Perception & Cognition Psychology Flashcards

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1
Q

Stimulus

A
  • Any passing source of physical energy that produces a response in a sense organ
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2
Q

Sensation

A
  • Activation of the sense organs by a source of physical energy
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3
Q

Perception

A
  • Sorting out, interpretation, analysis and integration of stimuli carried out by the sense organs and brain
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4
Q

Sensation & Perception process

A
  • Stimulus energy: Light, sound, smell etc
  • Sensory receptors: Eyes, ears, nose etc
  • Neural impulses
  • Brain: Visual, auditory, olfactory areas
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5
Q

How many senses

A
  • 8
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6
Q

Brain & Perception

A
  • Different areas of the brain are responsible for processing different senses
    • Even within one area (visual cortex) different subareas function for different purposes
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7
Q

Visual Perception

A
  • Human visual system can only process a certain range of wavelengths
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8
Q

Structure of the eye

A
  • Retina: a layer of photoreceptor cells

- Fovea (fovea centralis): a small pit in the retina; provides the most accuracy in vision

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9
Q

Structure of Retina

A
  • Cones: sensitive to colours; used under light

- Rods: used in dim light; black-and-white perception

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10
Q

How many cones types are there in homo sapiens

A
  • 3
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11
Q

Cones colpurs

A
  • Blue: short-wavelengths cones
  • Green: medium-wavelength cones
  • Red: long-wavelength cones
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12
Q

Cones

A
  • Activity of a single cone (type) is not sufficient to identify colour
  • Colour perception involved comparison in activity between the three cone types
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13
Q

From Cones to Brain: Convergence

A
  • Comparison between cone types require some way of monitoring and comparing activity of more than one cell at a time
  • So there is some cells that receive input from more than one cone
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14
Q

From Cones to Brain: Convergence: take place

A
  • Occurs in retina and in visual cortex
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15
Q

Colour constancy

A
  • Perceiving objects as having consistent colour, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths
    reflected by the objects
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16
Q

Gestalt

A
  • Organised whole
  • Gestalt psychologists (early 20th century) emphasised our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.
  • Perception is not just the sum of all parts.
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17
Q

Gestalt Principles

A
  • Similarity
  • Proximity
  • Closure
  • Continuity
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18
Q

Perception

A
  • Processing information from senses
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19
Q

Cognition

A
  • Elaboration of information
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20
Q

Perception & Cognition stage

A
  • Sensation > perception > cognition

sensation > perception: bottom-up (stimulus-driven)

perception > cognition
top-down (knowledge-driven)

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21
Q

Perceiving depth

A
  • We need to construct a 3D world from a 2D retinal image

- Intrinsically difficult, complex task

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22
Q

Depth Perception

A
  • Recovering size and depth from a 2D retinal image cannot be explained by sensation alone.
  • Requires internal cognitive processing to recover perception.
  • Based on knowledge and assumptions about the world.
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23
Q

Size Constancy

A
  • Knowledge/understanding of world to aid perception.
  • Things don’t tend to change in physical size.
  • Size cues for depth perception
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24
Q

Visual Illusions

A
  • Ponzo illusion: Depth cues (size constancy) can cause (physical) size illusions
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25
Q

Ames Room Illusion

A
  • Using false cues for depth to alter perception of size

- Different size people in same room

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26
Q

Illusory Contours

A
  • Cut shapes making it look like there is another shape
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27
Q

Cultural Effects on Perception

A
  • Gregory & Gombrich (1973)
    > Object Recognition:
    Europeans: indoor + object above woman’s head
    = window
    East Africans: outdoor under tree + object = basket / box
  • Hudson (1960)
    > Depth Perception:
    Tribal Africans: hunter to kill ‘baby elephant’
28
Q

Our preferences for faces

A
  • Humans have a tendency to pay attention to human faces > animal faces…
    > objects that could look like a face
29
Q

Face preferences from Birth

Valenza

A
  • Valenza et al. (1996)
    > 36 infants (mean age 73 hours)
    > Showed face-like patterns (vs inversed patterns)
    > Face-like patterns were looked at longer (=preferred).
30
Q

