Cognition_FlashcardsChapter03

Question 1

Term

Answer 1

Description

Question 2

Form perception

Answer 2

The process through which people see the basic shape, size, and position of an object. (page 77)

Question 3

Object recognition

Answer 3

The steps or processes through which people identify the objects they encounter in the world around them. (page 77)

Question 4

Necker cube

Answer 4

One of the classic ambiguous figures; the figure is a two-dimensional drawing that can be perceived as a cube viewed from above or as a cube viewed from below. (page 78)

Question 5

Figure/ground organization

Answer 5

The processing step in which the perceiver determines which aspects of the stimulus belong to the central object (or ‘figure”) and which aspects belong to the background (or ‘ground”). (page 80)

Question 6

Bottom-up influences

Answer 6

The term given to effects governed by the stimulus input itself and that shape the processing of that input. Often contrasted with top-down influences. (page 86)

Question 7

Top-down influences

Answer 7

The term given to factors arising from your knowledge and expectations, and shaping your processing of the stimulus input. (page 86)

Question 8

Visual features

Answer 8

The constituents of a visual pattern – vertical lines, curves, diagonals and so on – that, together, form the overall pattern. (page 87)

Question 9

Integrative agnosia

Answer 9

A disorder caused by a specific form of damage to the parietal lobe; people with this disorder appear relatively normal in tasks requiring them to detect whether specific features are present in a display, but they are impaired in tasks that require them to judge how the features are bound together to form complex objects. (page 88)

Question 10

Tachistoscope

Answer 10

A device that allows the presentation of stimuli for precisely controlled amounts of time, including very brief presentations. (page 88)

Question 11

Mask

Answer 11

A visual presentation used to interrupt the processing of another visual stimulus. (page 88)

Question 12

Priming

Answer 12

A process through which one input or cue prepares a person for an upcoming input or cue. (page 89)

Question 13

Repetition priming

Answer 13

A pattern of priming that occurs simply because a stimulus is presented a second time; processing is more efficient on the second presentation. (page 89)

Question 14

Word-superiority effect

Answer 14

The data pattern in which research participants are more accurate and more efficient in recognizing words (and wordlike letter strings) than they are in recognizing individual letters. (page 90)

Question 15

Feature net

Answer 15

A system for recognizing patterns that involves a network of detectors, with detectors for features as the initial layer in the system. (page 93)

Question 16

Activation level

Answer 16

A measure of the current status for a node or detector. Activation level is increased if the node or detector receives the appropriate input from its associated nodes or detectors; activation level will be high if input has been received frequently or recently. (page 93)

Question 17

Response threshold

Answer 17

The quantity of information, or quantity of activation, needed in order to trigger a response. (page 93)

Question 18

Bigram

Answer 18

A pair of letters. For example, the word ‘FLAT” contains the bigrams FL, LA, and AT. (page 94)

Question 19

Detector

Answer 19

A node within a processing network that fires primarily in response to a specific target contained within the incoming perceptual information. (page 94)

Question 20

Distributed knowledge

Answer 20

Information stored via a distributed representation. (page 101)

Question 21

Excitatory connection

Answer 21

A link from one node, or one detector, to another, such that activation of one node activates the other. Often contrasted with inhibitory connection. (page 103)

Question 22

Inhibitory connection

Answer 22

A link from one node, or one detector, to another, such that activation of one node decreases the activation level of the other. Often contrasted with excitatory connection. (page 103)

Question 23

Recognition by components model

Answer 23

A model (often referred to by its initials, RBC) of object recognition. In this model, a crucial role is played by geons, the (hypothesized) basic building blocks out of which all the objects we recognize are constructed. (page 104)

Question 24

Geon

Answer 24

One of the basic shapes proposed as the building blocks of all complex three-dimensional forms. Geons take the form of cylinders, cones, blocks, and the like, and they are combined to form ‘geon assemblies.” These are then combined to produce entire objects. (page 105)

Question 25

Viewpoint-independent recognition

Answer 25

A process in which the ease or success of recognition does not depend on the perceiver’s particular viewing angle or distance with regard to the target object. (page 106)

Question 26

Viewpoint-dependent recognition

Answer 26

A process in which the ease or success of recognition depends on the perceiver’s particular viewing angle or distance with regard to the target object. (page 106)

Question 27

Prosopagnosia

Answer 27

A syndrome in which patients lose their ability to recognize faces and to make other fine-grained discriminations within a highly familiar category, even though their other visual abilities seem relatively intact. (page 108)