Chapter 3: Perception

Question 1

The interpretation of sensory information to yield a meaningful description or understanding

Answer 1

perception

Question 2

An object, event, or pattern as it exists in the world

Answer 2

distal stimulus

Question 3

Reception of information and its registration by a sense organ

Answer 3

proximal stimulus

Question 4

A layer of visual receptor cells at the rear of the eyeball

Answer 4

retina

Question 5

A proximal stimulus for vision consisting of the projection of light waves reflected from stimuli and projected onto a surface at the back of the eye

Answer 5

retinal image

Question 6

The meaningful interpretation of the proximal stimulus

Answer 6

percept

Question 7

The phenomenon that one’s perception of an object remains constant even as the retinal image of the object changes size

Answer 7

size constancy

Question 8

The classification of a stimulus into a category

Answer 8

pattern recognition

Question 9

A perceptual segregation of a stimulus into one or more objects of focal interest and background

Answer 9

figure-ground organization

Question 10

Illusory outline created by certain visual cues that lead to erroneous form perception; suggests that perception is an active constructive process

Answer 10

subjective contour

Question 11

Laws that explain the regularities in the way people come to the perceptual interpretations of stimuli. The emphasis is on the apprehension of whole structures rather than the detection and assembly of parts of structures

Answer 11

Gestalt principles of perceptual organization

Question 12

A perceptual phenomenon in which qualitative differences appear as parts of a stimulus are added, so the wholes take on properties that are novel, unpredictable or surprising

Answer 12

emergence

Question 13

A perceptual phenomenon in which perception of an “odd stimulus out” is faster ina composite stimulus display than in a base stimulus display with fewer stimuli

Answer 13

configural superiority effect (CSE)

Question 14

Cognitive (usually perceptual) process guided by environmental input; also called data-driven process; starts with small bits of information from the environment and combines them in various ways to form a percept

Answer 14

bottom-up processes

Question 15

Cognitive (usually perceptual) process directed by expectations (derived from context, past learning, or both) to form a larger percept, concept, or interpretation; also called conceptually driven or theory-driven process

Answer 15

top-down processes

Question 16

A stored pattern or model to which incoming information is matched in order to be recognized and classified

Answer 16

template

Question 17

A component/part of an object, event, or representation

Answer 17

feature

Question 18

A simple geometric component hypothesized to be used in the recognition of objects

Answer 18

geon

Question 19

The smallest unit of sound that makes a meaningful difference between utterances in a given language

Answer 19

phoneme

Question 20

A task in which subjects are asked to detect the presence of a particular target against an array of similar stimuli

Answer 20

visual search task

Question 21

The classification of sounds that vary on an acoustic dimension continuously into discrete categories

Answer 21

categorical perception

Question 22

An idealized representation of some class of objects or events

Answer 22

prototype

Question 23

The effect on a cognitive process of the information surrounding the target object or event - sometimes called expectation effect because the context is thought to set up certain expectations in the mind of the cognitive processor

Answer 23

context effect

Question 24

The changes in perception that occur as a function of practice or experience with the stimuli

Answer 24

perceptual learning

Question 25

The phenomenon that single letters are more quickly identified in the context of words than they are when presented alone or in the context of random letters

Answer 25

word superiority effect

Question 26

An understanding of perception as a process requiring the active construction of subjective metal representations not only from perceptual information, but also from long term memory

Answer 26

constructivist approach to perception

Question 27

A theory of perception that information is “picked up on” by cognitive processor without much construction of internal representations or inferences; emphasis is on direct acquisition of information

Answer 27

direct perception

Question 28

A perceptual property of objects, places, and events that makes clear what actions or behaviors on the part of the perceiver are permitted in interaction with the object/place/event

Answer 28

affordance

Question 29

Impairments in the ability to interpret (although seeing) visual information

Answer 29

visual agnosias

Question 30

Visual agnosia for faces

Answer 30

prosopagnosia