Face preferences from Birth

Mondloch

A
  • Mondloch et al. (1999)
    > Tested 3 different age groups
    > Normal (positive) vs. negative faces
    > Newborns & 6 weeks: no preference between normal and negative
    > By 12 weeks: strong preference for normal
    > Initially crude representation of face refines over time?
31
Q

Importance of Face

A
- Faces are very important in our lives, especially for communication:
> Expressions – indicating emotions
> Eye contact
> Eye directions / following
> idicates the identity of the person.
32
Q

Facial Expressions

A
  • Field et al (1982)
    > 74 babies (mean age 36 hours) saw a live model with 3 facial expressions.
    > Babies’ expressions were recorded.
    > Observers able to guess the expression from facial responses of babies.
    > Newborns can discriminate and imitate those expressions
33
Q

Eye Contact

A
  • Eye contact for 30% of the time in conversation
  • Timing matters - e.g., duration
  • Turn taking - 75% look at other when listening, 40% when talking.
34
Q

Eye directions

A
  • We use eye directions as a communicative signal.

- We have tendency to follow another’s gaze

35
Q

Recognising Famous Faces

A
  • We are experts
  • Even without peripheral features (hair, ears etc)
  • Even with slight visual distortions
36
Q

Inversion Effect

A
  • Upside down faces
  • Yin (1969)
    > Faces are affected by inversion much more than other types of objects.
    > Face processing is different from other object processing.
37
Q

Featural Processing

Thatcher Effect

A
  • Thompson (1980)
    > Detection of inversion of eyes and mouth is difficult when the whole face is inverted.
    > i.e., We can still recognise the picture as of Thatcher, and don’t notice the oddity.
38
Q

Featural Processing

Thatcher Effect: How does this happen

A
  • When an entire face is inverted, processing the configuration (=holistic processing) is difficult.
  • Then featural processing becomes dominant.
  • Although inverted, each feature is processed locally, and the oddity is not noticed.
39
Q

Face Recognition

A
  • Bruce & Young (1986)

> Recognition process of familiar faces

40
Q

Face Recognition

Bruce & Young (1986): Process

A
  • Structural encoding
  • Face recognition units (FRUs)
  • Person identity nodes (PINs)
  • Name generation
41
Q

Face Recognition

Bruce & Young (1986): Structural encoding

A
  • Produce various representations of the face;

> Recognise the face as a face

42
Q

Face Recognition

Bruce & Young (1986): Face recognition units (FRUs)

A
  • Contain (fairly abstract) structural information about known faces;
    > Recognise the face as familiar
43
Q

Face Recognition

Bruce & Young (1986): Person identity nodes (PINs)

A
  • Provide information about individuals (e.g., occupations, interests)
44
Q

Face Recognition

Bruce & Young (1986): Name generation

A
  • Provide the name for the face (names are stored separately)
45
Q

Prosopagnosia

A
  • A condition in which there is a severe impairment in face recognition, but much less in object recognition.
  • Also known as ‘face blindness’
  • Could occur with brain damage (‘acquired prosopagnosia’) or without (‘developmental prosopagnosia’).
  • Precise symptoms and degrees vary across patients.
46
Q

Prosopagnosia

MS (Newcombe et al. 1989)

A
- Found that not having a functional structural encoding meant:
>Face/non-face
>Familiarity
>Information
>Name

Did not work

47
Q

Prosopagnosia

NR (DeHaan et al., 1992)

A
  • Found that not having a functional face recognition units (FRUs) meant:
    >Familiarity
    >Information
    >Name

did not work

48
Q

Prosopagnosia

PH (Young & DeHaan,1992)

A
  • Found that not having a functional personal identity nodes (PINs) meant:
    >Information
    >Name

did not work

49
Q

Prosopagnosia

MH (Carney & Temple, 1993)

A
  • Found that not having a functional name generation meant:
    >Name

did not work

50
Q

Misidentification Delusions

A
  • Some of common misidentification delusions could be explained by deficits in units in Bruce & Young’s model (Ellis & Young, 1990).
  • These delusions often occur in psychiatric settings (e.g., paranoid schizophrenia).
  • But could occur as a result of neurological conditions.
51
Q

