Anything Goes
This is the position that human beings are born with innate, pre-wired cognitive structures, modules, or knowledge, rather than acquired by learning.
What is nativism?
This is the functional problem of inverse optics.
What is how we get a representation of a 3D scene from a 2D retinal image?
This term in Bayes' Theorem is the probability of a given hypothesis before updating on the data.
What is a prior?
This area of the brain is important for recognizing faces.
What is the fusiform face area?
This is the method that experimenters most often use to learn about infant cognition (involving the looking time of infants), and this is some empirical support for the method in question.
What is
the violation-of-expectation method
and
Error-related negativity (ERN) (When people detect an error, their brains exhibit a characteristic pattern of activity detectable by EEG)?
This is the main problem with the "inner picture"/"homunculus" view of perception.
What is an infinite regress/needing to continuously posit a homunculus inside the homunculus?
This is the reason why the inverse optics problem is so hard and this is how the brain solves it.
What is
underdetermination/a one-to-many mapping/the fact that multiple 3D scenes can arise from a single 2D retinal pattern
and
probabilistic inference/using hidden assumptions?
This term in Bayes’ rule refers to the hidden assumptions of our perceptual system.
What is prior probability (P(scene))?
This is an example of a selective deficit.
What is prosopagnosia? (a selective deficit in processing faces, despite otherwise intact visual perception)
The Poverty of Stimulus Argument proposes innate structures as an explanation to this phenomenon regarding babies/children.
What is the mismatch between meager learning input that children receive and the comparatively rich output (i.e. what they know, and what they can do)?
These are Marr's three levels of explanation and what they refer to.
What are
functional – what the capacity is supposed to solve (what is the input and what is the output?)
algorithmic – procedures that enable the problem to be solved
physical – the neural/chemical substrates in which the procedures are implemented?
People with blindsight have damage to this area of the brain.
What is the visual cortex?
The "likelihood" in Bayes' Theorem corresponds to this probability (in terms of data and hypothesis).
What is the probability of the data given a hypothesis / P(data|hypothesis)?
The monkey/human faces study (Sugita) gives evidence for this powerful idea in cognitive science.
What is “an innate, computational template that is fine-tuned via ‘experience’ with the world”?
These are 4 things that babies know.
What are (1) basic arithmetic, (2) basic principles of physics, (3) reasoning about other minds, (4) probabilistic reasoning?
Bonus point: can you name all of the principles of physics that babies know?
This characteristic of the brain’s visual system explains why “The Writing’s on the Wall” music video is so visually surprising to us.
What is our brain’s visual system “abhors coincidences”?
This part of the brain is responsible for initial, superficial processing of visual information.
What is the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN)?
When considering visual perception as a form of Bayesian inference, the posterior probability in Bayes' Theorem corresponds to this probability (in terms of a 3D scene and 2D retinal pattern).
What is inverse optics: the probability of the (3D) scene given the (2D) retinal pattern / P(scene|retinal pattern)?
These are things we cannot conclude from the Sugita study (and other studies) about face perception.
What are
(1) What exactly is innately-specified about face processing
(2) What exactly is the adaptive function of the innately-specified face processing, and
(3) How exactly faces are processed?
These experiment results show that babies understand the relation between a statistical sample and a population
What is: Babies look longer when 5 white marbles are drawn out of a container of mostly red ones, but do not look longer when they’re drawn from the experimenter's pocket?
These are the study findings that give evidence that the overhead light source assumption is innate.
What are
Chicks raised in an environment where light comes from below that were trained to peck at bumps went for photographs that only look like bumps if you assume light comes from above
Chicks raised in an environment where light comes from below that were trained to peck at dents went for photographs that only look like dents if you assume light comes from above?
These are the five hidden assumptions the brain makes when processing visual information.
What are
(1) There is a single overhead light source
(2) Inferring color from shadowing (things in shadow are actually lighter than they appear)
(3) Things tend to move in a straight line
(4) Rigidity: all points on a moving object move together, and
(5) Occlusion: A moving object will progressively cover and uncover portions of a persisting background?
Forward optics refers to this part of Bayes’ rule.
What is probability of a particular 2D retinal pattern arising given a 3D scene (P(retinal patterns|scene))? (aka the likelihood)
The fact that people with prosopagnosia (face blindness) have otherwise intact visual perception makes it a useful example of this fundamental principle of mind and brain organization.
What is: the mind is, at least in part, composed of specialized modules that evolved to solve specific problems (modularity)?
After seeing a toy floating in the air, babies will play with the toy by picking it up and dropping it. This behavior is rational for this reason.
What is: The baby has an understanding of the principle of gravity, and by picking up and dropping the toy, the baby is testing this hypothesis or principle about how the world works that they had just seen been violated?