Perception Flashcards
Bottom up concept of perception
Data driven
Receive sensory stimulus/take info from environment and react to it
Top down concept of perception
Our experiences/assumption/knowledge is applied to the info we receive from our environment
Previous knowledge affects what were seeing
Measuring perception
Psychophysics methods developed by Gustav Fechner
mind/brain + scientific study of matter/energy
“Precisely determined physical stimulus and precisley determined behavioural response”
Absolute Threshold
Method of Limits
Think staircase
In this task, stimuli are presented on a graduated scale and participants must judge whether they detect the stimuli or not. The values are presented in order, going from most intense to least intense vice versa, in an ascending and descending staircase
The experiment will be carried out going down the intensity and then again going up in intensity of stimuli. The threshold will be determined as
the average of these crossover points
Method of adjustment
Like participant is adjusting the brightness or volume
In this task, the subject is given control over the stimulus and allowed to adjust it until they can just detect it. The stimulus at this point is the threshold.
A new starting point for the stimuli is then chosen and the subject repeats the process.
The threshold is the mean of the threshold values on each trial.
The advantage of this technique is that it can quickly yield a threshold for a participant but a disadvantage is that it will yield great diffferneces from a participant to the next as well as between successive trials for each participant
Staircase method
Scientific
Method of constant stimuli
Scientific
No particular order just saying yes no i hear it or not
Threshold is determined by presenting the observer with a set of stimuli of which some are above the threshold, some below, and participants must judge whether they detected the stimulus or not
The threshold for stimulus detection is the smallest stimulus that is detected 50% of the time
Just Noticeable Difference
Difference threshold
Webers Law
Difference threshold
Magnitude Estimation
Brightness vs Loudness
Fundamental Criteria (Popper, 1960)
A good theory should be:
-Explanatory (not just describing data)
-Falsifiable (predictive)
-Parsimonious (explained in the simplest way possible)
Theoretical approach
Levels of explanation can be :
Anatomical and physiological
Behavioural and psychological
Theoretical and philosophical
Perceptual Theories:
Physiological approach
Ecological approach
Computational approach
Physiological approach (Horace Barlow (1921-2020))
What:
Look at the way neurons interact, what is going on inside bod, how is everything interacting is key to understanding perception
Techniques used:
originall electrophysiology with psychpysics
now Neuroimaging
Ecological approach (James Gibson (1904-1979))
What:
It is not enough to just look at what is inside of body, you need to look at perception in real world.
Techniques used:
Observation of behaviour in natural envornment
Analysis of how is optic array changing
VR for behavioural in simulated envormemt
Computational approach (David Marr (1945-1980))
What:
Perception is information processing. Brain is computer that transforms data from one form to another (take in sensory data and transform it into another interpretable form)
Techniques used:
Computer-based analysis of information content of stimuli (e.g. images) from which properties of perceptual systems can be inferred
Other theoretical approaches to perception:
Perception for Action (Milner/Goodale)
Bayesian Approaches (Mamassian/Ernst)
Active Vision (Findlay/Gilchrist)
Predictive Coding (Friston/Muckli)
Name 3 Gestalt rules and how these impact our perception
Rule of Proximity
Similarity
Good continuation
Cells in the visual system detect “features” of the world, other than objects. So to create percpetion on object, gestalt/grouping rules take elementary features and turn them into extended contours and shapes
Gestalt rule:Similarity
When you group objects with similiar features togethe eg size, color..
Rule of Proximity
Grouping things that are closer to each other together
Good continuation
expecting a line to continue so see lines as being attached rather than as separate lines
Simple cells - coarse and fine details
fatter recpetor cells will pick up on more coarse/general features (eg when you blur a picture ) while the thinner ones will pick up on fine lines (eg like when sketching)
Perceptual Segregation
Segregating figure from background
Eg knowing there is an apple behind banana in the fruit basket even though you can barely see it/its mostly hidden behind other fruit
but this isnt always easy to differnetiate what is figure and what is ground
Figure vs ground
Reversible figures that fools you —> eg the one that looks like vase but also can be two faces looking at eachother
Details can be more accurately discrminated if assigned which is foreground and background
Illusory Contours
Kanizca Triangle
Contours are inferred by visual system
Object categorization - what level of categorization comes first?
Superordinate - its an animal
Basic level - its a dog
Subordinate - its a pug
Which level will naturally come quickest? Probably depends on level of expertise
viewpoint invariance vs multiple views
Controversy:
Do we store a single, viewpoint invariant representation of a given object or do we have a number of “snapshots” of the object from different viewpoints which together make the object representation up?
What is meant by the “gist” of a scene ? And what determines the gist?
Its a general Description of a Scene
Available after only a fraction of a second
Get gist using “Global Image Features” such as degree of openness, expansion, color, naturalness..
Inferotemporal Cortex (IT)
End point of visual pathway
Face processing –> eg biggest response in monkey to other objects was to face of another monkey , monkey cortex that responds to faces
Gibsonian Theory - affordance vs objects
Thinking of an object tin terms of what u can do with it (chair u can sit on, pen u can write on) rather than thinking of it as visual properties
What are the two types of attention? Give examples of both
Divided attention - driving (youre talking, changing gears, looking out for pedestrians…)
Selective attention - Selective attention is the process of focusing on a particular object in the environment for a certain period of time. Attention is a limited resource, so selective attention allows us to tune out unimportant details and focus on what matters
Attention can be guided by the environment or by yourself - what is this referred to as?
Exogenous - guided by your eyes, and whats happening in the environment around you
Endogenous - Information that aligns with an observer’s behavioral goals are internally selected for further processing. It involves a more effortful process such as being instructed to orient attention to a particular location. You choose to listen to your lecturer instead of looking at laptop