Emergence of Cognitive Psychology
Define visual agnosia
Impaired object recognition
Occurs despite:
intact vision
intact intelligence
intact memory
Indicates disruption in the ventral object-recognition system
Which stream (dorsal/ventral) is most implicated in object recognition and why?
Ventral stream is thought of as our 'what'pathway, as it concerns itself with identification of objects, face, colors, forms, etc.
What is the process of transduction?
conversion of physical energy into electrical signals
Define Perception
sensation and interpretation, making sense of the environment through bottom up and top down processes
Name 2 ways we can observe cognition experimentally?
accuracy and reaction time
What is Apperceptive agnosia?
lack of integration of visual features (lines, colors, shapes) into coherent objects, making it impossible to recognize, copy, or draw items despite having intact vision
What is the utility of pattern recognition?
Pattern recognition is the mental process that allows us to:
detect structure in sensory input
interpret what we perceive
identify objects, sounds, faces, and symbols
What is a receptor field
The area of the body or environment that activates a specific neuron.
Define Unconscious inference
states that we use prior knowledge automatically and involuntarily to make sense of sensory information (especially if it's ambiguous).
What are top-down processing and bottom-up processing?
Top-down: "knowledge-driven", using previous experience, perception, etc.
Bottom-up: "data-driven", input from sensory stimuli.
What is associative agnosia?
Associative agnosia is a disorder where a person can perceive an object correctly but cannot identify or assign meaning to it.
Name the 3 Elements to Template Theories
Copy Stores: Long-term memory(LTM) contains detailed representations of objects we have encountered before (mental photocopies)
Normalization: rotating size, resizing, etc, as real-world objects very rarely ever appear the same way.
Search and Matching Strategies: Once normalized, the system must decide which template matches.
What is a primary cortex
The primary cortex is the first cortical area (area of cerebral cortex) that receives sense input.
What were the findings of the Palmer 1975 study?
~60 university students, shown various line drawings of scenes (e.g. kitchen) followed by a target object (as seen on right hand of image), and asked to identify the object.
Identification was highest (in terms of accuracy and speed) when the target was congruent with the context (83%) compared with lower rates of accuracy in incongruent context or no context.
We rely on top-down processing (knowledge & context) to perceive sensory input
What is Signal Detection Theory?
SDT helps us understand how we decide whether we have perceived something, especially when information is uncertain or noisy.
Which form of agnosia would result in difficulty copying or matching objects?
apperceptive
What are 'critical features' according to feature theories?
Necessary and sufficient features used to identify an object
What is the function of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)?
The LGN organizes information from both eyes, relaying the visual information to where it needs to go.
What is the Ecological Approach to perception?
perception is a direct and immediate process, all information needed is given from the environment and higher processing is not necessary.
Which psychologists compared the mind to a 'black box' that could not be seen and therefore should not be studied
John B. Watson & B.F. Skinner
Integrative agnosia is a subtype of which form of agnosia? Where in perceptual processing would it occur (early, intermediate, or later)
Apperceptive
attention
Explain the role of the dorsal pathway in perception
The dorsal stream is also thought of as our 'vision for action 'pathway, which pulls information about spatial awareness and navigation, rather than identifying objects in a space.
What are the components of the Ecological Approach
Affordances: the action possibilities that the environment offers to anindividual/animal. It is relational between the individual and the environment.
Optic Array: structured light from environment when reflecting off surfaces
Invariants: aka stable properties of the world: e.g. Texture gradients, horizonline, relative size
Optical Flow: continuous change of light/surfaces/etc. moving across retina as wetake in environment
Organism-Environment System: organism and environment are in a unified system,and aspects of environment are defined by their affordances