Sensation and Perception

• Chapter 3 discusses perception, mental imagery, and object recognition
• Chapter 4 discusses external attention
• Chapter 8 discusses language and communication

Perception

• Perception involves recognizing, organizing, and making sense of sensations
• Sensory signals travel from sensation, through the sensory system, to the primary sensory cortex.
• Bottom-up information involves the detection of sensory signals and the beginning of perception
• Top-down information influences and enhances the interpretation of sensory input through knowledge and expectations
• Predictive coding is how visual brains operate by making predictions about what input the eyes are about to receive

Retina and photoreceptors

• The retina is the light-sensitive part of the eyes
• Photoreceptors stimulate 100 million photoreceptors on the retina
• Cones are sensitive to wavelengths corresponding to different colors
• Rods are light sensitive and useful when light is very dim; cannot distinguish colors
• The fovea is the center of the retina and contains cones and rods

Transduction

• Transduction is the process by which physical signals from the environment are translated into neural signals the brain can use

Additional Information

• A blind spot is where there are no photoreceptors on the retina
• Amodal completion is when someone perceive an object despite an apparently obstructed view
• Context and experience can shape perception
• Object segmentation can be influenced by beliefs, knowledge, or motivation

Depth cues

• Texture gradients are the grain of an item
• Relative size denotes that bigger objects are closer
• Interposition denotes that closer objects are in front of other objects
• Linear perspective is that parallel lines converge in distance
• Aerial perspective denotes that further objects are blurry
• Motion parallax denotes that further objects are slower
• Binocular convergence is when eyes look inward to focus on objects and can determine how far away the object is
• Binocular disparity is that the eyes see different angles of an object

Agnosia

• Agnosia is trouble recognizing things.
• Apperceptive agnosia is impaired early vision where people cannot perform simple visual feature tasks.
• Associative agnosia is impaired late vision, where people cannot name or categorize things but can copy images

Theories of object recognition

• View-based approaches are a theory of object recognition
• A template fully describes the shape of an object
• Structural descriptions are models that represent objects as sets of three-dimensional parts
• Recognition by components is the idea that there are 36 or fewer basic shapes

Geons

• Geons combine into a whole object, just like letters make words

Mental imagery

• Mental imagery is the act of forming a percept in mind without sensory input
• Aphantasia is the inability to engage in mental imagery
• Mental rotation is comparing and matching rotated images

External attention

• Attention is the family of cognitive mechanisms that combines to help us select, modulate, and sustain focus on the information that is most relevant to behavior
• Selection is singling out certain pieces of information among many
• Voluntary attention is the effort to select goal-relevant information
• Reflexive attention is attending to a particular stimulus because it has seized attention

Vigilance and modulation

• Vigilance is a state of heightened attentional anticipation
• Modulation is when attention can change the way we perceive a stimulus function
• Inattentional blindness is failing to notice an unexpected item right in front of the eyes when attention is preoccupied
• Change blindness is the failure to notice large changes from one view to the next
• Attentional bias is the tendency to direct attention to some stimuli
• Attentional bias modification is a therapeutic approach that tries to reduce maladaptive bias in attention
• Emotion-induced blindness is the inability to see targets that appear after emotional stimuli

Language and communication

• Psycholinguistics is the study of cognitive underpinnings of human language

Criteria of Language

• Communicative
• Referential and Meaningful
• Structured
• Creative

Language terms

• Mental lexicon is a word one uses and its links to real-world representation
• Phonological access is through sound
• Orthographical Access is through a written form
• Spreading activation model is that word meanings link to each other graph
• Semantic priming is the exposure to a word that influences a response to a subsequent stimulus
• Affective priming is that words can be primed by preceding items that have the same emotional quality

Language Acquisition

• Finite State Grammars and Markov Models are constructed in sequence, with earlier parts of a sentence constraining what subsequent parts of the sentence can be
• Markov models seek to explain verbal utterances and language development as probabilistically dependent on preceding words
• Poverty of the stimulus is the lack of information in an environment about correct language use

Universal grammar

• Universal grammar and language acquisition device have rules that enable mental representation ⇔ structured expression, an instinct to seek out and master the rules that define grammar
• The critical period is a time when children are optimally equipped to learn the rules of a particular language

Pidgin Languages and Creole Languages

• Pidgin is the simplified language used for communication between speakers of different languages
• Fully developed language is native language

Phonemes and Phonology

• Phonemes are the basic unit of sound in language (consonant, vowel)
• Phonology is the rules that govern how sounds combine

Morphemes and Morphology

• Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaningful sound
• Content and Function Morphemes describe place, action etc. used on its own and modify content morphemes

Aphasia

• Aphasia is a condition involving impaired ability to produce or understand language
• Damage to Broca's area can lead to Broca's aphasia, which is difficulty speaking fluently
• Damage to Wernicke's area can lead to Wernicke's aphasia, which is difficulty understanding
• Anomic aphasia is difficulty finding the words people want to say
• Global aphasia is difficulty in both producing and comprehending spoken language

Prosody

• Prosody's patterns of intonation in a language sentence can affect meaning

Pragmatic

• Pragmatic is the study of how the communicative function of language depends on common ground, which is the same understanding or perception
• Curse of knowledge is the difficulty that experts often have putting themselves into the shoes of less knowledgeable

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that differences among languages reflect and contribute to differences in underlying thought processes
• The strong form is that thoughts and behavior are determined by language, there is more evidence against than for
• The milder form is that thought and behavior are influenced by language and there is some evidence for and some evidence against
• Piraha does not have words for numbers but can perform relatively complex numerical calculators; however, they have difficulty remembering such calculations, suggesting that language can affect the way we attend to information and encode it into memory
• Language can change perception, e.g., Russian and English language speakers categorize the color blue differently