Deck 5: Perceiving Objects and Scenes

Question 1

The principle of similarity can account for grouping of stimuli that are similar in

A) orientation.
B) shape.
C) size.
D) orientation, shape, and size.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Wundt: _________ :: Wertheimer: _____________.

A) structuralism; Gestalt psychology
B) Gestalt psychology; structuralism
C) functionalism; structuralism
D) psychophysics; metaphysics

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Structuralists would be most likely to endorse which of the following statements?

A) Sensations and perceptions are the same "unit" of thought.
B) The whole of something is greater than its parts.
C) Perceptions can be explained by the sensations that make them up.
D) Past experience plays little or no role in perception formation.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Border ownership means that when figure-ground segregation occurs, the border between the figure and background

A) seems to change color.
B) is perceived to be associated with the background.
C) is perceived to be associated with the figure.
D) seems to disappear.

Question 5

A masking stimulus is primarily used to

A) stop persistence of vision.
B) increase the duration of persistence of vision.
C) increase the area of the "region-of-interest".
D) hide the purpose of the experiment from participants.

Question 6

The demonstration of apparent movement provides support for the Gestalt approach because

A) the phenomenon cannot be explained by sensations alone.
B) the phenomenon relies exclusively on the perceiver's past experience.
C) the images used do not follow the principle of common region.
D) the phenomenon relied on figure/ground segregation.

Question 7

Alyson looks at a picture of arrows and sees white arrows pointing to the right against a black background. She looks at the picture longer, and then sees black arrows pointing to the left against a white background. Her perception of the this stimulus is an example of

A) perceptual segregation.
B) binocular rivalry.
C) view invariance.
D) orientation invariance.

Question 8

The ___________ problem shows that numerous physical stimuli can create exactly the same image on the retina.

A) correspondence
B) inverse projection
C) occlusion
D) ambiguity

Question 9

Corey looks at a flock of seagulls flying in one direction, when suddenly five of the seagulls start flying in another direction. He now perceives two groups of birds, because of the Gestalt principle of

A) common fate.
B) uniform connectedness.
C) synchrony.
D) Pragnanz.

Question 10

In a scene, the objects in the foreground are best described as _________, whereas the image making up the background is best described as the _______.

A) object; setting
B) ground; figure
C) near point; distance
D) figure; ground

Question 11

Humans need approximately ____ to perceive the gist of a scene.

A) 250 milliseconds
B) 1000 milliseconds
C) 2 seconds
D) 5 seconds

Question 12

The Bev Doolittle print of "The Forest Has Eyes" exemplifies the way _______ affects perceptual organization.

A) proximity.
B) common region.
C) meaningfulness.
D) common fate.

Question 13

"Viewpoint invariance" means

A) children can only represent one perceptual viewpoint at a time.
B) computers can invert images to easily perform object recognition.
C) humans can easily recognize objects when seen from different viewpoints.
D) monkeys can only recognize other monkey faces from a frontal view.

Question 14

In one reversible figure/ground study, Gibson and Peterson (1994) used an image in which one area looks like a woman when upright, but does not resemble anything when turned upside down. Their general finding was that

A) meaningfulness of an image had a large effect on figure-ground segregation.
B) meaningful images were just as likely to be seen as figure or ground.
C) inverting the entire image lead to slower response times.
D) meaningfulness only had an effect when the are appeared on the left side.

Question 15

The Olympic symbol is an example of the Gestalt principle of

A) proximity.
B) Pragnanz.
C) common fate.
D) synchrony.

Question 16

Which of the following is a general determinant of figure-ground segregation?

A) An area on the right side is more likely to be perceived as a figure than a stimulus on the left.
B) Small stimuli are more likely to be perceived as ground than figure.
C) Detailed images are more likely to be perceived as figure than ground.
D) A lower region is more likely to be perceived as figure than an upper region.

Question 17

Gestalt psychologists used the example of illusory contours to support the claim that

A) perceptions are formed by combining sensations.
B) vision can be modeled on computer processing.
C) the whole is different than the sum of its parts.
D) experience determines perceptual interpretation.

Question 18

Computers are better than humans at perceiving objects because

A) computers can process information faster than humans.
B) computers have higher storage capacity than humans.
C) computers can more easily determine the reasons for changes in lightness.
D) none of these; humans are better than computers at object perception.

Question 19

Jimmy looks at a moderately blurred picture of Princess Diana's face. Jimmy will most likely

A) not be able to identify the face.
B) identify the face as male rather than female.
C) be able to correctly identify the face.
D) need a computer to scan the image to correctly identify it.

Question 20

Sally recently looked at some visual illusions. In one reversible-image illusion she saw a vase in the middle of a blue box. What is Sally most likely to remember about this illusion?

A) Details about the box.
B) The two faces on the side of the face.
C) The vase she saw in the illusion.
D) The lower half of the image.

Question 21

Research has shown that an infant can visually recognize his/her mother's face from

A) the contrast between her eye color and face.
B) her smile.
C) the contrast between her hairline and forehead.
D) her overall head shape.

Question 22

Copolla et al. (1998) gave students at Duke University digital cameras and told them to go to different areas on campus and take a picture every two minutes. Based on known physical regularities in the environment, what would you expect the photos to reveal?

