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1. “Perceiving machines” that can negotiate the environment with human-like ease
a. were developed by computer scientists in the 1960s.
b. were developed by computer scientists in the 1970s.
c. were developed by computer scientists in the 1990s.
d. have yet to be developed.
ANSWER: d

2. Knowing how perception works is interesting because perception is something you experience
a. intermittently.
b. when necessary.
c. when important.
d. constantly.
ANSWER: d

3. The only way to see, hear, taste, smell, and feel what you want to experience is by
a. identifying stimulus inputs.
b. discriminating among similar stimuli.
c. developing necessary cognitive
constructs.
d. activating sensory receptors.
ANSWER: d

4. A worker’s auditory receptors were damaged from failing to use hearing protection when working in a loud
environment. As a result, we can expect that
a. the areas of their brain associated with auditory perception will have diminished considerably in size.
b. they can no longer hear anything.
c. they will need to use hearing aids.
d. their auditory experiences will differ from those of an individual whose receptors have not been
damaged.
ANSWER: d

5. Which of the following is the first category of the stages in the perceptual process?
a. Stimuli
b. Neural processing
c. Serendipity
d. Behavioral responses
ANSWER: a

6. The process of transforming energy in the environment into electrical energy in the neurons is called
a. refraction.
b. transduction.
c. reduction.
d. construction.
ANSWER: b
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7. What is the step in the perceptual process that is analogous to what happens during an ATM withdrawal, when pressure
from the button press becomes electrical energy and then becomes a mechanical response, resulting in the dispensing of
money?
a. Knowledge
b. Transference
c. Action
d. Transduction
ANSWER: d

8. The specific term for the “stimulus on the receptors” in visual processing is the
a. transduced image.
b. environmental stimulus.
c. visual image.
d. perception.
ANSWER: c

9. What is the term for the image projected on the retina of the actual stimulus?
a. Representation
b. Environmental stimulus
c. Replication
d. Scale model
ANSWER: a

10. Which brain structure is responsible for creating perceptions and producing other “high” level functions, such as
language, memory, and thinking?
a. Brain stem
b. Cerebral cortex
c. Hypothalamus
d. Occipital lobe
ANSWER: b

11. Visual form agnosia is a problem of what step of the perceptual process?
a. Action
b. Attention
c. Transduction
d. Recognition
ANSWER: d

12. Which statement best describes the steps of the perceptual process?
a. The steps are unidirectional, starting at the environmental stimulus and ending at perception.
b. The steps are unidirectional, starting at the environmental stimulus and ending at
knowledge.
c. The steps are unidirectional, starting at transduction and ending at recognition.
d. The sequence of steps is dynamic and constantly changing.

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ANSWER: d

13. If a person sees the unambiguous “rat” stimulus and then views the ambiguous “rat-man” figure, the person will most
likely report seeing what?
a. A rat, because of the effect of knowledge.
b. A person, because we tend to see things that match our
species.
c. A rat, because of the effect of action.
d. A rat or a person equally.
ANSWER: a

14. Justin forgot to wear his glasses to class, so the writing he sees on the chalkboard is blurry. Even so, he is sure it reads,
“Pop Quiz!” because he knows there are pop quizzes in the class and he can read the “P” and the “Q”. What allows him to
read the board?
a. Bottom-up processing
b. Oblique processing
c. Top-down processing
d. Compression
ANSWER: c

15. What type of processing is based on the stimuli reaching the receptors?
a. Bottom-up
b. Oblique
c. Top-down
d. Receptor
ANSWER: a

16. Trying to read a note written by someone with poor handwriting involves
a. only top-down processing.
b. only bottom-up processing.
c. both top-down and bottom-up processing.
d. only data-based processing.
ANSWER: c

17. The physiological level of analysis involves the relationship between

a. stimulus and physiology only.
b. physiology and perception only.
c. stimulus and perception only.
d. both stimulus and physiology and physiology and
perception.
ANSWER: d

18. Kimmy is casting shadows on the wall and watching whether or not her cat, Tiger, jumps at the shadows. She uses
different hand motions to see if there is a difference in whether Tiger jumps or not. Kimmy is informally studying which
relationship?
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a. The stimulus-physiology relationship

b. The physiology-perception relationship
c. The stimulus-perception relationship
d. The perception-behavior relationship
ANSWER: c

19. The psychophysical method in which stimuli of varying intensities are presented in ascending and descending orders
in discrete steps is called the method of
a. limits.
b. constant stimuli.
c. searching.
d. scaling.
ANSWER: a

20. When using the method of limits, the absolute threshold is determined by calculating
a. the stimulus intensity detected 66% of the time.
b. the stimulus intensity detected 75% of the time.
c. the stimulus intensity detected 100% of the
time.
d. the average of the “cross-over” values.
ANSWER: d

21. The method of limits takes into account the variability of human perception by
a. consistently presenting subliminal stimuli to avoid
bias.
b. using deception to hide the true purpose.
c. averaging the results of several trials.
d. measuring brain activity concurrently.
ANSWER: c

22. Fechner’s and Weber’s methods not only made it possible to measure the ability to detect stimuli, but they also made
it possible to
a. determine mechanisms responsible for experiences.
b. identify the subconscious rationales for the responses.
c. provide scientific justification for introspection.
d. localize brain lesions responsible for poor performance.
ANSWER: a

23. The smallest difference between two stimuli that enables us to tell the difference between them is called the
a. necessary difference.
b. difference threshold.
c. discriminant equation.
d. determinant level.
ANSWER: b
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24. Based on the dark adaptation curve, what would you expect the absolute threshold to do as time in a darkened room
increased?
a. Get larger
b. Remain unchanged
c. Get smaller
d. Vary unpredictably
ANSWER: c

25. One of the important limitations of the knowledge derived from determining thresholds is that
a. perception includes far more than just what happens at the threshold.
b. the methods are based fundamentally on introspection.
c. the outcomes are of extremely limited reliability.
d. generalization from the laboratory to real life is not possible.
ANSWER: a

26. A patient recently had a stroke that has damaged their ability to name objects. The neurologist shows the patient a pen
and asks them to name what it is. This is best described as a test of
a. recognition.
b. magnitude.
c. reaction time.
d. description.
ANSWER: a

27. The game “Whack-a-Mole,” in which the player must “whack” randomly appearing moles with a hammer as quickly
as possible when they peek their heads out, is best described as what type of task?
a. Recognition
b. Magnitude
c. Reaction time
d. Description
ANSWER: c

28. A medical laboratory worker is being trained to read the results of certain laboratory tests. In this phase of training, the
worker looks at prepared slides and then writes a summary of what they see. What type of task is this?
a. Recognition
b. Magnitude
c. Reaction time
d. Description
ANSWER: d

29. Which methods are used to measure the quantitative relationship between the stimulus and perception?
a. Description
b. The phenomenological methods
c. Reflection
d. Classical psychophysical methods

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ANSWER: d

30. Fechner’s psychophysical methods

a. are important from a historical perspective only.
b. were developed in the early 1960s.
c. showed that mental activity cannot be measured
quantitatively.
d. are currently used to test a person’s hearing and vision.
ANSWER: d

31. What is it called when a participant is given a “standard stimulus” and is asked to assign a numerical value to that
stimulus?
a. Recognition
b. Description
c. Phenomenological method
d. Magnitude estimation
ANSWER: d

32. The method of magnitude estimation yields a measure of what sort of magnitude?
a. Objective
b. Perceived
c. Difference
d. Absolute
ANSWER: b

33. As a part of the interview process for a job in quality control at a small, luxury chocolate manufacturer, an applicant is
asked to taste small pieces of chocolate and then describe what they taste. The applicant is most likely being asked to
provide a(n)
a. phenomenological report.
b. magnitude estimation.
c. adaptation curve.
d. absolute thresholds.
ANSWER: a

34. The question “What do you see?” is asking about

a. sensation.
b. discrimination.
c. recognition.
d. perception.
ANSWER: d

35. The question “What is it?” is asking about

a. sensation.
b. discrimination.

