conductedare similar to the natural setting where the results will be applied.
holistic ( recognition)
A term describing the recognition of faces and other selected stimuli, based on their overall shape and structure, or gestalt.
gestalt
overall quality that transcends its individual elements
prosopagnosia
condition in which people cannot recognize human faces, though they perceive other objects relatively normally.
face-inversion effect
observation that [ep[;e are much more accurate in identifying upright faces, compared to upside-down faces.
Schizophrenia
People with schizophrenia typically do not show intense emotions and they may have hallucinations. Another facet is disordered thinking.
Speech perception
The process by which the auditory system records sound vibrations that are generated by someone talking. The auditory system then translates these vibrations into a sequence of sounds that are perceived as speech.
Phoneme
the basic unit of spoken language, such as the sounds a,k,th,
Inter-speaker variability i
s the term used to refer to the observation that different speakers of the same language produce the same sound differently.
Coarticulation
One of the causes of phoneme variation, in this case created by surrounding phonemes. Specifically, when pronouncing a particular phoneme, the mouth remains in somewhat the same shape as when it pronounced the previous phoneme; in addition, the mouth is preparing to pronounce the next phoneme.
Phonemic restoration
In speech perception, filling in a missing phoneme based on contextual meaning.
McGurk effect
The observation that visual information influences speech perception ; listeners integrate both visual and auditory information when perceiving speech.
special mechanism approach or speech-is-special approach
humans are born with a specialized device that allows us to decode speech stimuli. As a result, we process speech sounds more quickly and accurately than other auditory stimuli, such as instrumental music.
Categorical perception
A phenomenon in which people report hearing a clear cut phoneme even though they actually heard an ambiguous sound, between the two phoneme
General Mechanism approach
The idea that speech perception can be explained without proposing any specialized phonetic module. in other words, humans use the same neural mechanisms to process both speech sounds and nonspeech sounds.