A) Horizontal and vertical orientations were the major physical regularities.
B) Diagonal orientations were the major environmental regularities.
C) Gestalt principles were incompatible with the major environmental regularities.
D) Environmental irregularities were more salient than environmental regularities.

Question 23

A voxel is

A) a small cube-shaped area of the brain about 2 mm on each side.
B) an electrode used to measure brain activity.
C) the basic unit of sensation.
D) the retinal area on which an image is projected.

Question 24

The results of Grill-Spector et al.'s (2004) "Harrison Ford" study demonstrated that

A) FFA activation is the same whether detecting or recognizing a face.
B) FFA activation is greater when detecting than recognizing a face.
C) FFA activation is greater when recognizing than detecting a face.
D) FFA activation is the same whether detecting a face or seeing no face.

Question 25

The preferential looking technique showed that infants as young as ______ will
Look at their mother's face than a stranger's face.

A) two-days-old
B) one-week-old
C) one-month-old
D) six-months-old

Question 26

The _______ effect is that humans perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations.

A) Turing
B) oblique
C) spreading
D) visual persistence

Question 27

In studies with monkeys, Sheinberg and Logothetis (1997) presented a butterfly to one eye and a sunburst pattern to the other eye. This research demonstrated that

A) binocular rivalry does not occur in monkeys.
B) monkeys use binocular rivalry as a depth cue.
C) "ineffective" and "effective" stimuli are processed the same way in the cortex.
D) changes in perception are linked to cortical neural firing.

Question 28

Nascelaris et al. (2009) developed the _____ decoder that is used to make predictions about characteristics of a scene such as contrast and shape.

A) form
B) structure
C) orientation
D) semantic

Question 29

The theory of unconscious inference

A) was developed by Treisman in the 1990's.
B) is closely related to the "likelihood principle."
C) describes the use of algortithms in perception.
D) is incompatible with Gestalt psychology.

Question 30

Tong et al. (1998) used binocular rivalry to test brain responses when the person perceived a house or a face. When the person perceived the house, activity in the _____ increased.

A) activity in the PPA increased.
B) activity in the FFA increased.
C) activity in the PPA and the FFA increased.
D) activity in the PPA and the FFA decreased.

Question 31

Perceiving the emotional aspects of a face are reflected by activation in the brian structure called

A) the amygdala.
B) the medulla.
C) the IT cortex.
D) the superior temporal sulcus.

Question 32

The ______ decoder is intended to discriminate between different categories of images, such as outdoor scenes and portraits.

A) orientation
B) structure
C) scene
D) semantic

Question 33

Which of the following is a global image feature, according to Oliva and Torralba?

A) degree of naturalness
B) degree of openness
C) color
D) All of these are global image features.

Question 34

Kamitani and Tong (2005) developed "orientation decoders". When eight orientations were tested, the decoders were able to correctly predict what orientation a person was looking at on _____ of the trials.

A) 10%
B) 25%
C) 40%
D) 100%

Question 35

When Palmer (1975) showed observers a kitchen scene and then a target picture, which picture was identified correctly 80% of the time?

A) A loaf of bread, because it matches the context of the scene
B) A mailbox, because it seems so out-of-context, that it "pops-out"
C) A drum, because participants were music majors.
D) A bedroom, because it is from the same category.

Question 36

Humans use the _____________ to determine shape from shading.

A) environmental assumption
B) light-from-above assumption
C) proximity principle
D) delayed-matching principle

Question 37

Jimmy looks at a picture of a side of a submarine that has dents and bumps on it. When he turns the picture upside-down, what he originally perceived as bumps, now look like dents, and vice versa. This is due to

A) figure-ground reversal.
B) the oblique effect.
C) accidental properties of light.
D) the "light-from-above" heuristic.

Question 38

Which of the following is true regarding inversion effects?

A) Faces and other objects are equally affected by inversion.
B) Face processing is slowed more than that of other objects.
C) Object identification is not affected by inversion.
D) They demonstrate that faces are processed featurally.

Question 39

Based on Fei-Fei et al. (2007), smaller objects within a scene are typically recognized within

A) 50 milliseconds.
B) 150 milliseconds.
C) 500 milliseconds.
D) 1000 milliseconds.

Question 40

The ability to recognize faces at an adult level does not develop until approximately

A) 3-4 months of age.
B) 6 years of age.
C) 11 years of age.
D) 18 years of age.

Question 41

Describe what decoders were developed by Kamitani and Tong (2005) and Naselaris et al. (2009), how they were established, and what they can be used for.

Question 42

State, define, and give an example (in words and/or drawings) for each of five Gestalt principles of perceptual organization.

Question 43

Describe a stimulus factor and a subjective factor that determine what area is seen as "figure" in an image with reversible figure-ground. Draw an example that demonstrates each factor.

Question 44

Name and describe five "global image features".

Question 45

Describe the main finding from binocular rivalry research and explain why that finding is important.

Question 46

Discuss three reasons why object perception is difficult for computer vision.

Question 47

Summarize two research studies that show the influence of semantic regularities on perceptual organization.

Question 48

Describe Grill-Spector et al.'s (2004) Harrison Ford study and the results of that study.