Psychology: Figure-Ground Perception and Processing
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Questions and Answers

What is the process of gathering information about the environment and transmitting it to the brain for initial processing?

  • Psychophysics
  • Sensation (correct)
  • Phenomenological world
  • Perception

    • What is the term used to describe the world as it is subjectively experienced by an individual?

  • Physical world
  • Perceptual world
  • Phenomenological world (correct)
  • Psychological world

    • What is the branch of psychology that studies the relationship between attributes of the physical world and our psychological experience of it?

  • Sociology
  • Psychophysics (correct)
  • Neuroscience
  • Psychology

    • What is the primary difference between sensation and perception?

    <p>Sensation is an immediate experience, while perception involves interpretation</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is NOT a common feature of all sensory systems?

    <p>Sensing the world requires knowledge of the world</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the relationship between the physical world and our experiences, according to psychophysics?

    <p>There is a complex relationship between the physical world and our experiences</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the role of the brain in the process of sensation?

    <p>The brain interprets the information gathered by the senses</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the term used to describe the study of the relationship between sensation and perception?

    <p>Psychophysics</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the primary function of efficient sensory processing?

    <p>To turn down the volume on information that is redundant</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the main idea behind the doctrine of specific nerve energies?

    <p>That sensations result from following specific nerve pathways</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is response bias introduced by?

    <p>Both prior expectation and motivation</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the law that states that there must be a constant proportion between two stimuli for an individual to know that the two stimuli are indeed different?

    <p>Weber's law</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the term for the tendency of sensory receptors to respond less to stimuli that continue without change?

    <p>Sensory adaptation</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the range of light that can be seen by a normally sighted human?

    <p>400 to 700 nm</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Why is light a useful form of energy?

    <p>Because it is either absorbed or reflected when it hits a surface</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the absolute threshold?

    <p>The minimum amount of physical energy needed for a person to notice a stimulus</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the primary function of sensory receptors?

    <p>To translate physical stimulation into sensory signals</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the term for the ability of senses to detect changes in stimulation?

    <p>Sensitivity</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the term for neurons that fire only when stimulation in their receptive field matches a very specific pattern?

    <p>Feature detectors</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the pathway involved in locating an object in space, following its movement, and guiding movement towards it?

    <p>'Where' pathway</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the term for the inability to recognise familiar faces?

    <p>Prosopagnosia</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the sequence of structures that light passes through when it enters the eye?

    <p>Cornea, aqueous humour, pupil, lens, vitreous humour, retina</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the band of muscles behind the cornea that gives the eye its colour?

    <p>Iris</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Where do impulses from the optic nerve first pass through?

    <p>Optic chiasm</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the pathway that visual information takes after it travels along the optic nerve?

    <p>Optic chiasm, lateral geniculate nucleus, primary visual cortex</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the characteristic of sound that refers to its highness or lowness?

    <p>Pitch</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the term for the point where the optic nerve becomes the optic tract?

    <p>Optic chiasm</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the pathway involved in recognising and naming an object?

    <p>'What' pathway</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the minimum amount of physical energy needed for an observer to notice a stimulus?

    <p>Absolute threshold</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the process by which light is focused on the retina?

    <p>Focusing</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the part of the retina that is most sensitive to small detail?

    <p>Fovea</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the point on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye?

    <p>Blind spot</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the region within which a neuron responds to appropriate stimulation?

    <p>Receptive field</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the correct order of transmission of visual information?

    <p>Rods and cones; bipolar cells; ganglion cells; optic nerve</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What happens to the intersections of a black/white grid of lines due to lateral inhibition?

    <p>They appear about the same grey</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What are the continuations of the axons from ganglion cells that constitute the optic nerve?

    <p>Optic tracts</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What do feature detectors in the primary visual cortex respond to?

    <p>Only when stimulation in their receptive field matches a particular pattern</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the process by which the visual image is transduced into neural impulses?

    <p>Transduction</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the principle that states that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and is used to explain figure-ground perception?

    <p>Gestalt</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What type of processing occurs simultaneously in perception?

    <p>Top-down and bottom-up processing</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the physical dimension of light that translates into the psychological dimension of colour?

    <p>Wavelength</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the point on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye and lacks receptor cells?

