Introduction to psychology Chapter 7 (Psychology of Vision) Flashcards
Explain how vision develops after birth
Most seeing mechanics are poor at birth but develop rapidly over the first few months. They can see things from up to 2 meters away.
What are experience expectant processes and their role in vision
The nervous system of animals has been prepared by natural selection for certain type of stimulation, in vision it are 3D moving objects that then influence in the development of the nervous system.
Eg rats who are raised in darkness have difficulties seeing.
What are feature detectors and where are they
Feature detectors are neurones in the primary visual cortex that fire when visual stimuli is percieved. Each reacts different to certain type of features like edges, color, movement and orientation.
What is the two stage feature integration of perception theory?
The Treisman theory says that there are 2 stages of processing:
- parallel processing (processing all the features in an image)
- serial processing (integrating one feature at a time for conscious perception, here also recognition happens)
This is the reason that we can tell what we saw when an image is flashed, but not what had what color for example.
What does gestalt psychlogy say
Gestalt psychology says that the mind and a perception must be understood as an organized whole instead of elementary parts. You see a chair before you see its parts.
“The whole is different from the sum of its parts”
What are the 6 gestalt principles of grouping
- Proximity (how close are objects)
- Similarity (how similar are objects)
- Closure (are the forms of objects closed)
- Good continutation (direction and change of objects)
- Common movement (which objects move together)
- Good form (how easy is an objects to percieve (symmetry))
–> These help to group and respond to patterns of objects
The mind also divides into figure (object of attention) and background, a object can not be percieved as both at the same time (kissing and vase)
What is unconcious inference and give an example
When the mind makes an inference about something, it can distort features that seem to not make sense. This can be seen when forms outline an object which makes it look like a differnt color, even tho it is not.
What are top-down and bottom-up processes?
Bottom up are perceptions that are actually present in the stimuli, Top down are perceptions that unconcious processes make up “over” the brain.
Example are illusions.
Whats visual agnosia and what tyes of it are there
Visual agnosia is a condition where a subject is not able to recognise anythings. There are 3 forms:
- form agnosia (cannot percieve shape)
- obejct agnosia (cannot recognise objects, even tho shapes are ok)
- prosopagnosia (cannot recognise faces)
What are the two streams of visual processing
- Dorsal stream: Where? (spatial and guiding actions) (upper part of brain)
- Ventral stream: “What? (precieving and identifiying) (lower part of brain)
Why do we often see faces in objects
Because face recognition is an extremely important factor in humans, which is why it is very enhanced.
Why do people often see other races as all the same
Because of the “own race bias”. People develop perception for different races in the first few months and have harder time to distinguish between them if they have not seen other races while that.
Where does face recignision take place in the brain
It takes place in the fusiform gyrus
What are the three cues that help the brain to percieve depth
- binocular disparity (both eyes see different images, this can also be tricked by 3D movies where each eye sees a slightly different image)
- motion paralax (one eye can see depth when you move your head)
- pictorial cues (a person can percieve an image with depth because of things like size, shadow, position and occlusion)
what is size constancy
Its when we percieve something as a certain size, even tho we see it as bigger or smaller because of cues and experience
