Exam 1 Review: Perception, Attention, and Memory

Comprehensive practice flashcards reviewing Perception, Attention, and Memory topics for Exam 1.

How does subjective perception differ from objective reality?

Objective reality refers to actual physical stimuli in the external environment, whereas subjective perception is the internal mental interpretation and experience constructed from sensory inputs.

What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up processing in perception?

Bottom-up processing is driven directly by sensory input from environmental stimuli, whereas top-down processing is guided by prior knowledge, expectations, experiences, and context.

What is speech segmentation?

The perceptual process of distinguishing individual words within a continuous acoustic stream of speech, largely aided by top-down knowledge of language.

How does the Gibsonian (Direct perception) approach explain visual processing?

It posits that perception is direct and immediate because the environment provides rich, structured information (such as the optic array) without requiring complex internal computations or cognitive construction.

What characterizes the constructive perception approach?

The perspective that perception is an active process where the brain constructs hypotheses and representations of the external world by combining incomplete sensory data with prior knowledge.

What is Hermann von Helmholtz's concept of unconscious inference?

The proposal that visual perceptions are the result of unconscious, rapid assumptions or inferences made by the visual system about what is most likely causing the sensory input.

What are the primary Gestalt principles of perceptual organization?

Figure-ground (distinguishing an object from its background), Continuity (preferring smooth continuous paths), Pragnanz (simplicity or good figure), Proximity (grouping nearby elements), Similarity (grouping alike elements), and Closure (filling in visual gaps to perceive complete objects).

What is lateral inhibition?

A physiological process where stimulated photoreceptors or visual neurons inhibit the activity of neighboring neurons, thereby sharpening edges and enhancing contrast perception.

What are the optic array and optic flow in Gibson's ecological approach?

The optic array is the structured pattern of light reaching a viewing observer from all directions; optic flow is the dynamic pattern of motion within the optic array produced when the observer moves relative to the environment.

How do expansion in the optic array, motion parallax, and linear perspective convey depth?

Expansion in the optic array indicates approaching objects; motion parallax causes nearer objects to pass by faster than distant objects; linear perspective causes parallel lines to appear to converge as distance increases.

What is size constancy?

The perceptual tendency to perceive an object as retaining its actual physical size despite dramatic variations in the size of its retinal image caused by changing distances.

What does an affordance refer to?

The action possibilities or functional properties that an object or environment offers directly to an organism (such as a chair affording sitting or a handle affording pulling).

What is the visual cliff and what does it test?

An experimental apparatus consisting of a patterned surface over a shallow and a drop-off visual surface covered by glass, used to assess depth perception in infants and young animals.

What is experience-dependent plasticity in the visual system?

The brain's neural capacity to alter its structure and synaptic connections in response to specific perceptual interactions and regularities in the environment.

What are the ventral and dorsal visual pathways, and what functions do they serve?

The ventral pathway ('what' pathway) projects to the temporal lobe to process object identification, color, and form; the dorsal pathway ('where' or 'how' pathway) projects to the parietal lobe to process spatial location, motion, and action guidance.

How do Template Matching, Feature Analysis, and Structural Theory explain object recognition?

Template Matching compares sensory input to exact holistic memory templates; Feature Analysis breaks down objects into basic visual components; Structural Theory explains objects by their spatial configurations of three-dimensional building blocks known as geons.

What is prosopagnosia?

A visual perceptual disorder characterized by an inability to recognize familiar human faces, often linked to impairment in the fusiform face area, while recognition of other objects typically remains intact.

What are mirror neurons?

Neurons that fire both when an individual executes a motor action and when the individual observes another person performing the identical action.

What is the size-weight illusion?

A perceptual illusion where, when lifting two objects of equal mass but different volumes, the physically smaller object is consistently perceived as being noticeably heavier.

How do selective attention, attentional capture, and divided attention differ?

Selective attention focuses processing resources on one stimulus while ignoring others; attentional capture is the involuntary shift of attention caused by a salient unexpected stimulus; divided attention involves distributing cognitive resources among multiple tasks simultaneously.

What is dichotic listening, and what is shadowing?

Dichotic listening presents different auditory messages simultaneously to each ear (attended and unattended channels); shadowing is the experimental procedure requiring the participant to repeat the message in the attended channel aloud as it is heard.