    <p>Optic disk</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the mechanical energy that triggers action potentials in sensory neurons in the hearing process?

    <p>Movement of cilia</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the pathway that visual information takes after it travels along the optic nerve?

    <p>To the lateral geniculates and then to the primary visual cortex</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What are the transducers of taste stimuli?

    <p>Taste buds</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What are the two proprioceptive senses?

    <p>Vestibular and kinaesthesia</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the experience of sound wave frequency referred to as?

    <p>Pitch</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the primary function of the pinna?

    <p>Locating sound in space</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which part of the inner ear is responsible for primary transduction of sound?

    <p>Cochlea</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Where is the primary projection area for auditory stimuli located in the brain?

    <p>Temporal lobe</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What are the main cues for sound localisation?

    <p>Differences in loudness and time of arrival</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a characteristic of sound that is not true of light?

    <p>It involves different variations in electromagnetic radiation</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the characteristic of sound that allows us to recognise each other's voices and musical instruments?

    <p>Timbre</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the difference between a louder sound and a softer sound?

    <p>The sound waves of the louder sound are higher than the sound waves of the softer sound</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the role of the cochlea in the inner ear?

    <p>Involved in the transduction of sound</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the experience of sound wave amplitude referred to as?

    <p>Loudness</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the relationship between the amplitude of a sound wave and the loudness of the sound?

    <p>The louder the sound, the higher the amplitude.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which regions of the body are most sensitive to pressure?

    <p>Face and fingers</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Where do taste receptors send information to?

    <p>Primary gustatory cortex and limbic system</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What type of information does kinaesthesia provide?

    <p>Movement and position of limbs and other parts of the body</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Where are the sensory receptors of the vestibular organ located?

    <p>Inner ear</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What are the two proprioceptive senses?

    <p>Kinaesthesia and vestibular</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following perceptions is believed to be partially learned?

    <p>Perceiving three dimensions in two-dimensional artwork</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What happens to the receptive fields of 'motion detectors' as the input travels closer to the primary visual cortex?

    <p>They grow smaller</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the role of kinaesthesia in guiding complex movements?

    <p>It provides information about the movement and position of limbs and other parts of the body</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which pathway is responsible for producing immediate emotional and behavioural responses to taste?

    <p>Limbic system</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the main characteristic of receptive fields of neurons that detect motion in the brain?

    <p>They grow larger with each 'step' along the processing stream.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the term for the ability to perceive objects as having a constant size, shape, and colour despite changes in viewing conditions?

    <p>Perceptual constancy</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the 'carpentered world hypothesis'?

    <p>The idea that experience with rectangularity protects individuals from seeing the Müller-Lyer illusion.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the primary factor that influences the Ponzo illusion?

    <p>Experience with linear perspective</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the theory that states that the meaning of stimuli is often immediate and obvious, even to the 'untrained' eye?

    <p>Direct perception</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the primary function of schemas in perception?

    <p>To increase the speed and efficiency of perception</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is NOT a major perceptual rule proposed by Gestalt psychologists?

    <p>Shading</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the main characteristic of motion-detecting neurons in the primary visual cortex?

    <p>They have small receptive fields</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the primary function of the medial temporal (MT) region in the processing stream of motion detection?

    <p>To process motion information from the thalamus</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the relationship between the size of receptive fields and the position of neurons in the processing stream of motion detection?

    <p>Receptive fields increase in size as neurons move further along the processing stream</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Study Notes

    Sensation and Perception

    • Sensation refers to the process of gathering information from the environment and transmitting it to the brain for initial processing.
    • The phenomenological world refers to the world as subjectively experienced by an individual, which is a joint product of external reality and the person's creative efforts to understand and depict it mentally.

    Psychophysics

    • Psychophysics is the branch of psychology that studies the relationship between attributes of the physical world and our psychological experience of it.
    • The doctrine of specific nerve energies states that the experiences of neural messages such as light, sound, or some other sensations result less from differences in stimuli than from the particular neurons excited by them.

    Sensory Systems

    • All senses share certain common features, including the ability to detect changes in stimulation and the ability to distinguish meaningful from irrelevant information, which requires constant decision making.
    • Sensory adaptation is the tendency of sensory receptors to respond less and less to a constant stimulus, allowing the nervous system to ignore constant sensory inputs that do not provide new information.

