psy 200 ch 1-3

cognitive psychology - studying behavior to understand human cognition
cognitive neuroscience - combining information from behavior and brain
neuroimaging techniques to understand human cognition
bottom-up processing - processing directly influenced by physical characteristics
of stimuli
top-down processing - processing influenced by a person’s feelings and
expectations
serial processing - completely processing one stimulus before processing
the next
parallel processing - multiple cognitive processes occur at the same time
modularity - the cognitive system consists of independent, specialized processors
dissociation - with brain damaged patients, intact performance on one
task but impaired performance on a different task
case-series study - study in which several patients with similar cognitive
impairments are tested
event-related potentials (ERPs) - pattern of electrical activity obtained by averaging brain responses to the same repeated stimulus
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) - magnetic pulses briefly disrupt brain function in a given area
lesion - structural alteration within the brain caused by disease or injury
cognitive architecture - a framework for understanding human cognition as
computer programs
computational modelling - constructing computer programs that simulate human
cognitive processes
retinopy - there is mapping between retina receptor cells and points on the surface of the visual cortex
lateral inhibition - activity in one neuron decreases because of activity in a
nearby neuron
binding problem - integrating different types of information to produce a
whole visual perception
ventral stream - visual processing; object perception and recognition as
well as perceptual representation
dorsal stream - visual processing; visually guided action
achromatopsia - brain damage with impaired color perception but intact
form and motion perception
akinetopsia - brain damage with impaired motion perception but intact
stationary object perception
optic ataxia - brain damage with impaired visually guided movements
but intact visual perception

visual form agnosia - brain damage with impaired shape perception but intact
visually guided action
dichromacy - deficiency in color vision with one missing cone class
negative afterimage - illusion of perceiving the complementary color to the one
that has been fixated
color constancy - perceiving the same color under varying viewing
conditions
illuminant - source of light falling on a surface or object
pattern recognition - identify or categorize two-dimensional patterns
Law of Pragnanz - we perceive the simplest possible organization of the
visual environment
figure-ground segregation - perceiving an object of central interest as the figure and
a less important background as the ground
uniform connectedness - nearby stimuli with the same visual properties are
perceived as a single unit
holistic processing - processing that involves integrating information from an
entire object
face inversion effect - faces are much harder to recognize when they are
upside down
part-whole effect - part of a face is more easily recognized when presented
in the context of a whole face than on its own
prosopagnosia - brain damage with impaired face recognition but intact
object recognition
fusiform face area - part of the brain associated with face and object
processing
visual buffer - Kosslyn’s theory; a short-term memory store
binocular rivalry - two different visual stimuli are presented one to each eye
but only one stimulus is seen
positron emission tomography (PET) - brain-scanning technique based on the detection of positrons; good at spatial location but not time course
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - brain-scanning technique based on imaging blood oxygenation using an MRI machine; good at spatial location and time course