Lecture 10: Taking Action

Question 1

What is a visual direction strategy?

Answer 1

keeping one’s body pointed toward a target

Question 2

TRUE or FALSE: blind walking experiments show that people cannot navigate accurately without visual stimulation from the environment

Answer 2

FALSE: they can navigate without visual stimulus via muscle movement and memory

Question 3

What is spatial updating?

Answer 3

processes involved with keeping track of one’s position as they move around within an environment

Question 4

TRUE or FALSE: spatial updating can happen without visual stimulus

Answer 4

TRUE

Question 5

Describe Land and Lee’s 1994 driving experiment and what they found.

Answer 5

• car fitted with instruments to measure angle of steering wheel, speed of vehicle, gaze direction
• predicted drivers would fixate on FOE (to estimate final destination)
• however, they tended to look at TANGENT POINT OF CURVE ON SIDE OF ROAD DURING TURNS (to help keep car within the lines)

Question 6

What is wayfinding?

Answer 6

navigating to a destination that requires making a series of turns

Question 7

What are landmarks?

Answer 7

objects on the route that serve as cues to indicate where to turn

Question 8

Describe the eye tracking museum experiment by Hamid et al. (2010). What was the training phase? testing phase? critical comparison? main finding?

Answer 8

• training phase: learn how to navigate a virtual maze (with pictures of common objects serving as landmarks)
• testing phase: attempt to reach specific destinations within same virtual maze environment
• critical comparison: fixation number on decision-point landmarks vs non-decision-point landmarks
• finding: DECISION-POINT LANDMARKS FIXATED MORE than non-decision-point landmarks

Question 9

What was the follow-up experiment in Hamid et al. (2010) eye tracking museum experiment? What were the findings? What argument do the findings support?

Answer 9

• remove half of the landmarks and compare performance to baseline (all landmarks present)
• removing landmarks that were LEAST FIXATED had LITTLE IMPACT on performance
• removing landmarks that were MOST FIXATED IMPAIRED NAVIGATION
• supports that people are actually using/relying on certain landmarks to navigate

Question 10

For objects that are remembered, those at decision points were associated with greater __________________________ activation than those at non-decision points.

Answer 10

parahippocampal gyrus

Question 11

What is topographical agnosia?

Answer 11

inability to recognize landmarks

Question 12

topographical agnosia is associated with damage to the ______________________________.

Answer 12

parahippocampal gyrus

Question 13

TRUE or FALSE: Tolman found that rats learn to navigate based purely on whatever is reinforced.

Answer 13

FALSE: they develop a cognitive map that allowed them to more flexibly navigate the maze in an intelligent way that took far more into account than merely what they had been reinforced to do

Question 14

What are place cells?

Answer 14

neurons that fire when in particular locations (their ‘place field’)

Question 15

What are grid cells?

Answer 15

neurons that have multiple place fields that are systematically distributed (and follow a sort of spatial regularity)

Question 16

TRUE or FALSE: place cells provide a way to code direction.

Answer 16

FALSE: grid cells

Question 17

What are head direction cells?

Answer 17

neurons that fire depending on the direction the animal is facing

Question 18

What are border cells?

Answer 18

neurons that fire when an animal is near the edge of an environment

Question 19

Compared to London bus drivers, London taxi drivers:
- performed ___________ on a recognition test of pictures of places in London
- had more _____________ _______________ volume

Answer 19

better; posterior hippocampal

Question 20

What are the two most common actions taken in the environment and have great adaptive value?

Answer 20

reaching and grasping

Question 21

The _________________ contains neurons that become active while reaching/grasping.

Answer 21

parietal reach region

Question 22

What is the ventral pathway responsible for?

Answer 22

identifying the object

Question 23

What is the dorsal pathway responsible for?

Answer 23

positioning hand and finger to grasp

Question 24

What are visuomotor grip cells?

Answer 24

neurons that become active when simply looking at objects during trials that require specific grips

Question 25

What is proprioception?

Answer 25

the ability to sense body position and movement

Question 26

Where are proprioception receptors found and what do they help with?

Answer 26

• in elbow joint, muscle spindle, tendon
• help guide reaching/grasping behaviour

Question 27

What is the size-weight illusion?

Answer 27

• erroneously predicting weight when observing two differently sized objects that have the same weight
• the error occurs when the perceiver predicts that the larger object will be heavier, and therefore USES MORE FORCE TO LIFT IT. causing it to be lifted higher and to feel lighter

Question 28

read slide 22 about ketchup bottle and adjusting grip

Answer 28

slide 22

Question 29

TRUE or FALSE: mirror neurons show a diminished response if the object is grasped less directly (e.g. by pliers)

Answer 29

TRUE

Question 30

Describe the distribution of mirror neurons associated with various motor functions on the human cortex.

Answer 30

see diagram on slide 24

Question 31

What are some possible functions of mirror neurons?

Answer 31

• help understand another animal’s actions and react to them appropriately
• help imitate the observed action (i.e. learning)
• social applications (empathy)

Question 32

What do audiovisual mirror neurons respond to? What might they help link?

Answer 32

• stimuli associated with both seeing and hearing action
• link sensory perceptions and motor actions

Question 33

According to action-based accounts of perception, the purpose of perception is to _________________________________.

Answer 33

create a representation in the mind of how one can interact with their environment

Question 34

What is the action-specific perception hypothesis?

Answer 34

one’s environment is perceived in terms of how they are able to act on it

Question 35

Batters with higher batting averages reported perceiving the ball as larger. Which hypothesis does this support?

Answer 35

action-specific perception hypothesis

Question 36

According to the action-specific perception hypothesis, estimates of distance ____________ as more weight is being carried.

Answer 36

increase

Question 37

According to the action-specific perception hypothesis, people with chronic back and/or leg pain _________________ distances of objects in their environment

Answer 37

overestimate

Question 38

According to the action-specific perception hypothesis, tennis players who have recently won estimate the net to be _______.

Answer 38

lower

Question 39

According to the action-specific perception hypothesis, football players who have had more recent successes at kicking field goals estimate the goal posts to be ____________.

Answer 39

farther apart