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c. recognition.
d. perception.
ANSWER: d

36. Classical psychophysical methods opened the way for the founding of scientific psychology by providing methods to
measure
a. an aspect of the mind.
b. neurological activation.
c. response bias.
d. multicultural effects.
ANSWER: a

37. A driver in a car notices that stationary objects closer to them move faster than stationary objects that are farther away.
The driver is using what technique regarding perception of a stimulus?
a. Detection
b. Search
c. Phenomenological
d. Magnitude estimation
ANSWER: c

38. A resident lives near the railroad tracks and often hears the loud bangs associated with cars being added to trains.
When a friend visits, the friend becomes alarmed at the sounds, wondering what they are, but the resident is able to
reassure their friend that it is a normal train-related sound. What skills does the resident have, at least in this situation, that
are superior to their friend’s?
a. Recognition
b. Detection
c. Search
d. Adjustment
ANSWER: a

39. An intern works for a company that designs adapted products to help people who have trouble grasping items. Today,
the intern is meeting with children who have difficulty grasping as a result of traumatic brain injury, and has provided
them with a supply of crayons, which have been adapted in various ways. The intern watches as the children color with
the crayons. Which question is the intern most likely asking?
a. How quickly do the children react to the crayons?
b. How do the children interact with the crayons?
c. How do the children describe the crayons?
d. Can the children identify the crayons?
ANSWER: b

40. What spectrum is a band of energy ranging from gamma rays at the short-wave end of the spectrum to AM radio and
AC circuits at the long-wave end?
a. Light
b. Sound
c. Electromagnetic
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d. Perceptual
ANSWER: c

41. According to Ludy Benjamin, if changes in physical stimuli always resulted in similar changes in perception of those
stimuli,
a. the world would be unbearably complex.
b. remediation of sensory deficits would be impossible.
c. there would be no need for psychology.
d. the neurophysiology of perception would be clear.
ANSWER: c

42. The part of the electromagnetic spectrum visible to the human eye is found between which two bands?
a. Ultraviolet and infrared
b. X-rays and ultraviolet
c. Gamma rays and x-rays
d. Infrared and radar
ANSWER: a

43. Discuss the difference between sensation and perception.

ANSWER: Sensation is often identified as involving simple “elementary” processes that occur right at the beginning of a
sensory system, as when light stimulates receptors in the eye. In contrast, perception is identified with
complex processes that involve higher-order mechanisms, such as interpretation and memory that involve
activity in the brain. Therefore,it is often stated that sensation involves detecting elementary properties of a
stimulus (Carlson, 2010), and that perception involves the higher brain functions involved in interpreting
events and objects (Myers, 2004).

44. Name the five questions about the perceptual world outlined in the text and provide an example for each.
ANSWER: What is the perceptual magnitude of a stimulus?
What is the identity of the stimulus?
How quickly can someone react to the stimulus?
How can what is “out there” be described?
How can someone interact with what is “out there?”
Examples will vary.

45. List seven steps from a stimulus in the environment to an action by the perceiving individual, illustrating each step
with an example.
ANSWER: Stimulus in the environment
Stimulus passes through the environment to the receptors
Receptor processes
Neural processing
Perception
Recognition
Action
Examples will vary.

46. (a) Define “top-down” and “bottom-up” processing.

(b) Discuss how the “rat-man” demonstration is used to exemplify the distinction between these two types of processing.
ANSWER: Bottom-up processing (also called data-based processing) is processing that is based on the stimuli reaching
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the receptors. Top-down processing (also called knowledge-based processing) refers to processing that is
based on knowledge.
The rat–man demonstration shows how recently acquired knowledge (“that pattern is a rat”) can influence
perception. When individuals are initially shown a figure that looks like a rat, they are more likely to identify
an ambiguous rat-man figure as a rat while those who initially see a man are more likely to identify it as a
man.

47. Name and provide examples of the three relationships used to study perceptual processes.
ANSWER: Relationship A: The stimulus–perception relationship
Relationship B: The stimulus–physiological relationship
Relationship C: The physiology–perception relationship

48. Describe the method of limits and how it is used.

ANSWER: In the method of limits, the experimenter presents stimuli in either ascending order (intensity is increased) or
descending order (intensity is decreased). For example, suppose an experimenter is studying the perception
of tones. On the first series of trials, the experimenter begins by presenting a tone with an intensity we will
call 103, and the observer indicates by a “yes” response that he hears the tone. This response is indicated by a
Y at an intensity of 103 in the far left column of the table. The experimenter then presents another tone, at a
lower intensity, and the observer responds to this tone. This procedure continues, with the observer making a
judgment at each intensity until he responds “no,” he did not hear the tone. This change from “yes” to “no,”
indicated by the dashed line, is the crossover point, and the threshold for this series is taken as the mean
between 99 and 98, or 98.5. The next series of trials begins below the observer’s threshold, so that he says
“no” on the first trial (intensity 95) and continues until he says “yes” (when the intensity reaches 100). Notice
that the crossover point when starting below the threshold is slightly different. Because the crossover points
may vary slightly, this procedure is repeated a number of times, starting above the threshold half the time and
starting below the threshold half the time. The threshold is then determined by calculating the average of all
of the crossover points.

49. What is meant by the absolute threshold? What about the difference threshold?
ANSWER: The absolute threshold is the smallest stimulus level that can just be detected. The difference threshold is the
smallest difference between two stimuli that enables us to tell the difference between them.

50. Why is the difference between physical and perceptual important?

ANSWER: What physical measuring instruments record and what we perceive are two different things. The Hermann
grid creates an “illusory perception” in which we perceive dark spots that are not physically present. But
sometimes we fail to perceive stimuli that are physically present. Perception is psychology, not physics, and
perceptual responses are not necessarily the same as the responses of physical measuring devices.

CHAPTER TWO .

1. Which proposed representational system is the least likely to be in place in the human visual system?
a. Sparse coding
b. Specificity coding
c. Representation by a small number of neurons
d. Distributed coding
ANSWER: b

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2. Which type of coding is the representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons?
a. Specificity
b. Population
c. Extrastriate
d. Sparse
ANSWER: b

3. Quiroga et al. (2008) studied sensory coding by _____.

a. ablation of the IT in humans
b. ablation of the FFA in humans
c. using implanted electrodes in the limbic system of college student
volunteers
d. using implanted electrodes in the temporal lobe of epileptic patients
ANSWER: d

4. Which type of coding occurs when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of only a small group of
neurons, with most neurons remaining silent?
a. Sparse
b. Selective
c. Limited
d. Specific
ANSWER: a

5. In which type of coding would a particular neuron respond to Jason’s face, another particular neuron to Sam’s face, and
another particular neuron to Bill’s face?
a. Identity
b. Specificity
c. Individuated
d. Experiential
ANSWER: b

6. The three major parts of a neuron are

a. dendrites, cell body, and axon.
b. axon, nerve fiber, and receptor.
c. receptor, transmitter, and median.
d. receptor, dendrites, and conductor.
ANSWER: a