    Visual System

    • The range of light that can be seen by a normally sighted human is roughly 400 to 700 nanometers.
    • The two major processes occurring in the eye are focusing (cornea, pupil, and lens) and transduction (retina).
    • The centre of the retina, which is most sensitive to small detail, is known as the fovea.
    • The point of the retina at which the neurons leave the eyes is known as the blind spot (optic disk).
    • Receptive fields of many ganglion cells are regions within which a neuron responds to appropriate stimulation.

    Optic Tracts and Visual Cortex

    • Impulses from the optic nerve first pass through the optic chiasm, where the optic nerve splits, and then travel to the brain via the optic tracts.
    • Feature detectors in the primary visual cortex respond only when stimulation in their receptive field matches a particular pattern.
    • Beyond the primary visual cortex, visual information flows along the 'what' and 'where' processing streams.

    Hearing

    • The three psychological characteristics of sound are pitch, loudness, and timbre.
    • Sound travels more slowly than light, although at close range the difference between the speed of light and speed of sound is imperceptible.
    • People recognise each other's voices, as well as the sounds of different musical instruments, from their characteristic timbre.

    Touch and Balance

    • Sensitivity to pressure varies considerably over the surface of the body, with the face and fingers being the most sensitive regions and the back and legs being the least sensitive.
    • Taste receptors stimulate neurons that carry information to the medulla and pons and then along two pathways: one to the primary gustatory cortex and one to the limbic system.
    • Kinaesthesia provides information about the movement and position of limbs and other parts of the body relative to one another.### Proprioceptive Senses
    • The vestibular sense organs are located in the inner ear, above the cochlea.
    • There are two proprioceptive senses: kinaesthesia and vestibular.

    Perception

    • Perceiving three dimensions in two-dimensional artwork is a partially learned perception.
    • Monocular depth cues are used to represent a three-dimensional world in two-dimensional artwork.
    • These cues include interposition, elevation, and linear perspective.
    • People who have not seen photography have difficulty recognizing even their own images in two-dimensional form.

    Motion Detection

    • The receptive fields of 'motion detectors' grow larger with each step along the processing stream in the brain.

    Perceptual Constancies

    • The three types of perceptual constancies in vision are: size, shape, and colour.
    • Size constancy describes the way objects do not appear to change in size when viewed from different distances.
    • Shape constancy is the ability to maintain perceptions of an object's shape each time it is encountered.
    • Colour constancy refers to the tendency to perceive the colour of objects as stable despite changing illumination.

    Carpentered World Hypothesis

    • The 'carpentered world hypothesis' asserts that the nature of architecture in a culture influences the tendency to experience particular illusions.
    • People reared in cultures without rectangular buildings and angled roofs are less susceptible to the Müller-Lyer illusion.

    Ponzo Illusion

    • The Ponzo illusion appears to be influenced by culture.
    • People who live in environments in which lines converge in the distance are more susceptible to this illusion.

    Direct Perception

    • The theory of direct perception contends that the meaning of stimuli is often immediate and obvious, even to the 'untrained' eye.

    Schemas

    • Schemas increase the speed and efficiency of perception by rendering the environment relatively predictable.
    • Schemas are patterns of thinking about a domain that are held in memory.

    Gestalt Principles

    • Gestalt psychologists proposed a number of basic perceptual rules and laws of perceptual organisation.
    • These included figure-ground perception, similarity, proximity, good continuation, simplicity, and closure.

    Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing

    • Top-down and bottom-up processing occur simultaneously.

    Light and Colour

    • Intensity of light is related to brightness, and wavelength of light is related to colour.

    Blind Spot

    • The optic disk is the blind spot because it does not have any receptor cells.

    Hearing Process

    • The movement of cilia caused by the basilar and tectorial membranes is critical for transduction in the hearing process.

    Visual Pathway

    • From the optic tracts, information travels the visual pathway to the lateral geniculates or to the superior colliculi.

    Taste Stimuli

    • Taste buds are the transducers of taste stimuli.

    Proprioceptive Senses

    • Kinaesthesia and vestibular are proprioceptive senses that regulate body position and movement.

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    Description

    Explore the principles of figure-ground perception, including similarity, proximity, and closure, and learn how top-down and bottom-up processing occur simultaneously in perception.

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