Cognitive Psychology - Perception

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Visual agnosia

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Impossibility to recognize an object based on visual perception despite the ability to see it clearly.
Vision and visual recognition are different functions in the brain.

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Associative agnosia

Back 2

A difficulty naming objects despite being able to see it clearly.
Object naming is a function independent to vision.

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Time spaces

Back 3

The perceptual experience of time units such as days of the week or months of the year as occupying spatial locations outside the body.
Perception can be done without a stimulus.

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Theory of ecological optics

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(by J.J. Gibson)
The proposal that perception is the direct absorbing of visual information available in the environment.

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Ambient Optical Array (AOA)

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All the visual information present at a particular point of view.

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Texture gradients

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Gradual changes in the pattern of a surface that is normally assumed to be uniform to deduce information like the curvature or recession of said surface.

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Topological breakage

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The discontinuity created by the intersection of two texture gradients which suggests an edge.

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Scatter-reflection

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the degree to which light scatters when reflected from a surface. Indicative of the nature of the object's surface.

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Transformation (Perception, vision)

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(J.J. Gibson)
The change of optical information hitting the eye when the observer moves through the environment.

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Optic flow field

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The movement of objects or of the observer through the environment produces change in what is seen.

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Percept

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Meaningful interpretation of sensory information.

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Memory trace

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The trace that an experience leaves in the brain.

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Höffding function

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The process whereby an emerging perception makes contact with a memory trace, resulting in recognition.

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Prototype

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One of the the most standard forms in a category used to represent the category. Apples could be Bob's prototype for fruits.

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template-matching theory

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comparing a stimulus with a template; when they match, the stimulus is recognized as belonging to the category.

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Multiple-trace memory model

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Traces of each individual experience are recorded in memory every single time and regardless of how often the event was experienced.
Repetition makes better memory.

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Primary memory / Secondary memory

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Primary: What one experiences at a given point in time.
secondary: Cumulative traces of all events of one's life.

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Probe

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Secondary memory can be activated by means of a probe from primary memory.

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Echo

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When a probe goes out from primary to secondary memory, memory traces are the activated to the extent that they are similar to the probe.

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Feature detection theory

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Detecting patterns on the basis of their individual features.

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Pandemonium

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A model of pattern recognition consisting of three levels:
1. Data, the presented pattern of features.
2. Cognitive demons, pattern-specific elves that shout at a noise level proportional to the correspondence between their pattern and the one presented.
3. Decision demons, they decide of what is seen according to who shouts the loudest.

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Contrast energy

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The degree of contrast between a letter and its background which determines how easy it is to read said letter.

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Squelching

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Neuron's tendency to ignore unclear/weak signals.

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Geons

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The basic geometric shapes that compose objects. Biederman found 36 of them.

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Recognition by components (RBC)

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A model of perception based on subdividing objects into geons.

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Recoverability

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The degree to which geons can be made out in a degraded image of an object.

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Bottom-up processing (Data-driven processing)

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When perception results from the combination of individual pieces of information (details to general image).
B-U is used in naive observation.

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Top-down processing (user-driven processing)

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When perception is driven by expectations and prior knowledge.

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Context effects

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The influence that the situation plays on the perception of a stimulus.

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Moon illusion

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Fuck you, moon illusion.
The moon seems bigger when it is near the horizon than high in the sky although we see it the same size in both cases.

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Apparent-distance theory

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An explanation to the moon illusion stating that the moon appears further away when it is near the horizon so it would have to be bigger to appear the same size as the high moon.

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Angle-of-regard theory

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An explanation to the moon illusion stating that the moon seems smaller at the zenith than at the horizon because one must look up to see it.

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Jumbled word effect

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The ability to raed wdors in steentnces dsepite hvinag mxid-up ltteers in teh mlidde of smoe of the wrods.
Shows that the letters in a word more than their order is important in reading.

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Word superiority effect

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It is easier to identify a letter when presented in a word than on its own.

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Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP)

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(model) Different features are processed at the same time by different units which send each other excitatory and inhibitory signals that increase or decrease the likelihood of a the object to be anything in particular.
In a word the first few letters alter the likelihood of the following letters being something or other.

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Empirical theory of color vision

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Color vision is partly influenced by our prior knowledge of the effect of light on colors (ex. we know an object is yellow although it appears green if a blue light is shone on it)
Color vision isn't only due to interpretation of wave lengths.

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McGurk effect

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When one hears "ba" while seeing someone mouth "ga" in such a way that one hears a hybrid.
When given conflicting stimuli, the brain interprets the information as a hybrid.

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Change blindness

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We are oblivious to change.
We usually don't realize that we are oblivious to change (change blindness blindness)

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Grand illusion of perception

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The impression of seeing things clearly and in detail like if we were watching life like a movie when in fact we only see clearly one or two objects at a time.
Our brain does a bunch of Top-Down processing of the little bits of information we receive outside the fovea.

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Feature integration theory (FIT) (reciprocal of preattentive processing)

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Before we can attend to objects we must extract the features that make up said objects.

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Preattentive processing (reciprocal of FIT)

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Automatic extraction of features before an object can be percieved.

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Feature binding (reciprocal of attentive processing)

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Combining of visual features through attention to form whole objects.

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Attentive processing (reciprocal of feature binding)

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Combining features into a whole object through attention.

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Perceptual completion (filling-in)

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The process if making up for our blind spot by experiencing there something we can't actually see.
We are not aware of our disabilities because the brain has the power to make up for them.

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Gestalt psychology

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Deals with wholes rather than in part (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts)
Includes many theories on perception and how we process visual information that isn't straight forward.

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Bi-stable figures

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Image in which we can see 2 different things.
Gives insight on how the brain processes ambiguous visual information.

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Organization principles : Principle of experience

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We tend to perceive objects based on our prior experience.

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Figure-ground segmentation

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Perceptual organization of a scene such that some elements become the foreground and some others become the background. In ambiguous situations, we judge each part's denotivity (amount of sense in makes)

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Organizational principles : Principle of proximity

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What is close together tends to be grouped together.
" " " " " " " vs ' ' ' ' '

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Organizational principles : Principle of closure

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Things that form closed shapes tend to be grouped together.
[ ] [ ] [ ]

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Organizational principles : Principle of good continuation

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Things that form continuous lines tend to be grouped together.

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Organizational principles : Principle of similarity

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Things that look alike tend to be grouped together
o o x x o o x x

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Organizational principles : Principle of common fate

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Things that move together tend to be grouped together.

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Gestaltist's error

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Gestaltist's are wrong in assuming that whole objects *always* dominate over the elements of an image

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Apperceptive agnosia

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The incapability to match or categorize objects despite a perfect vision.
Object matching and categorizing has its own function in the brain.

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Optic ataxia

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The incapability to interact physically with an object because of a bad assessment of its shape and location.
Object localization in space is independent to depth perception.

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Prosopagnosia

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The impairment of face recognition when object recognition is intact although it isn't because the people have been forgotten.
Face recognition is its own function in the brain.

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Capgras syndrome

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The lack of a conductive response of the skin at the sight of familiar people although they are still recognized. People with that condition usually think the people they know have been replaced by impostors.

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Sensation

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Stimulus detection

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Perception

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Personal interpretation of sensation

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(Gestalt) Reification

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Percepts contain more information than sensation

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(Gestalt) Multistability

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Percepts can alternate

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(Gestalt) Invariance

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Simple objects are always recognized independently of their orientation.