7. The difference in charge between the inside and the outside of the nerve fiber when the nerve is at rest is
a. –70 mV.
b. –10 mV.
c. 0 mV.
d. +19 mV.
ANSWER: a
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8. Which of the following statements best defines the propagated response?Which of the following statements best defines
the propagated response?
a. Once a response is triggered, the response travels the length of the axon without decreasing in amplitude.
b. Once a response is triggered, the response gradually increases in amplitude as it travels down the length of the
axon.
c. The response increases the positive charge of the chlorine ions throughout the length of the axon.
d. The number of negative potassium ions increase the closer the impulse is to the dendrites.
ANSWER: a

9. As stimulus intensity is increased, recording from a single neuron shows that

a. the amplitude of the action potential increases.
b. the amplitude of the action potential decreases.
c. the amplitude of the action potential may increase or decrease, depending on the
stimulus.
d. the rate of firing of the nerve fiber increases.
ANSWER: d

10. The upper limit of a neuron’s firing rate is estimated to be how many impulses per second?
a. 20
b. 100
c. 800
d. 4400
ANSWER: c

11. At the beginning of the action potential, which type of ions flow from outside the nerve fiber into the nerve fiber?
a. Positive potassium
b. Negative potassium
c. Positive sodium
d. Negative sodium
ANSWER: c

12. The flow of ions that create the action potential are caused by changes in what aspect of the nerve fiber?
a. Suppression
b. Permeability
c. Accommodation
d. Assimilation
ANSWER: b

13. What chemicals are in synaptic vesicles that are released across the synapse to the next neuron?
a. Electrolytes
b. Collagens
c. Neurotransmitters
d. Glial cells
ANSWER: c
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14. Which analogy is used to describe the relationship of neurotransmitters with receptor sites?
a. Needle in a haystack
b. Lock and key
c. Stadium wave
d. Rolling stone
ANSWER: b

15. What is the process by which inhibitory transmitters cause the inside of the neuron to become more negative?
a. Hyperpolarization
b. Depolarization
c. Antipolarization
d. Repolarization
ANSWER: a

16. The rate of firing of the postsynaptic neuron depends on the amount of what type of input?
a. Excitation only
b. Inhibition only
c. Equalization
d. Both excitation and inhibition
ANSWER: d

17. What is necessary for the neural transmission and processing of information?
a. Only inhibition
b. Only excitation
c. Only equalization
d. Both inhibition and excitation
ANSWER: d

18. The principle that specific functions are served by specific cortical areas is called
a. magnification.
b. modularity.
c. distribution.
d. segmentation.
ANSWER: b

19. A structure that is specialized to process information about a particular type of stimulus is called a
a. lesion.
b. module.
c. partition.
d. pathway.
ANSWER: b

20. The brain imaging technique that tracks blood flow in the brain using magnetic fields is
a. fMRI.
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b. ablation.
c. ERP.
d. PET scan.
ANSWER: a

21. The brain imaging technique that creates images of structures in the brain, but cannot indicate neural activity, is
a. fMRI.
b. ablation.
c. PET scan.
d. MRI.
ANSWER: d

22. A “grandmother” cell is a neuron that

a. fires in response to one specific stimulus.
b. fires in response to seeing close relatives.
c. fires when viewing faces.
d. causes other neurons to have similar
responses.
ANSWER: a

23. In the “Halle Berry” study, Quiroga et al. found that the Halle Berry neuron is best described as responding to what
regarding Ms. Berry?
a. Visual features
b. Face
c. Associations
d. Concept
ANSWER: d

24. What is the term used to describe the state of an axon when the inside is 70 mV more negative than the outside?
a. Action potential
b. Negative potential
c. Resting potential
d. Firing potential
ANSWER: c

25. The brain imaging technique that creates images of the structures in the brain but cannot indicate neural activity is
a. fMRI.
b. ablation.
c. PET scan.
d. MRI.
ANSWER: d

26. The question of how physiologic processes cause our experiences is known as the
a. neuro-physiological question.
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b. mind-body problem.
c. causation-correlation problem.
d. stimulus-experience question.
ANSWER: b

27. When your body perceives a painful stimulus and simultaneously responds with multiple components, it is an example
of
a. neural representation.
b. multiple representation.
c. distributed representation.
d. diffuse representation.
ANSWER: c

28. What is the name of the area of the temporal lobe involved in understanding speech?
a. Wernicke’s area
b. Fusiform gyrus
c. Broca’s area
d. Superior temporal sulcus
ANSWER: a

29. Which of the following is NOT a step in synaptic transmission?

a. A signal travels down the axon of a neuron.
b. The nerve impulse causes the release of neurotransmitter
molecules.
c. The neurotransmitters fit into receptor sites.
d. Chlorine rushes out of the neuron.
ANSWER: d

30. What is a way to record the signal from a single neuron?

a. A recording electrode and a reference electrode can measure the difference in charge.
b. An fMRI scan can single out a single neuron.
c. An EEG will record individual neurons.
d. Two recording electrodes can measure the difference in charge.
ANSWER: a

31. Which type of ion flows into the neuron when a signal starts to come through the axon?
a. K+
b. Na+
c. Cl-
d. NaCl
ANSWER: b

32. What is the primary purpose of the cell body in a neuron?

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a. Receiving electrical impulses from other

neurons.
b. Conducting an electrical signal through a fluid.
c. Holding the mechanism that keeps the cell alive.
d. Receiving environmental stimuli.
ANSWER: c

33. Which area of the brain was called the “voice area” because it was activated significantly more when it heard voices
than when it heard other sounds?
a. Occipital cortex
b. Superior temporal sulcus
c. Temporal lobe
d. Frontal cortex
ANSWER: b

34. What is structural connectivity?

a. The path an electrical signal takes through neurons.
b. The neural activity associated with a particular function.
c. The colored areas shown on an fMRI scan.
d. The road map of fibers connecting different areas of the
brain.
ANSWER: c

35. One limitation of fMRI is that it cannot

a. identify the activity of sections of the brain.
b. detect the activity of individual neurons.
c. detect blood flow to areas of the brain.
d. identify a baseline level of activity.
ANSWER: b

36. What happens during the rising phase of the action potential?
a. A quick and steep depolarization
b. A quick and steep repolarization
c. A slow depolarization
d. A slow repolarization
ANSWER: a

37. What is the structure that allows ions into the axon during the rising phase of the action potential?
a. Ion channel
b. Potassium channel
c. Charge pathway
d. Sodium channel
ANSWER: d

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38. What is the term for the interval between the time one nerve impulse occurs and the next one can be generated in the
axon?
a. Waiting period
b. Recovery period
c. Refractory period
d. Resting period
ANSWER: c

39. Increasing the stimulus strength on a nerve fiber results in which of the following?
a. An increase in the rate of the impulse
b. A decrease in the size of the impulse
c. An increase in the size of the impulse
d. A decrease in the rate of the impulse
ANSWER: a

40. Individuals with stronger functional connectivity have a lower

a. response rate.
b. perception threshold.
c. sensitivity.
d. detection threshold.
ANSWER: d

41. Which part of the neuron structure may be missing in some neurons?
a. Cell body
b. Dendrite
c. Axon
d. Synapse
ANSWER: c

42. When a neuron is at rest, its electrical potential is

a. –70 millivolts.
b. +70 millivolts.
c. –40 millivolts.
d. +40 millivolts.
ANSWER: a

43. What are the basic properties of action potentials?

ANSWER: An important property of the action potential is that it is a propagated response—once the response is
triggered, it travels all the way down the axon without decreasing in size.
Another property is that the action potential remains the same size no matter how intense the stimulus is.
Changing the stimulus intensity does not affect the size of the action potentials, but it does affect the rate of
firing.
Although increasing the stimulus intensity can increase the rate of firing, there is an upper limit to the
number of nerve impulses per second that can be conducted down an axon. This limit occurs because of a
property of the axon called the refractory period—the interval between the time one nerve impulse occurs
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and the next one can be generated in the axon.