Fregoli Syndrome

A
  • aka Fregoli Delusion
  • Delusional belief that a single person can assume different physical appearances.
  • Deficit in PINs?: Wrong nodes activated?
52
Q

Intermetamorphosis

A
  • Delusional belief that people change appearance to that of someone else familiar.
  • Deficit in FRUs?: activating FRUs with abnormally low thresholds?
53
Q

Capgras Syndrome

A
  • aka Capgras Delusion
  • Delusional belief that someone who looks familiar is actually an impostor
  • Preserved face recognition but impaired emotional response to the faces?
  • Familiar person replaced by physically similar double
54
Q

Our interactions with the world

A
  • Stimulus
  • Sensation > perception > cognition
  • Response
55
Q

Traditional Cognition

A
  • Thinking about, looking at and interacting with an object all result in DIFFERENT activations in the brain.
  • Representations are stored (somewhere) away from sensory and motor regions of the brain.
56
Q

Embodied Cognition (alternative approach)

A
  • Our cognitive systems are grounded in our sensory and motor systems.
  • No need for a separate mental representation.
  • Representations are distributed across motor and sensory areas.
57
Q

Embodied Cognition

A
  • Thinking about, looking at and interacting with an object all result in (more or less) the SAME activations in the brain.
  • Representations are distributed across (and stored within) sensory and motor systems.
  • Cognition involves ‘mental simulation’
    > of perceptual and motor experience
58
Q

Priming and Activating Representations

A

Embodied cognition: If activate one part of representation of an object then this will activate other components of that representation.
> e.g., Reading word ‘CAT’ activating the feeling of touching a cat?

59
Q

Predictions

A
  • If we activate motor aspects of representations then this should prime memories of objects that involve this action.
    > body-mind effects (body affecting mind)
  • If we activate sensory aspects of representations of an object then this should prime actions associated with that object.
    > mind-body effects (mind affecting body)
60
Q

Body-mind effects: Witt & Brockmore (2012)

A
  • Witt & Brockmore (2012)
    > subjects holding either gun or ball; Asked to move it up (if saw gun) or down (if saw neutral obj)
    > action affecting object detection
61
Q

Checking the effects

A
  • Witt & Brockmore (2012)
    > Ex1 & 2: response –raise object (gun or ball) for gun present, lower for absent
    > Ex3: response - lower object for gun present, raise for absent
    > Ex4: presence of gun in room but not for response = no bias
    > Ex5: hold shoe = bias for reporting shoes - so effect is NOT GUN-SPECIFIC
    >Overall, evidence for body-mind effects: holding object for response: affecting difficulty of perceiving stimulus object
62
Q

Mind-body Effects: Tucker & Ellis (2004)

A
  • Subjects saw pictures of either small or large objects.
  • Task: judge whether the object is natural or man-made, by moving a response switch with either a precision or power grip.
63
Q

Mind-body Effects: Tucker & Ellis (2004): conditions

A
  • Conditions:
    > stimulus-response compatible:
    nut (natural/small – precision) vs. bottle (man-made/large – power)
    > stimulus-response incompatible:
    nut (natural/small – power) vs. bottle (man-made/large – precision)
64
Q

Mind-body Effects: Tucker & Ellis (2004): results

A
  • Stimulus-response compatibility effects
  • Evidence for mind-body effects: perceiving stimulus object : activating information about handling it manually: affecting difficulty of response action
65
Q

Action Observation

A

Helbig et al. (2009)

  • Subjects saw movie of hand action (prime): picture of object: word
  • Task: judge whether name matches object.
  • Conditions: Congruent vs. Incongruent
66
Q

Action Observation: results

A

Helbig et al. (2009)
- Priming effect of action on object recognition
- Observing someone else’s action
> activating perceptual/motor representation related to action > making it easier to recognise object that involves the action.

67
Q

Adaptive Advantage

Studies showing perception/ cognition influenced by body:

A
  • Steepness of hills with a backpack (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999)
    > judging a hill steeper
  • Steepness of hills after a sugary drink (Schnall et al., 2010)
    > Judging a hull less steep
  • Size of hole in golf with performance (Witt et al., 2008)
    > judging a hole bigger
  • Width of doors with arms outstretched (Stefanucci & Geuss, 2009)
    > Judging a door smaller