Cognitive Psychology Ch 3 – Perception advanced test

perception - ANSWERSexperiences resulting from stimulation of the senses bottom-up processing - ANSWERSprocessing that begins with stimulation of receptors recognition-by-components theory - ANSWERSproposes that we perceive objects by perceiving elementary features called geons geons - ANSWERSperceptual building blocks that can be combined to create objects principle of componential recovery - ANSWERSif we can recover (see) an object's geons, we can identify the object top-dowm processing - ANSWERSprocessing that involves a person's knowledge or expectations (also called knowledge-based processing) feedback signals - ANSWERSsignals that travel down from higher centers to influence incoming signals size constancy - ANSWERSwe tend to perceive objects as remaining the same size even when they move to different distances speech segmentation - ANSWERSthe process of perceiving individual words within the continuous flow of the speech signal theory of unconscious interference - ANSWERSstates that some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions that we make about the environment likelihood principle - ANSWERSwe perceive the object that is MOST LIKELY to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received Gestalt psychologists - ANSWERSgroup of psychologists who proposed principles governing perception, such as laws of organization, and a perceptual approach to problem solving involving restructuring perceptual organization - ANSWERSthe process of organizing elements of the environment into separate objects laws of perceptual organization - ANSWERSlaws that indicate how elements in the environment are organized or grouped together law of good continuation - ANSWERSlaw of perceptual organization stating that points that, when connected, result in straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together, and the lines tend to be seen in such a way as to follow the smoothest path law of pragnanz (law of good figure or law of simplicity) - ANSWERSlaw of perceptual organization that states that every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible law of similarity - ANSWERSlaw of perceptual organization that states that similar things appear to be grouped together law of familiarity - ANSWERSlaw of perceptual organization that states that things that form patterns that are familiar or meaningful are likely to be grouped together heuristics - ANSWERSrules of thumb that provide a best-guess solution to a problem algorithm - ANSWERSa procedure that is GUARANTEED to solve a problem regularities in the environment - ANSWERScharacteristics of he environment that occur frequently physical regularities - ANSWERSregularly occurring physical properties of the environment oblique effect - ANSWERSpeople can perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations light-from-above heuristic - ANSWERSassumption that light is coming from above theory of natural selection - ANSWERSgenetically based characteristics that enhance an animal's ability to survive, and therefore reproduce, will be passed on to future generations experience-dependent plasticity - ANSWERSthe mechanism through which the structure of the brain is changed by experience neuropsychology - ANSWERSthe study of the behavior of people with brain damage brain ablation - ANSWERSremoving part of the brain object discrimination problem - ANSWERSa problem in which the task is to remember an object based on its shape and choose it when presented with another object after a delay (associated with research on the WHAT processing stream) landmark discrimination problem - ANSWERSproblem in which the task is to remember an object's location and to choose that location after a delay (associated with research on the WHERE processing stream) WHAT pathway - ANSWERSneural pathway, extending from the occipital lobe to the temporal lobe, that is associated with perceiving or recognizing objects. corresponds to the perception pathway WHERE pathway - ANSWERSneural pathway, extending from the occipital lobe to the parietal lobe, that is associated with processing that occurs when people locate objects in space. roughly corresponds to the action pathway perception pathway - ANSWERSthe pathway from the visual cortex to the temporal lobe action pathway - ANSWERSthe pathway from the visual cortex to the parietal lobe mirror neurons - ANSWERSneurons that respond both when a monkey observes someone else grasping an objet, and when the monkey itself grasps the object audiovisual mirror neurons - ANSWERSneurons in the premotor cortex that respond when a monkey performs a hand action AND when it herds the sound associated with this action