Recognizing Objects

Question 1

What is bottom-up processing?

Answer 1

Directly shaped by stimulus, data-driven

Question 2

What is top-down processing?

Answer 2

Processes shaped by knowledge, concept-driven

Question 3

What are visual search tasks?

Answer 3

Tasks in which participants examine a display and judge whether a particular target is present in the display or not

Question 4

Why are visual search tasks useful?

Answer 4

Support the claim that recognition begins with identification of features

Question 5

What is a tachistoscope?

Answer 5

A device designed to present stimuli for precisely controlled
amounts of time

Question 6

What is a mask?

Answer 6

A random pattern of lines, curves, or letters that is meant to interrupt any continued processing of the previously-presented stimulus

Question 7

What is priming?

Answer 7

Preparing a participant for exposure to a stimulus

Question 8

What is repetition priming?

Answer 8

Using an initial exposure to a stimulus to prepare the participant for another exposure to the same stimulus

Question 9

What is the word-superiority effect (WSE)?

Answer 9

Letters are more easily recognized in the context of a word than in isolation

Question 10

What is well-formedness?

Answer 10

How well a letter sequence conforms to typical English spelling patterns (produces similar effect as the WSE)

Question 11

What are the common recognition errors?

Answer 11

Less common patterns (i.e. “TPUM”) are more likely to be misread as more common patterns (i.e. “DRUM”, “TRUM”), but the reverse effect doesn’t occur
Misspelled words, partial words, and non-words are adjusted to fit typical spelling patterns

Question 12

What are feature nets?

Answer 12

A network of feature detectors, with the scale of objects increasing when moving upwards through the feature net

Question 13

What is a detector’s activation level?

Answer 13

How energized the detector is/the status of the detector at the moment

Question 14

What is a detector’s response threshold?

Answer 14

The point at which the detector will fire/send its signal to the other detectors to which it is connected

Question 15

What are bigram detectors?

Answer 15

Detectors of letter pairs, triggered by lower-level detectors and send their output to higher-level detectors

Question 16

How are ambiguous inputs interpreted?

Answer 16

The detector that is more primed will respond (i.e. “TAE” vs. “THE” - detector for “THE” has been primed significantly more than “TAE”, therefore “THE” will be recognized)

Question 17

How do recognition errors occur?

Answer 17

Similar to the recognition of ambiguous inputs (i.e. if “CQRN” is presented, “CORN” will be recognized due to more priming)

Question 18

What does it mean for knowledge to be “locally represented”?

Answer 18

Able to look at a single bigram and determine the frequency of occurrence

Question 19

What is a distributed representation of knowledge?

Answer 19

Activation levels have to be determined by viewing the relationship between priming levels (i.e. “CO” priming levels need to be compared to “CF” priming levels)

Question 20

How do we maximize efficiency and accuracy?

Answer 20

English has many redundancies, therefore not every letter of a word needs to be read in order to be able to correctly recognize the word (i.e. “contxt”)

Question 21

What is the McClelland and Rumelhart Model?

Answer 21

A different representation of a feature network that involves both excitatory and inhibitory connections

Question 22

What are excitatory connections? (McClelland and Rumelhart)

Answer 22

Connections that allow one detector to activate its neighbors (i.e. activation of “T” detector allows activation of “TRIP” detector)

Question 23

What are inhibitory connections? (McClelland and Rumelhart)

Answer 23

Connections that allow one detector to inhibit its neighbors (i,e, activation of “G” detector inhibits activation of “TRIP” detector)

Question 24

What is the Recognition by Components (RBC) model?

Answer 24

A feature network to explain the recognition of objects, containing an immediate level of detectors sensitive to geons

Question 25

What are geons (geometric ions)?

Answer 25

The building blocks of all objects we recognize (the alphabet from which all objects are constructed), assembled into “geon assemblies” that activate the object model

Question 26

What does it mean for object recognition to be viewpoint-dependent?

Answer 26

Only a certain number of viewpoints of a particular object are remembered, and those that are encountered more frequently create faster recognition than those less encountered

Question 27

How do neurons in the inferotemporal cortex support the idea that object recognition is viewpoint-dependent?

Answer 27

Particular neurons in this area fire preferentially when a specific type of object is present in the visual field, and many of these neurons are view-tuned

Question 28

What is prosopagnosia?

Answer 28

People cannot recognize faces of loved ones, famous people, or even themselves

Question 29

What is the inversion effect?

Answer 29

The recognition of inverted objects is significantly less accurate than recognition of them in their typical orientation (this effect is particularly present in the recognition of faces)

Question 30

What is holistic perception?

Answer 30

Perception that depends on the overall configuration of the object rather than an inventory of its parts (how faces are likely perceived)