Action potentials that occur in the absence of stimuli from the environment are called spontaneous activity.
This spontaneous activity establishes a baseline level of firing for the neuron.

44. Describe the process of synaptic transmission. Include in this description the differences between excitatory and
inhibitory transmitters.
ANSWER: In the early 1900s, it was discovered that when action potentials reach the end of a neuron, they trigger the
release of chemicals called neurotransmitters that are stored in structures called synaptic vesicles in the
sending neuron. The neurotransmitter molecules flow into the synapse and into small areas on the receiving
neuron called receptor sites that are sensitive to specific neurotransmitters. These receptor sites exist in a
variety of shapes that match the shapes of particular neurotransmitter molecules.
Thus, when an electrical signal reaches the synapse, it triggers a chemical process that causes a new electrical
signal in the receiving neuron. The nature of this signal depends on both the type of transmitter that is
released and the nature of the receptor sites in the receiving neuron. Two types of responses can occur at
these receptor sites, excitatory and inhibitory. An excitatory response occurs when the inside of the neuron
becomes more positive, a process called depolarization. An inhibitory response occurs when the inside of the
neuron becomes more negative, a process called hyperpolarization.
Hyperpolarization is an inhibitory response because it causes the charge inside the axon to move away from
the level of depolarization, indicated by the dashed line, needed to generate an action potential.

45. Describe how information would be represented under each of the following representational schemes: specificity
coding, population coding, and sparse coding.
ANSWER: The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that
object is called specificity coding. Population coding is the representation of a particular object by the pattern
of firing of a large number of neurons. Sparse coding occurs when a particular object is represented by a
pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons, with most neurons remaining silent.

46. Define “modular organization” and specify how the senses are organized into primary receiving areas.
ANSWER: The idea that there are pathways that serve different functions leads us to modularity; the idea that specific
areas of the cortex are specialized to respond to specific types of stimuli. Areas that are specialized to
specific types of stimuli areas are called modules for processing information about these stimuli. For
example, there is a great deal of evidence for an area that is rich in neurons that respond to faces.

47. Describe how MRIs and fMRIs are performed and explain why these methods are so important to psychological
research.
ANSWER: In the 1980s, a technique called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) made it possible to create images of
structures within the brain. Since then, MRI has become a standard technique for detecting tumors and other
brain abnormalities. While this technique is excellent for revealing brain structures, it doesn’t indicate neural
activity. Another technique, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has enabled researchers to
determine how various types of cognition activate different areas of the brain. Functional magnetic resonance
imaging takes advantage of the fact that blood flow increases in areas of the brain that are activated. The
measurement of blood flow is based on the fact that hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood, contains
a ferrous (iron) molecule and, therefore, has magnetic properties. If a magnetic field is presented to the brain,
the hemoglobin molecules line up like tiny magnets. Areas of the brain that are more active consume more
oxygen, so the hemoglobin molecules lose some of the oxygen they are transporting, which makes them
more magnetic and increases their response to the magnetic field. The fMRI apparatus determines the
relative activity of various areas of the brain by detecting changes in the magnetic response of the
hemoglobin.

48. Describe the procedure, results, and implications of the Quiroga, et al.’s (2005) “Halle Berry neuron” study.
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ANSWER: Quiroga, et al. recorded from eight patients with epilepsy who, in preparation for surgery, had electrodes
implanted in their hippocampus or other areas in the medial temporal lobe to help localize precisely where
their seizures originated. Patients saw a number of different views of specific individuals and objects plus
pictures of other things, such as faces, buildings, and animals. Not surprisingly, a number of neurons
responded to some of these stimuli. What was surprising, however, was that some neurons responded to a
number of different views of just one person or building, or to a number of ways of representing that person
or building. For example, one neuron responded to pictures of the actresses Jennifer Aniston and Lisa
Kudrow, who both starred in the TV series Friends, but did not respond to faces of other famous people, non
famous people, landmarks, animals, or other objects. As we noted in Chapter 3, another neuron responded to
pictures of actor Steve Carell. Still another neuron responded to photographs of Halle Berry, to drawings of
her, to pictures of her dressed as Catwoman from Batman, and to seeing the words “Halle Berry.” The role of
these neurons in memory is supported by the way they respond to many different views of the stimulus,
different modes of depiction, and even words signifying the stimulus. These neurons are not responding to
visual features of the pictures, but to concepts – “Jennifer Aniston,” “Halle Berry,” “Sydney Opera House” –
that the stimuli represent.

49. Discuss the mind-body problem.

ANSWER: The mind–body problem is asking how the flow of sodium and potassium ions across membranes that creates
nerve impulses becomes transformed into the experience we have when we see something (such as a face) or
identify a characteristic of something (like a color). Just showing that a neuron fires when we see something
doesn’t answer the question of how the firing creates the experience of seeing or perceiving something. But
the mind–body problem goes beyond asking how physiological responses correlate with perception. It asks
how physiological processes cause our experience.

50. Describe Pierre Paul Broca’s discovery and its impact on the science of neuropsychology.
ANSWER: Pierre Paul Broca had a patient who could only say the word “tan” despite having normal receptive speech
and cognitive ability. When the patient died, it was discovered that he had a lesion on his left frontal lobe.
Broca found other patients with similar lesions that led to similar disabilities. This area became known as
Broca’s area. The discovery that lesions or damage to certain parts of the brain could cause a predictable
neurological condition established the foundation for the study of modularity, the idea that certain areas of
the brain are dedicated to certain tasks.

CHAPTER THREE .

1. Our perception of the environment begins with

a. energy.
b. the proximal stimulus.
c. the distal stimulus.
d. cognition.
ANSWER: c

2. Visible light is between which wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum?

a. 100 and 400
b. 400 and 700
c. 500 and 1000
d. 900 and 1500
ANSWER: b
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3. What has a wavelength of 10,000 meters on the electromagnetic spectrum?

a. X-rays
b. Radio wave
c. Infrared
rays
d. Gamma rays
ANSWER: b

4. The electromagnetic spectrum is a continuum of electromagnetic energy that is produced by

a. electric charges.
b. magnetism.
c. X-rays.
d. dynamic charges.
ANSWER: a

5. Jan tries to focus on the tip of her pencil as she brings it closer to her. She feels the strain on her eye as she does this.
What she is feeling in her eye is due to the process called
a. inhibition.
b. reflection.
c. accommodation.
d. assimilation.
ANSWER: c

6. The structure of the eye that provides about 80% of the eye’s focusing power is the
a. iris.
b. pupil.
c. cornea.
d. lens.
ANSWER: c

7. Lorelei’s mother is 60 years old and has a difficult time bringing near objects into focus. This condition is called
a. cataracts.
b. diplopia.
c. presbyopia.
d. retinitis pigmentosa.
ANSWER: c

8. The ciliary muscles change the shape of which structure in the eye?
a. Iris
b. Pupil
c. Cornea
d. Lens
ANSWER: d
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9. In what condition is the eyeball is too long, resulting in difficulty seeing far away objects?
a. Axial myopia
b. Refractive myopia
c. Axial hyperopia
d. Refractive
hyperopia
ANSWER: a

10. Individuals with myopia may have difficulty seeing distant objects clearly. Sometimes, these individuals are also
referred to as
a. being farsighted.
b. being
nearsighted.
c. having cataracts.
d. having old eyes.
ANSWER: d

11. Vera has hyperopia and tends to get headaches when she reads. This might be because
a. Vera also has presbyopia and has the constant need to accommodate.
b. Vera also has myopia and is unable to accommodate.
c. Vera has just had LASIK surgery and her ciliary muscles are damaged.
d. Vera is 5 years old and lacks the visual acuity to read.
ANSWER: a

12. The visual pigment molecules are contained in the

a. inner segments of the visual receptors.
b. outer segments of the visual receptors.
c. axons of the rods.
d. axons of the cones.
ANSWER: b

13. Which chemical reacts to light to start the process of transduction?

a. Opsin
b. Retinal
c. Choroid
d. Thyric acid
ANSWER: b

14. The isomerization of a single pigment molecule triggers what is best described as a
a. chain reaction.
b. ballistic expansion.
c. hyperactive potential.
d. hypopolarization
wave.

