Chapter 3-Perception Flashcards
Perception
The processing of sensory information in such a way that it produces conscious experiences and guides action in the world
Blindsight
A condition in which patients with damage to the primary visual cortex are able to make accurate judgements about objects presented to their blind area even though they report to no conscious experience of the objets and believe they are only guessing
Encoding
The process of transforming information into one or more forms of representation
Visual Agnosia
An inability to identify objects visually even though they can be identified using other senses
Subliminal Perception
AKA unconscious perception, it occurs when an observer is unaware of percieving a stimulus, yet the stimulus can still have an impact on his or her behavior
Stimulus
An entity in the external environment that can be percieved by an observer
Limen
Threshold
Backward Masking
presenting a stimulus, called the target, to the participant an then covering, or masking, the target with another stimulus
Stimulus onset asynchrony
The temporal delay between the first stimulus and a masking stimulus
Priming
The tendency for some initial stimuli to make subsequent responses to realted stimuli more likely
Direct vs indirect measures
Participants’ reports that they have seen a stimulus, as opposed to the effects of an undetected stimulus on a subsequent task
Dissociation Paradigm
experimental strategy designed to show that it is possible to percieve stimuli in the absence of any conscious awareness of them
Perception without awareness
A stimulus has an effect even though it is below the participant’s subjective threshold of awareness
Objective and Subjective thresholds
the point at which participants can detect a stimulus at a chance level versus the point at which they say they did not percieve it
Process Dissociation Procedure
Experimental technique that requires participants not to respond with items they have observed previously
Implicit perception
effect of person’s experience, thought, or action of an object in the current stimulus environment in the absence of, or independent of, conscious perception of that event
Percept
The visual experience of sensory information
Theory of ecological optics
the proposition that perception is based on direct contact of the sensory organs with stimulus energy emenating from the environment and that an important goal of perception is action
Ambient Optical Array
All the visual information that is present at a particular point of view
Gradient of texture density
Incremental changes in the pattern on a surface, which provide information about the slant of the surface
Topological Breakage
The discontinuity created by the intersection of two textures
Scatter-Reflection
The degree to which light scatters when reflected from a surface
Transformation
In the theory proposed by Gibson, the change of optical information hitting the eye when the observer moves through the environment
optic flow field
the continually changing pattern of information that results from the movement of either objects or the observer through the environment
Pattern Recognition
The ability to recognize an event as an instance of a particular category of event
Memory Trace
The trace that an experience leaves behind in memory
Hoffding Function
The process whereby an experience makes contact with a memory trace, resulting in recognition
Prototypical
Representative of a pattern or category
Template-matching theory
The hypothesis that the process of pattern recognition relies on the use of templates or protoypes
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 individual event is recorded each time
Probe
A snapshot of information in primary memory that can activate memory traces in secondary memory
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
Feature detection theory
Detecting patterns on the basis of their features or properties
pandemonium
a model of pattern recognition consisteing of three levels, data, cognitive demons, and decision demons
Feature
a component or characteristic of a stimulus
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
Contrast energy
the relative ease with which a stimulus can be distinguished from the background against which it is displayed
Squelching
the tendency of the nervous system to inhibit the processing of unclear features
Recognition by components
the thoery that we recognize objects by breaking them down into their fundamental geometric shapes
Geons
the set of 36 basic three dimensional shapes from which all real world objects can be constructed
Context Effects
The influence of proximate stimuli and the situation on the perceptual experience of a stimulus
Moon Illusion
the tendency for the moon to appear different in size depending on where it is in the sky
Apparent distance theory
An explanation for the moon illusion; it posits that the moon on the horizon appears larger because distance cues lead the observer to percieve it as being farther away than the zenith moon
Jumbled Word Effect
The ability to raed wrdos in steences dseptie hvinag mexid-up ltteers in teh mldddie of smoe of the wrods
Word superiority effect
It’s easier to identify a letter if it appears in a word than if it appears alone
Parallel Distributed Processing
A model of perception according to which different features are processed at the same time by different units connected together in a network
Empirical Theory of Color Vision
The theory that colour perception involves not only the processing of wavelengths of light but also the processing of prior experiences with the way different surrounding objects and different lighting conditions affect the appearance of objects
McGurk Effect
Auditory experience of the syllable “da” when seeing a mouth silently saying “ga” while at the same time hearing a voice saying “ba”
Top Down Influences
te influence of context and an observer’s knowledge, expectations, and high level goals on perceptual experience
Bottom up influences
The influence of the stimulus on the resulting perceptual experience
Change blindness
failure to consciously detect an obvious change in a scene
Grand Illusion of Perception
the illusion that what we see in our visual field is a clear and detailed picture of the world
Feature Integration Theory
before we can attend to objects in the world we must extract the features that constitute them
Feature Integration Theory
Before we can atend to objects in the world we must extract the features that constitute tem
Preattentive Processing
The unconscious extraction of features that must take place before we can perceive an object
Feature binding
the combining of visual features to form whole objects; a process that takes place when attention is directed at a particular location
Perceptual completion
the incorrect impression that a stimulus occupies a section of the visual scene when in fact it occupies only the surrounding region
Gestalt Psychology
a branch of psychology that focuses on wholes as opposed to parts
Bi-Stable figures
Images from which two separate percepts can be formed
Holistic
Focusing on the whole configuration of an object
Atomistic
focusing on the features or components of objects
Grouping
The combination of individual elements to form a perceptual whole
Organizational principles
The rules that govern how whole objects or events are percieved from a collection of individual elements
Principle of experience
visual elements are grouped together based on the prior experience and knowledge of the observer
Figure ground segmentation
Perceptual organization of a scene such that one element becomes the foreground(figure) and the other elements become the background(ground)
Denotivity
the degree to which an object is meaningful and familiar to an individual observer
Principle of Proximity
Visual elements that are close to one another are grouped to form a whole
Principle of closed forms
Visual elements that form the edges of closed shapes are grouped to form a whole
Principle of good contour
Visual elements that form the most direct continuation of each other are grouped together
Principle of Similarity
Visual elements that are similar are grouped together
Principle of Common Movement
Visual elements that move simultaneously and in the same way are grouped to form a whole
Ceteris Paribus
latin phrase meaning: other things being equal
Gestaltist’s error
assumption that whole objects will always dominate over the elements of an image
