Chapter 4

Question 1

extrastriate cortex

Answer 1

The region of cortex bordering the primary visual

cortex and containing multiple areas involved in visual processing.

Question 2

lesion

Answer 2

In reference to neurophysiology, 1. (n) A region of damaged brain. 2. (v) To destroy a section of the brain.

Question 3

agnosia

Answer 3

A failure to recognize objects in spite of the ability to see them. Agnosia is typically due to brain damage.

Question 4

inferotemporal (IT) cortex

Answer 4

Part of the cerebral cortex in the lower portion of the temporal lobe, important in object recognition.

Question 5

homologous regions

Answer 5

Brain regions that appear to have the same function in different species.

Question 6

feed-forward process

Answer 6

A process that carries out a computation (e.g., object recognition) one neural step after another, without need for feedback from a later stage to an earlier stage.

Question 7

reverse-hierarchy theory

Answer 7

A theory that fast, feed-forward processes can give you crude information about objects and scenes based on activity in high-level parts of the visual cortex. You become aware of details when activity flows back down the hierarchy of visual areas to lower-level areas where the detailed information is preserved.

Question 8

mid-level (or middle) vision

Answer 8

A loosely defined stage of visual processing that comes after basic features have been extracted from the image (low-level, or early, vision) and before object recognition and scene understanding (high-level vision).

Question 9

illusory contour

Answer 9

A contour that is perceived even though nothing changes from one side of it to the other in an image.

Question 10

structuralism

Answer 10

In reference to perception, a school of thought that believed that complex objects or perceptions could be understood by analysis of the components.

Question 11

Gestalt

Answer 11

In German, literally “form.”
In reference to perception, a school of thought stressing that the perceptual whole can be greater than the apparent sum of the parts.

Question 12

Gestalt grouping rules

Answer 12

A set of rules describing which elements in an image will appear to group together. The original list was assembled by members of the Gestalt school of thought.

Question 13

good continuation

Answer 13

A Gestalt grouping rule stating that two elements will

tend to group together if they seem to lie on the same contour.

Question 14

closure

Answer 14

In reference to perception, the Gestalt principle that holds that a closed contour is preferred to an open contour.

Question 15

texture segmentation

Answer 15

Carving an image into regions of common texture properties.

Question 16

similarity

Answer 16

A Gestalt grouping rule stating that the tendency of two features to group together will increase as the similarity between them increases.

Question 17

proximity

Answer 17

A Gestalt grouping rule stating that the tendency of two features to group together will increase as the distance between them decreases.

Question 18

parallelism

Answer 18

A rule for figure-ground assignment stating that parallel contours are likely to belong to the same figure.

Question 19

symmetry

Answer 19

A rule for figure-ground assignment stating that symmetrical regions are more likely to be seen as figure.

Question 20

ambiguous figure

Answer 20

A visual stimulus that gives rise to two or more interpretations of its identity or structure.

Question 21

Necker cube

Answer 21

An outline that is perceptually bi-stable. Unlike the situation with most stimuli, two interpretations continually battle for perceptual dominance.

Question 22

accidental viewpoint

Answer 22

A viewing position that produces some regularity in the visual image that is not present in the world (e.g., the sides of two independent objects lining up perfectly).

Question 23

figure-ground assignment

Answer 23

The process of determining that some regions

of an image belong to a foreground object (figure) and other regions are part of the background (ground).

Question 24

surroundedness

Answer 24

A rule for figure-ground assignment stating that if

one region is entirely surrounded by another, it is likely that the surrounded region is the figure.

Question 25

relatibility

Answer 25

The degree to which two line segments appear to be part of the same contour.

Question 26

heuristic

Answer 26

A mental shortcut.

Question 27

nonaccidental feature

Answer 27

A feature of an object that is not dependent on the

exact (or accidental) viewing position of the observer.

Question 28

global superiority effect

Answer 28

The finding in various experiments that the properties of the whole object take precedence over the properties of parts of the object.

Question 29

Bayesian approach

Answer 29

A way of formalizing the idea that our perception is
a combination of the current stimulus and our knowledge about the conditions of the world—what is and is not likely to occur. The Bayesian approach is stated mathematically as Bayes’ theorem: P(A|O) = P(A) × P(O|A)/P(O), which enables us to calculate the probability (P) that the world is in a particular state (A) given a particular observation (O).

Question 30

subtraction method

Answer 30

In functional magnetic imaging, comparison of brain
activity measured in two conditions: one with and one without the involvement of the mental process of interest. The difference between the images for the two conditions may show regions of brain specifically activated by that mental process.

Question 31

parahippocampal place area (PPA)

Answer 31

A region of extrastriate visual cortex in humans that is specifically and reliably activated more by images of places than by other stimuli.

Question 32

fusiform face area (FFA)

Answer 32

A region of extrastriate visual cortex in humans that is specifically and reliably activated by human faces.

Question 33

extrastriate body area (EBA)

Answer 33

A region of extrastriate visual cortex in humans that is specifically and reliably activated by images of the body other than the face.

Question 34

decoding

Answer 34

The process of determining the nature of a stimulus from the pattern of responses measured in the brain or, potentially, in an artificial system like a computer network. The stimulus could be a sensory stimulus or it could be an internal state (e.g., the contents of a dream).

Question 35

template

Answer 35

The internal representation of a stimulus that is used to recognize the stimulus in the world. Unlike its use in, for example, making a key, a mental template is not expected to actually look like the stimulus that it matches.

Question 36

structural description

Answer 36

A description of an object in terms of the nature of its

constituent parts and the relationships between those parts.

Question 37

recognition-by-components model

Answer 37

Biederman’s model of object recognition, which holds that objects are recognized by the identities and relationships of their component parts.

Question 38

geon

Answer 38

In Biederman’s recognition-by-components model, any of the “geometric ions” out of which perceptual objects are built.

Question 39

deep neural network (DNN)

Answer 39

A type of “machine learning” in artificial intelligence in which a computer is programmed to learn something (here object recognition). First the network is “trained” using input for which the answer is known (“that is a cow”). Subsequently, the network can provide answers from input that it has never seen before.

Question 40

entry-level category

Answer 40

For an object, the label that comes to mind most
quickly when we identify it (e.g., “bird”). At the subordinate level, the object might be more specifically named (e.g., “eagle”); at the superordinate level, it might be more generally named (e.g., “animal”).

Question 41

holistic processing

Answer 41

Processing based on analysis of the entire object or scene and not on adding together a set of smaller parts or features.

Question 42

prosopagnosia

Answer 42

An inability to recognize faces.

Question 43

congenital prosopagnosia

Answer 43

A form of face blindness apparently present from birth, as opposed to acquired prosopagnosia, which would typically be the result of an injury to the nervous system.