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ANSWER: a

15. Which of the following is true about the difference between the rods and the cones?
a. The rods control vision in high illumination conditions, and the cones control vision in low illumination
conditions.
b. The rods are packed in an area called the fovea, and the cones are found more in the peripheral retina.
c. There are about 120 million rods in the human eye and about 6 million cones.
d. The only difference between the rods and the cones is physical shape.
ANSWER: c

16. A retinal condition that destroys the cones in the fovea is

a. macular degeneration.
b. retinitis pigmentosa.
c. presbyopia.
d. retinal
hypopolarization.
ANSWER: a

17. In what condition are the peripheral rod receptors destroyed, leading to poorer peripheral vision?
a. Macular degeneration
b. Retinitis pigmentosa
c. Presbyopia
d. Retinal hypopolarization
ANSWER: b

18. The blind spot is located

a. in the fovea.
b. in the vitreous.
c. where the optic nerve leaves the eye.
d. at the optic chiasm.
ANSWER: c

19. Nina does a demonstration of “seeing” the blind spot in which a grid pattern surrounds the black dot that disappears
when it falls on the blind spot. What does Nina most likely see in the area where the dot disappears?
a. A blurry gray area
b. A white circle
c. Nothing
d. A continuation of the grid pattern
ANSWER: d

20. To isolate the rod portion of the dark adaptation curve, researchers
a. use rod monochromats as the
participants.
b. present the stimulus foveally.

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c. present the stimulus in the periphery.

d. use cone monochromats as participants.
ANSWER: a

21. The “rod-cone break” in the dark adaptation curve occurs after about how long in the dark?
a. 30 seconds
b. 2 minutes
c. 7 minutes
d. 30 minutes
ANSWER: c

22. When visual pigments become bleached, they are

a. dead.
b. fully regenerated.
c. color sensitive.
d. detached from the
opsin.
ANSWER: d

23. Rushton demonstrated that the physiological mechanism behind dark adaptation is
a. visual pigment
regeneration.
b. the enzyme cascade.
c. modular organization.
d. photon remission.
ANSWER: a

24. Cone spectral sensitivity is measured by having the observer

a. look up and blink.
b. look straight forward without
blinking.
c. look directly into a light.
d. look to the side of a flashing light.
ANSWER: c

25. What is the peak in the spectral sensitivity curve for the rods and the cones, respectively?
a. 700 nm rods; 400 nm cones
b. 450 nm rods; 800 nm cones
c. 500 nm rods; 560 nm cones
d. 600 nm rods; 450 nm cones
ANSWER: c

26. The Purkinje shift

a. occurs when reds appear brighter than blues in well-lit conditions, but blues appear brighter than reds in dim

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conditions.
b. occurs when blues appear brighter than reds in well-lit conditions, and blues also appear brighter than reds in
dim conditions.
c. occurs when details that are easily seen in well-lit conditions become more difficult to see in low-light
conditions.
d. demonstrates the importance of eye movements in visual pigment regeneration.
ANSWER: a

27. Rods and cones synapse with what type of cells?

a. Ganglion
b. Bipolar
c. Amacrine
d. Unipolar
ANSWER: b

28. Converging circuits with excitation and inhibition are associated most closely with which step of the perceptual
process?
a. Recognition
b. Attention
c. Neural processing
d. The environmental stimulus
ANSWER: c

29. If we compare how the rods and cones converge onto other retinal neurons, we find that
a. foveal cones converge more than the peripheral rods.
b. rods and cones converge equally.
c. rods converge more than foveal cones.
d. horizontal cells converge onto the peripheral cones.
ANSWER: c

30. Convergence results in what changes in sensitivity and acuity?

a. Both increased sensitivity and acuity
b. Increased sensitivity and decreased acuity
c. Both decreased sensitivity and acuity
d. Decreased sensitivity and increased acuity
ANSWER: b

31. Reading the eye chart in an optometrist’s office is a way to measure

a. acuity.
b. sensitivity.
c. receptive
fields.
d. creativity.
ANSWER: a
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32. Acuity is better in the
a. periphery.
b. optic disk.
c. cornea.
d. fovea.
ANSWER: d

33. The difficulty of reading under dim light conditions can be explained by
a. the increased sensitivity of cones under low light conditions.
b. the increased acuity of cones under low light conditions.
c. the fact that rod functioning predominates during dark adaptation, resulting in poor acuity.
d. the fact that cone functioning predominates during dark adaptation, resulting in poor
acuity.
ANSWER: c

34. The stimuli used in the preferential looking technique of testing infant acuity are
a. geons.
b. gratings.
c. greebles.
d. graftings.
ANSWER: b

35. Acuity develops to almost 20/20 vision by the time the infant is
a. one month old.
b. two months
old.
c. one year old.
d. two years old.
ANSWER: c

36. Which of the following is a reason for the poor acuity of newborns?
a. The rods are not developed at birth.
b. Newborns have too much visual pigment in the cones.
c. A newborn’s rods have very narrow inner segments.
d. The visual cortex of the newborn is only partially developed.
ANSWER: d

37. How many different types of cone receptors are there?

a. 2
b. 3
c. 4
d. 7
ANSWER: b

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38. Hartline et al. (1956) selected the Limulus to demonstrate lateral inhibition because
a. it was possible to illuminate a single receptor without illuminating its adjacent
receptor.
b. it was readily available to him and was extremely easy to breed in the lab.
c. the Limulus eye contained more cones than rods.
d. the Limulus has excellent color vision.
ANSWER: a

39. A receptor array in the Limulus is connected by the lateral plexus. Receptor “A” is located 5 receptors to the left of
Receptor “B.” What stimulation will result in the greatest firing rate recorded from “A”?
a. Stimulating A with 10 units of illumination
b. Stimulating A with 10 units of illumination and stimulating B with 10 units
c. Stimulating A with 10 units of illumination and stimulating B with 20 units
d. Stimulating A with 5 units of illumination and stimulating B with 20 units
ANSWER: a

40. Human lateral inhibition is most likely accomplished by

a. end-stopped cells.
b. extrastriate cells.
c. bipolar cells.
d. dissociative cells.
ANSWER: c

41. The inability of lateral inhibition to explain some perceptual effects suggests that some contrast effects are based in
a. the retina.
b. the cortex.
c. the lateral
plexus.
d. the macula.
ANSWER: b

42. The area on the retina that influences the firing rate of the neuron is called the
a. receptive field.
b. amacrine region.
c. divergence area.
d. inverted fovea.
ANSWER: a

43. A neuron with an excitatory-center inhibitory-surround receptive field will respond most when we stimulate
a. only the center.
b. only the surround.
c. both the center and surround together.
d. part of the surround.
ANSWER: a
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44. (a) What is lateral inhibition?
(b) Using Mach bands, discuss how lateral inhibition accounts for the phenomenon.
ANSWER: Lateral inhibition is inhibition that is transmitted across the retina. Explanations will vary but should focus on
the effects of summing lateral inhibition over a circuit.

