Perception Flashcards
Exam 1
What is sensation?
Absorbing raw energy through our sensory organs
What is transduction?
Conversion of sensation energy to neuronal signals
What is attention?
Concentration of mental energy to process incoming information
What is perception?
Selecting, organizing, and interpreting these signals
Perception is
experience resulting from stimulation of the senses
Perception can change based on
added information
Are perceptual processes unique to humans?
It is very possible
How is artificial intelligence handling perception?
There has been minimal successes
Two types of information intake in the perceptual system
- Environmental energy stimulating the receptors
- Knowledge and expectations the observer brings to the situation
What is the direct perception theory?
Bottom-up processing
What is bottom-up processing?
Bringing information in from the outside world; starts with the senses
What is the constructive perception theory?
Top-Down Processing
What is top-down processing?
Using information based on expectations and past experiences to construct perceptions; Starts with brain
What processes do the “multiple personalities of a blob” use?
Top-down influences allow different people to create different inferences
Speech segmentation
The ability to tell when one word ends and another begins
Transitional probabilities
Knowing which sound will likely follow another in a word (pre-tty ba-by)
Transitional probabilities are an example of ________ Processing
Top-Down; Uses prior knowledge to string words together
We use our _____________ to inform our perceptions
Knowledge
Some perceptions are the results of ________________ we make about the envionment
Unconscious assumptions
The Likelihood Principle
We perceive the world in the way that is “most likely” based on our past experiences
Helmholtz’s Unconscious inference
Blue square in front of orange square is interpreted as two normal sized squares
What was the old-view of perceptual organization?
Structuralism
What is structuralism?
Perception involves adding up sensations; Bottom-up
What is the new-view of perceptual organization?
Gestalt Principles
What are the Gestalt Principles?
The mind groups patterns according to intrinsic laws of perceptual organization
Principle of good continuation (Gestalt 1)
Lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path; rope on the beach
Law of Pragnanz (Principle of simplicity or good figure) (Gestalt 2)
Every stimulus pattern is seen so the resulting structure is as simple as possible; Olympic Rings
Principle of similarity (Gestalt 3)
Similar things are grouped together; Blue and red balls
Principle of familiarity (Gestalt 4)
Things are more likely to form groups if the groups appear familiar or meaningful; The Forest has Eyes
Perception is determined by Specific ______________, not just dark and _______
Organizing Principles; light stimuli activating the retina
Experience can ____________ perception but is not the key driver
influence
Oblique Effect
We perceive verticals and horizontals more easily than other orientations
Light-from-above Assumption
We assume light comes from above because this is common in our environment
What are sematic regularities?
The characteristics associated with functions carried out in different types of scenes (Ex: Food and cooking will be done in the kitchen, while bagging and packing will be done in an airport)
Scene Schema
Knowledge of what a given scene ordinarily contains; diamonds or fish and chips at ring store
Conceptions of Top-down processing
Unconscious inference and environmental regularities
Conceptions of Bottom-up processing
Gestalt-principles
Neurons become tuned to respond best to what we commonly experience; for example ___
horizontals and verticals; experience-dependent plasticity
What did Gauthier’s Greeble experiment prove? *
The FFA can be trained to respond to new stimuli over extensive training
Why did facial stimuli decrease after Greeble training?*
Experience-dependent plasticity; The Greebles were looked at for hours, so human faces stopped stimulating anymore; The FFA is adaptive.
The What Pathway
Determining the Identity of an object
What is another name for the What pathway
Ventral/Perception Pathway (lower part of the brain)
The Where Pathway
Determining the location of an object
What is another name for the Where pathway?
Dorsal/Action Pathway (Upper part of brain)
What cortex do the What and Where pathways move out of?
Visual cortex
What do scientists do during the Brain Ablation model?
They damage parts of the brain on purpose to see which functions are removed.
What is a single dissociation?
One function is lost, another remains
What is a double dissociation?
Requires TWO individuals with different damage and opposite deficits
What does double dissociation show us in the monkey example?
The What and Where streams must have different mechanisms AND operate independently of one another
What are mirror neurons?
Neurons that respond while a subject watches an action being performed in the same way as if the subject was performing the action; “Monkey See, Monkey Do”
What did Iacoboni find about mirror neurons?
Found a higher rate of mirroring if the subject’s intention to perform the action was greater
Who founded the idea of the likelihood principle?
Helmholtz
What is viewpoint invariance?
Being able to recognize a face from a bunch of different perspectives
Inverse projection problem
The task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on the retina
Why is AI struggling with perception?
Perception is so complex; many viewpoints add up, different perspectives, familiar images, etc.
Size consistency
Even though something is far away, we perceive it as normal because we know that the object is just far away
