Chapter 3 Vocab Terms Flashcards
Perception and Mental Imagery
The outside edges of our vision, where the optic nerve passes through to convey visual signals to the brian.
Our minds fill in the missing pieces of the scene.
Blind spot
Where your view of the illusory object is not obstructed, and where there is no objective boundary between the illusory object and the background
Modal completion
You seem to percieve an object despite an apparently obstructed view
Amodal completion
The sensory input, such as image coming through the eyes.
Starting with individual elements and gradually combining them to form a bigger picture.
Bottom-up information
The light-sensitive part at the back of the eye that detects light and converts it into electrical signals that are sent to the brain to create visual images
Retina
Specialized cells in the the retina that detect light and convert it into electrical signals for vision, the two main types are rods and cones.
Photoreceptors
Densely packed photoreceptors located in the fovea (the center of the retina) that detect color and detail
Cones
Extremely light-sensitive photoreceptors that help with low-light vision
Rods
Part of the brain that is located in the occipital lobe that processes visual info recieved from the retina. Plays a key role in interpreting basic visual features like color and motion
Primary visual cortex
The way sensory info moves from lower to higher processing areas, such as from the retina to the visual cortex
Feedforward system
Starts with prior knowledge, expectations, or context to interpret and understand sensory input, influencing perception and decision-making.
Top-down information
Automatic process by which the brain interprets sensory information using prior knowledge and assumptions to make sense of the world.
Hermann von Helmholtz
Unconscious inference
Brain theory suggesting that perception results from the brain continuously generating and updating predictions about sensory input, minimizing the difference between expected and actual information.
Predictive coding
The process of identifying and separating objects within a visual scene, allowing the brain or computer vision systems to distinguish different elements from the background
Object segmentation
A visual perception principle where the brain distinguishes objects (figure) from their background (ground), allowing us to focus on important elements while ignoring the rest.
Figure-ground organization
The process of interpreting a 3D scene from its 2D retinal image, where multiple 3D objects could create the same 2D projection, making depth perception ambiguous.
Inverse projection
The closer something is to you, the
greater the difference between what your two eyes see
Binocular disparity
Cues that require both eyes to be effective
Binocular depth cues
Visual signals that provide depth information using only one eye, including cues like relative size, occlusion, linear perspective, and shading.
Monocular depth cues
Refers to the fact that although the
same object looks very different on the retina depending on its
orientation (indeed, try rotating a book around in your hand),
people are good at recognizing objects despite their orientation.
Object constancy
Refers to the fact that the perceived sizes of objects
are remarkably stable despite radical differences in their image size on the retina
Size constancy
When our visual system factors in differences in
illumination when shaping our color perception
Color constancy
Our minds similarly factor in illumination
conditions when perceiving the brightness of things,
Lightness constancy
A neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize objects, people, sounds, or smells despite normal sensory function.
Agnosia
Claims that we match images to representations that are
like two-dimensional pictures or “templates”
View-based approach
An approach that plays a key role in object recognition, models that represent objects as sets of three-dimansional parts standing in spatial relationships to each other.
Structural descriptions
A theory of object recognition proposing that objects are identified by decomposing them into basic 3D shapes called geons and analyzing their spatial relationships.
Biederman
Recognition by components
Basic three-dimensional shapes, such as cylinders, cubes, and cones, that form the building blocks of object recognition.
It suggests that humans recognize complex objects by breaking them down into those simpler shapes.
Geons
We’re able to recognize and categorize objects when viewing them from a range of angles. We’re able to do this because the view-based approach suggests that we remember different images of the same object from various angles, helping us quickly recognize and match new objects to what we’ve seen before.
Multiple-trace memory model
We process a whole object at once, including the relations of the individual parts to each other. It involves processing visual information globally, focusing on overall structure, shape, and relationships rather than isolated details.
Holistic perception
The act of forming a percept in mind without sensory input. It allows people to visualize objects, scenes, or experiences as if they were perceiving them in real life.
Ex: Giving directions to other people, problem-solving, etc.
Mental imagery
The process of mentally moving from one point in an image to another.
“Without looking back at the map,
determine whether the hut and the lake are closer than the hut and
the tree.”
Mental scanning
A secondary effect or byproduct that arises from a process but does not influence that process itself. A side effect rather than a casual factor in the system it emerges from.
People are simply “simulating” perception but do not actually use visual imagery.
Pylyshyn describes imagery this way
Epiphenomenon
Refers to how the brain maps sensory or motor information in a structured way.
The occipital cortex is like a map that reveals activity in the visual world, just like a weather map on your phone or computer can represent where rain
is falling in the regions around you
Topographic
A neurological condition in which a person fails to attend to one side of space, typically due to brain damage.
Ex:
When asked to copy a drawing of a clock, they might draw all the numbers on only the right side.
Spacial neglect