45. Describe Hartline’s procedure for mapping receptive fields.

ANSWER: Hartline isolated a single fiber in the optic nerve of a frog by teasing apart the optic nerve near where it
leaves the eye. While recording from this teased-out fiber, Hartline illuminated different areas of the retina
and found that the fiber he was recording from responded only when a small area of the retina was
illuminated. He called the area that caused the neuron to fire the nerve fiber’s receptive field, which he
defined as “the region of the retina that must receive illumination in order to obtain a response in any given
fiber.”

46. (a) In words and/or diagrams, discuss why convergence of the rods results in increased sensitivity but decreased
acuity.
(b) In words and/or diagrams, discuss why the lack of convergence in the foveal cones results in decreased sensitivity but
increased acuity.
ANSWER: When we present two spots of light next to each other, the rod’s signals cause the ganglion cell to fire. When
we separate the two spots, the two separated rods feed into the same ganglion cell and cause it to fire. In both
cases, the ganglion cell fires. Thus, firing of the ganglion cell provides no information about whether there
are two spots close together or two separated spots.

When we present a light that stimulates two neighboring cones, two adjacent ganglion cells fire. But when
we separate the spots, two more-distantly separated ganglion cells fire. This separation between two firing
cells provides information that there are two separate spots of light. Thus, the cones’ lack of convergence
causes cone vision to have higher acuity than rod vision.
Convergence is, therefore, a double-edged sword. High convergence results in high sensitivity but poor
acuity (the rods). Low convergence results in low sensitivity but high acuity (cones). The way the rods and
cones are wired up in the retina, therefore, influences what we perceive.

47. Describe how preferential looking and visual evoked potentials technique have been used to study infant perception.
ANSWER: In the preferential looking (PL) technique, two stimuli are presented, and the experimenter watches the
infant’s eyes to determine where the infant is looking. In order to guard against bias, the experimenter does
not know which stimulus is being presented on the left or right. If the infant looks at one stimulus more than
the other, the experimenter concludes that the infant can tell the difference between them.

Visual evoked potential (VEP) is recorded by disc electrodes placed on the infant’s head over the visual
cortex. For this technique, researchers alternate a gray field with a grating or checkerboard pattern. If the
stripes or checks are large enough to be detected by the visual system, the visual cortex generates an
electrical response called the visual evoked potential. If, however, the stripes are too fine to be detected by
the visual system, no response is generated. Thus, the VEP provides an objective measure of the visual
system’s ability to detect details.

48. Name and define three kinds of focusing problems.

ANSWER: When you change focus from far away to the nearby pencil point, you are changing your accommodation.
Either near objects or far objects can be in focus, but not both at the same time. Accommodation, therefore,
makes it possible to adjust vision for different distances. However, as people get older, their ability to
accommodate decreases due to hardening of the lens and weakening of the ciliary muscles, and so they
become unable to accommodate enough to see objects, or read, at close range. This loss of the ability to
accommodate, called presbyopia (for “old eye”), can be dealt with by wearing reading glasses, which brings
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near objects into focus by replacing the focusing power that can no longer be provided by the lens.

Another problem that can be solved by a corrective lens is myopia, or nearsightedness, an inability to see
distant objects clearly. Myopia occurs when the optical system brings parallel rays of light into focus at a
point in front of the retina, so the image that reaches the retina is blurred. This problem can be caused by
either of two factors: (1) refractive myopia, in which the cornea and/or the lens bends the light too much, or
(2) axial myopia, in which the eyeball is too long. Either way, images of faraway objects are not focused
sharply, so objects look blurred. Corrective lenses can solve this problem.
Finally, people with hyperopia, or farsightedness, can see distant objects clearly but have trouble seeing
nearby objects because the focus point for parallel rays of light is located behind the retina, usually because
the eyeball is too short. Young people can bring the image forward onto the retina by accommodating.
However, older people, who have difficulty accommodating, often use corrective lenses that bring the focus
point forward onto the retina.

49. (a) Discuss the major differences between the rods and the cones.
(b) Describe two retinal disorders that differentially affect the rods and the cones.
ANSWER: There are two types of visual receptors, rods and cones, so called because of the rod- and cone-shaped outer
segments. The rod and cone receptors not only have different shapes, but they are also distributed differently
across the retina. One small area, the fovea, contains only cones. When we look directly at an object, the
object’s image falls on the fovea. The peripheral retina, which includes all of the retina outside of the fovea,
contains both rods and cones. It is important to note that although the fovea has only cones, there are also
many cones in the peripheral retina.
A condition called macular degeneration, which is most common in older people, destroys the cone-rich
fovea and a small area that surrounds it. (Macula is a term usually associated with medical practice that
includes the fovea plus a small area surrounding the fovea.) This creates a blind region in central vision, so
when a person looks directly at something, he or she loses sight of it.
Another condition, called retinitis pigmentosa, is a degeneration of the retina that is passed from one
generation to the next (although not always affecting everyone in a family). This condition first attacks the
peripheral rod receptors and results in poor vision in the peripheral visual field. The peripheral retina
contains many more rods than cones because there are about 120 million rods and only 6 million cones in the
retina.

50. (a) What is the “blind spot”?

(b) Discuss two reasons why we are not usually aware of the blind spot.
ANSWER: There is one area in the retina where there are no receptors. This occurs where the nerve fibers that make up
the optic nerve leave the eye. Because of the absence of receptors, this place is called the blind spot. One
reason we are not usually aware of the blind spot is because the blind spot is located off to the side of our
visual field, where objects are not in sharp focus. Because of this, and because we do not know exactly where
to look for it, the blind spot is hard to detect. But the most important reason why we do not see the blind spot
is that some mechanism in the brain “fills in” the place where the image disappears.

51. (a) Draw a graph (with appropriate axis labels) of the dark adaptation curve.
(b) Describe the methodology used to isolate the rod component of the curve and the cone component.
ANSWER: Refer to Figure 2.13 in the text, which shows three dark adaptation curves. The dark adaptation curve shows
that as adaptation proceeds, the subject becomes more sensitive to the light. Note that higher sensitivity is at
the bottom of this graph, so movement of the dark adaptation curve downward means that the subject’s
sensitivity is increasing. The red dark adaptation curve indicates that the subject’s sensitivity increases in two
phases. It increases rapidly for the first 3 to 4 minutes after the light is extinguished and then levels off. At
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about 7 to 10 minutes, it begins increasing again and continues to do so until the subject has been in the dark
for about 20 or 30 minutes. The sensitivity at the end of dark adaptation, labeled dark-adapted sensitivity, is
about 100,000 times greater than the light-adapted sensitivity measured before dark adaptation began.
The figure shows three dark adaptation curves. The red line is the two-stage dark adaptation curve, with an
initial cone branch and a later rod branch, which occurs when the test light is in the peripheral retina. The
green line is the cone adaptation curve, which occurs when the test light falls on the fovea. The purple curve
is the rod adaptation curve measured in a rod monochromat. Note that the downward movement of these
curves represents an increase in sensitivity. The curves actually begin at the points indicating “light-adapted
sensitivity,” but there is a slight delay between the time the lights are turned off and when measurement of
the curves begins.
To measure the dark adaptation of the cones alone, we must ensure that the image of the test light falls only
on cones. We achieve this by having the subject look directly at the test light, so its image falls on the all-
cone fovea and by making the test light small enough so that its entire image falls within the fovea.
In order to reveal how the sensitivity of the rods is changing at the very beginning of dark adaptation, we
need to measure dark adaptation in a person who has no cones. These people, who have no cones because of
a rare genetic disorder, are called rod monochromats. Their all-rod retinas provide a way for us to study rod
dark adaptation without interference from the cones. Because the rod monochromat has no cones, the light-
adapted sensitivity we measure just before we turn off the lights is determined by the rods.