What is the cocktail party effect?

The cognitive ability to selectively focus auditory attention on a single conversation amid competing noisy chatter, while still detecting personally salient information (such as one's own name) from unattended channels.

How do early selection and late selection models of attention differ?

Early selection models assert that sensory stimuli are filtered for physical properties before semantic analysis can occur; late selection models propose that all stimuli undergo semantic analysis before filtering determines conscious awareness and response.

How does perceptual load affect selective attention according to capacity theories?

High perceptual load tasks exhaust available processing resources, preventing task-irrelevant distractors from being processed, whereas low perceptual load tasks leave spare capacity that automatically processes extraneous distractors.

What is the difference between automatic and controlled processes?

Automatic processes require minimal attentional capacity, occur without conscious intention, and run rapidly; controlled processes demand active attention, are deliberate and effortful, and operate sequentially.

What does the Stroop test demonstrate about automatic processing?

It shows that reading word names is an automatic process that interferes with naming the physical font color when the word and color conflict (e.g., the word 'RED' printed in blue ink).

How do single feature search and conjunction feature search differ in terms of search processing?

Single feature search involves target detection based on one distinct characteristic processed via parallel, fast visual search; conjunction search requires combining multiple features, demanding serial, slower, item-by-item processing.

What is Treisman's feature integration theory, and how does it explain illusory conjunctions?

It posits a preattentive stage where elementary features are analyzed independently and an attentive stage where focused attention binds features together; without adequate attention, features can be erroneously combined, resulting in illusory conjunctions (solving the binding problem).

What are satisfaction of search and target frequency in visual search tasks?

Satisfaction of search refers to the increased rate of missing a second target once an initial target is found; low target frequency significantly increases miss rates due to reduced search vigilance and faster stopping thresholds.

What are inattentional blindness, change blindness, and the illusion of awareness?

Inattentional blindness is failing to notice an unexpected stimulus in plain sight; change blindness is failing to detect a visual modification between scenes; both reveal the illusion of awareness, which is our mistaken belief that we perceive our entire visual field in full detail.

What is the difference between overt attention and covert attention?

Overt attention involves physically moving the eyes or head toward an attended object, whereas covert attention involves shifting mental focus to a spatial location without moving the eyes.

What are the three core stages of Atkinson and Shiffrin's Modal Model of Memory?

Sensory store (brief holding of raw perceptual information), short-term memory (limited-capacity temporary conscious storage), and long-term memory (limitless enduring storage).

How do iconic memory and echoic memory differ in duration and modality?

Iconic memory is visual sensory memory that lasts for roughly 250 to 500 milliseconds; echoic memory is auditory sensory memory that persists for approximately 2 to 4 seconds.

What is George Miller's classic capacity limit for short-term memory?

Miller identified that short-term memory has a storage limit of approximately $7 \pm 2$ chunks of information.

What mechanisms explain the primacy and recency effects in the serial position curve?

The primacy effect reflects superior recall for initial items due to increased rehearsal and transfer into long-term memory; the recency effect reflects superior recall for final items because they remain active in short-term memory.

What are the three main components of Baddeley's classic Working Memory model?

The phonological loop (holding verbal and acoustic information), the visuo-spatial sketch pad (holding visual and spatial information), and the central executive (allocating attentional resources and coordinating subsystems).

What is a chunk, and how does chunking affect memory span?

A chunk is a meaningful unit or collection of information organized according to prior knowledge; chunking groups individual items together, effectively expanding operational memory and digit span.

What are the phonological similarity effect and articulatory suppression?

The phonological similarity effect is the reduced recall of words or letters that sound alike; articulatory suppression is the repetitive pronunciation of an irrelevant sound (e.g., 'the, the, the') that disrupts verbal rehearsal in the phonological loop.

What is the word length effect?

The observation that memory span is greater for lists of short words than for lists of long words, because shorter words take less time to pronounce and refresh in the phonological loop.

How do proactive interference and retroactive interference cause forgetting in memory?

Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information disrupts the recall of newly acquired information; retroactive interference occurs when newly learned information disrupts the recall of older memories.

What is perseveration in executive functioning?

The persistent repetition of a particular response or behavioral rule despite feedback indicating that the response is no longer correct or appropriate, often associated with central executive and frontal lobe impairment.