Cognitive Psychology: Perception Week 2

Sensation is the process of receiving input through senses, like sight, sound, smell. Perception is the brain's interpretation of these sensations.

A school of thought focusing on how we perceive organized patterns rather than individual elements.

The tendency to organize our perceptions into the simplest, most stable form.

We group together things that are close together.

We group together things that look similar.

Our minds separating a figure (object) from its background (ground).

The ability to identify meaningful patterns in sensory information.

The process by which your brain determines what objects are in the scene

Using prior knowledge and experience to interpret sensory information. This allows us to fill in gaps and make sense of ambiguous stimuli.

Gestalt principles, like proximity and similarity, influence our perception of objects and patterns. They can help us group elements and understand the whole picture.

Matching a stimulus to a category of objects stored in memory can be challenging, as the stimulus may not perfectly match any stored pattern.

Object recognition involves more than just identifying patterns. It also relies on our knowledge and experience, allowing us to interpret objects even when conditions are not ideal.

Recognizing a pattern by matching it to a stored mental template (like a blueprint).

Patterns are identified by matching their individual features (like lines, corners, etc.).

They don't work well with variations in a pattern's appearance, like different angles or perspectives.

They assume we analyze smaller parts before the whole image, which isn't always true.

Neurons in the brain called feature detectors react to specific features in visual input (like lines, edges, etc.).

Simple cells respond to basic features at specific locations, while complex cells respond to features regardless of location.

Features are easier to identify when they're part of a recognizable object.

Prior knowledge and expectations influence how we interpret sensory information.

A visual illusion where altering the bottom half of a face makes the top half appear different, even though it remains unchanged.

Faces are harder to recognize when upside down compared to other objects, highlighting our specialized processing for upright faces.

A condition where recognizing faces is significantly impaired, but object recognition remains mostly normal.

An inability to recognize objects visually, despite intact vision.

A subtype of visual agnosia where object recognition is impaired due to difficulties with perception.

A subtype of visual agnosia where perception is intact, but recognition fails due to deficits in accessing object knowledge from memory.

Object recognition involves different stages, including early stages of perception and later stages of accessing stored knowledge.

This condition can significantly affect daily life, making tasks involving objects difficult.

Biederman's theory proposing that object recognition is based on identifying basic 3D shapes called 'geons'.

Basic 3D shapes (like cylinders, blocks, or cones) that serve as building blocks for object recognition.

Object recognition involves combining information from perceptual organization and pattern recognition, leading to the activation of a matching mental representation.

Recognition-by-components theory struggles with objects lacking defined shapes, like clouds or fire, highlighting the potential role of top-down influences.

Object recognition is impacted by the viewpoint from which it is observed, especially for less familiar objects.

Strong for familiar faces, less effective for unfamiliar ones, involving holistic processing rather than feature-based analysis.

Studies show that faces are processed as a whole, not just individual features, evidenced by things like the composite face effect.