52. Using words and/or diagrams, describe circuits with (a) no convergence and (b) convergence.
ANSWER: Convergence occurs when a number of neurons synapse onto a single neuron. A great deal of convergence
occurs in the retina because each eye has 126 million receptors but only 1 million ganglion cells. An
important difference between rods and cones is that the signals from the rods converge more than do the
signals from the cones. This difference between rod and cone convergence becomes even greater when we
consider the cones in the fovea. Many of these foveal cones have “private lines” to ganglion cells, so that
each ganglion cell receives signals from only one cone, with no convergence.
Many rods sum their responses by feeding into the same ganglion cell, but only one or a few cones send their
responses to any one ganglion cell. The fact that rod and cone sensitivity is determined not by individual
receptors but by groups of receptors converging onto other neurons means that when we describe “rod
vision” and “cone vision”, we are actually referring to the way groups of rods and cones participate in
determining our perceptions.

CHAPTER FOUR .

1. What term is used to describe the electronic map of the retina on the cortex?
a. Visual map
b. Spatial map
c. Retinotopic map
d. Cortextual map
ANSWER: c

2. The cortical magnification factor occurs in humans because

a. a small area in the peripheral retina accounts for a large area on the cortex.
b. the small area of the fovea accounts for a large area on the cortex.
c. the lens accommodates so that the image is magnified on the retina.
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d. the area at the optic disk accounts for a large area on the cortex.
ANSWER: b

3. Dougherty et al. (2003) used brain imaging to investigate cortical magnification. Their primary finding was that
a. information presented in the peripheral vision activated the most brain
area.
b. information presented to the fovea activated the most brain area.
c. moving stimuli activated different brain areas than stationary stimuli.
d. cortical magnification is not detectable using fMRI.
ANSWER: b

4. Using the techniques of both recording from neurons and ablation, researchers found that properties of the ventral and
dorsal streams are established by two different types of what kind of cells in the retina?
a. Bipolar
b. Hippocampus
c. Ganglion
d. LGN
ANSWER: c

5. In what type of ocular columns do neurons respond better to input from one eye than from the other?
a. Preference
b. Dominance
c. Orientation
d. Laterality
ANSWER: b

6. An electrode is placed in an orientation column that responds best to orientations of 45 degrees. The adjacent column of
cells will probably best respond to orientations of
a. 5 degrees.
b. 40 degrees.
c. 90 degrees.
d. 175 degrees.
ANSWER: b

7. Which statement is true regarding the organization of columns in the cortex?

a. A location column can contain many orientation columns.
b. An orientation column can contain many location columns.
c. Location and orientation columns are in different parts of the cortex.
d. Action columns are present in both location and orientation
columns.
ANSWER: a

8. What is the term for a location column that receives information about all possible orientations within a given area of
the retina?
a. Supercolumn
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b. Orientation
c. Hypercolumn
d. Action
ANSWER: c

9. Neurons respond preferentially to the right eye or the left eye. This phenomenon is referred to as
a. hemispheric
specialization.
b. bilateral dominance.
c. retinotopic disparity.
d. ocular dominance.
ANSWER: d

10. The arrangement of ocular dominance columns in the cortex is best described as
a. columns for both the left eye and right eye in each hypercolumn.
b. columns for the left eye in the left hemisphere and for the right eye in the right hemisphere.
c. groupings of left eye columns adjacent to groupings of right eye columns.
d. concentric areas with the center columns for the left eye and the surrounding columns for the
right.
ANSWER: a

11. A large object, such as a tree trunk, will cause

a. every neuron in one location column to fire, but no firing in any other column.
b. a limited number of neurons to fire in only one ocular dominance column.
c. firing of neurons in a number of different columns.
d. every neuron in an orientation column to fire, but not in the location columns.
ANSWER: c

12. When looking at a scene, the different sections of the scene are processed by many different location columns.
Through the use of all of the location columns, the entire scene can be perceived. This effect is referred to as
a. fielding.
b. orientation.
c. convergence.
d. tiling.
ANSWER: d

13. Ablation is a procedure in which

a. a radioactive isotope is injected into the bloodstream and traced through the
brain.
b. electrodes on the scalp are used to measure changes in brain activity.
c. a particular area of the brain is removed or destroyed.
d. an electromagnetic pulse is used to temporarily disrupt brain activity.
ANSWER: c

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14. In Ungerleider and Mishkin’s (1982) research, monkeys who had had their temporal lobes removed had difficulty
a. coordinating their movements.
b. discriminating between objects.
c. discriminating between locations.
d. remembering sequences of actions.
ANSWER: b

15. To which lobe does the dorsal pathway go?

a. Temporal
b. Frontal
c. Parietal
d. Occipital
ANSWER: c

16. With what other name has the ventral pathway been labeled?
a. Where
b. How
c. What
d. Why
ANSWER: c

17. Which statement regarding the dorsal and ventral pathways is most accurate?
a. Information flow is unidirectional in both pathways.
b. The pathways rely on information from the same type of ganglion
cells.
c. The pathways are independent of each other and do not communicate.
d. Both pathways have feedback activation.
ANSWER: d

18. According to Milner and Goodale, the dorsal stream is what kind of pathway?
a. What
b. When
c. How
d. Why
ANSWER: c

19. A researcher finds that damage to Area A of the brain results in the loss of Function A, but not Function B. In another
individual, damage to Area B results in the loss of Function B, but not Function A. These results are best described as a(n)
a. associative link.
b. double dissociation.
c. single dissociation.
d. differential
assessment.
ANSWER: b
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20. The results of the patient D.F., who had visual form agnosia, show that
a. perception and action are independent of each other in the brain.
b. the same brain areas are involved in visual orientation and oriented
action.
c. the inability to draw items is due to a lack of general knowledge.
d. double dissociations do not occur in these patients.
ANSWER: a

21. Ganel et al. (2008) designed a modified visual illusion, in which line 1 appears to be longer than line 2, when, in
reality, line 2 is longer. Participants are asked to judge the line lengths and to reach and grab the ends of the lines. The
results of this investigation reveal
a. the interaction of the ventral and dorsal stream.
b. that the visual illusion affects both the ventral and dorsal
streams.
c. the effects of damage to the ventral pathway.
d. that the illusion only affects ventral stream processing.
ANSWER: d

22. An IT neuron in the monkey will fire briskly when presented with a picture of a
a. monkey’s
face.
b. tree.
c. banana.
d. human torso.
ANSWER: a

23. What percent of neurons in the monkey IT cortex did Tsao et al. (2006) find were face selective?
a. 12%
b. 97%
c. 70%
d. 43%
ANSWER: b

24. What is the name of the area in the temporal lobe that specializes in recognizing faces?
a. FFA
b. RBC
c. Parietal area
d. Area 4H
ANSWER: a

25. Activity in the PPA

a. reveals a preference for indoor, not outdoor, scenes.
b. is higher for pictures of empty rooms than furnished rooms.
c. reveals a preference for body parts over faces.
d. is the same for pictures of furnished and empty rooms.
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ANSWER: d

26. The EBA is activated by

a. pictures of houses and other manmade
structures.
b. pictures of bodies and parts of bodies.
c. direct eye gaze from another individual.
d. tasks that require spatial information.
ANSWER: b

27. Patient H.M. had his what removed in order to control his epileptic seizures?
a. Hippocampi
b. IT cortex
c. Striate cortex
d. Corpus callosum
ANSWER: a

28. The primary deficit encountered by patient H.M. is best described as the inability to
a. discriminate between faces.
b. perceive different line orientations.
c. form new long-term memories.
d. use information from the “where”
pathway.
ANSWER: c

29. Neurons in the LGN have what type of receptive fields?

a. Center-surround
b. Side-by-side columnar
c. Ill-defined
d. Ambiguous
ANSWER: a

30. The flow of information in the LGN is best described as

a. unidirectional, with signals going from the retina to the LGN.
b. unidirectional, with signals going from the LGN to the retina.
c. unidirectional, with signals going from the LGN to the cortex.
d. signals coming from the retina and the cortex to the LGN.
ANSWER: d

31. Gelbard-Sagiv et al. (2008) monitored individual MTL neurons while displaying video clips of a variety of stimuli.
They were able to identify neurons that respond preferentially to a visual stimulus. Later, they found preferential
activation of the same neuron to the video clip concept when they asked participants to do what?
a. View pictures from various viewpoints.
b. View the same video clips, but with an altered color
pallette.
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c. Try to remember the video clips they had seen.

d. Draw a picture representing the video clip.
ANSWER: c

32. What term refers to the fact that the response properties of neurons can be shaped by what an animal or person
perceives?
a. Selective adaptation
b. Experience-dependent plasticity
c. Sensory integration
d. Perceptual analysis
ANSWER: b

33. What effect occurs because humans have more cortical neurons that respond to horizontal and vertical orientations
than slanted orientations?
a. Oblique
b. Transverse
c. Parallel
d. Box
ANSWER: a

34. Neurons in what area respond to complex stimuli, but not simple stimuli such as straight lines?
a. LGN
b. Striate cortex
c. IT cortex
d. Retina
ANSWER: c

35. When a kitten is exposed to an environment of just horizontal lines, the kitten
a. would pay attention only to vertical lines.
b. would pay attention only to horizontal lines.
c. would have cortical cells that only respond to vertical lines.
d. would have cortical cells that respond to horizontal lines, but none to vertical
lines.
ANSWER: d

36. Selective rearing refers to

a. raising an organism in an environment that only contains certain types of
stimuli.
b. genetically manipulating the organism prenatally.
c. genetically manipulating the organism in the first month after birth.
d. presenting an array of stimuli to the organism in the first month after birth.
ANSWER: a

37. The different types of cortical cells that respond to specific stimuli are also known as

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a. inhibitory cells.
b. feature
detectors.
c. direct circuits.
d. signal detectors.
ANSWER: b

38. A stimulus that contains alternating black and white bars is called a
a. grating.
b. grid.
c. Boolean array.
d. Moire pattern.
ANSWER: a

39. The difference in intensity between light bars and dark bars is called
a. orientation.
b. wave form.
c. phase.
d. contrast.
ANSWER: d

40. When an experimenter decreases the intensity difference between the light bars and the dark bars until an observer can
just barely detect the difference between the dark bars and the light bars, the experimenter is testing
a. Mach bands.
b. contrast threshold.
c. phase continuity.
d. brightness constancy.
ANSWER: b

41. When we view a stimulus with a specific property, neurons tuned to that property fire and will eventually become
fatigued. What is the term used to describe this effect?
a. Selective
b. Refractory
c. Depletion
d. Massed
ANSWER: a

42. What term refers to the fact that the response properties of neurons can be shaped by an animal’s or person’s
perceptual experience.
a. Selective adaptation
b. Neural plasticity
c. Sensory integration
d. Perceptual analysis
ANSWER: b
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43. Most signals travel via the optic nerve from the retina to the
a. temporal cortex.
b. lateral geniculate
nucleus.
c. the superior colliculus.
d. the visual homunculus.
ANSWER: b

44. Graphing the response of a simple cortical cell results in the

a. response compression curve.
b. orientation tuning curve.
c. response expansion curve.
d. motion-directive sensitivity
function.
ANSWER: b

45. Unlike simple cells, complex cells respond best to

a. stationary spots of light.
b. small spots of light.
c. moving stimuli.
d. stationary lines of any orientation.
ANSWER: c

46. What type of cell fires to moving lines of a specific length or to moving corners or angles?
a. Complex
b. Simplex
c. End-stopped
d. Edge
ANSWER: c

47. As we travel farther from the retina, neurons fire to

a. more complex
stimuli.
b. less complex stimuli.
c. more intense stimuli.
d. less intense stimuli.
ANSWER: a

48. (a) Describe the research that shows that cortical magnification occurs in humans.
(b) What is the connection between cortical magnification and acuity?
ANSWER: Even though the fovea accounts for only 0.01 percent of the retina’s area, signals from the fovea account for
8 to 10 percent of the retinotopic map on the cortex (Van Essen & Anderson, 1995). This apportioning of a
large area on the cortex to the small fovea is called cortical magnification. The extra cortical space allotted to
the letters and words at which the person is looking provides the extra neural processing needed to
accomplish tasks such as reading that require high visual acuity (Azzopardi & Cowey, 1993).
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49. Describe how an object such as a tree is represented in the striate cortex.
ANSWER: The continuous tree trunk is represented by the firing of neurons sensitive to a specific orientation in a
number of separate columns in the cortex. Although it may be a bit surprising that the tree is represented by
separate columns in the cortex, it simply confirms a property of our perceptual system. The cortical
representation of a stimulus does not have to resemble the stimulus; it must contain information that
represents the stimulus. Working together, these columns cover the entire visual field, an effect called tiling.
Just as a wall can be covered by adjacent tiles, the visual field is served by adjacent (and often overlapping)
location columns.

50. Describe research on people with brain injuries that support the idea that the dorsal stream is the “how” pathway.
ANSWER: Milner and Goodale (1995) used the method of determining double dissociations to study D.F., a 34-year-old
woman who suffered damage to her ventral pathway from carbon monoxide poisoning. One result of the
brain injury was that D.F. was not able to match the orientation of a card held in her hand to different
orientations of a slot. Because D.F. had trouble orienting a card to match the orientation of the slot, it would
seem reasonable that she would also have trouble placing the card through the slot, because to do this she
would have to turn the card so that it was lined up with the slot. But when D.F. was asked to “mail” the card
through the slot, she could do it! Even though D.F. could not turn the card to match the slot’s orientation,
once she started moving the card toward the slot, she was able to rotate it to match the orientation of the slot.
Thus, D.F. performed poorly in the static orientation-matching task but did well as soon as action was
involved (Murphy et al., 1996). Milner and Goodale interpreted D.F.’s behavior as showing that there is one
mechanism for judging orientation and another for coordinating vision and action.

51. Summarize the Ganel et al. (2008) research on length estimation and grasping tasks, and what the implication of this
research is for different processing streams.
ANSWER: Tzvi Ganel and coworkers (2008) conducted an experiment designed to demonstrate a separation of
perception and action in subjects without brain injuries. The stimulus they used consisted of two lines and
created a visual illusion in which line 2 appears longer than line 1, when line 1 is actually longer. Ganel and
coworkers presented subjects with two tasks: (1) a length estimation task in which they were asked to
indicate how they perceived the lines’ length by spreading their thumb and index finger; and (2) a grasping
task in which they were asked to reach toward the lines and grasp each line by its ends. Sensors on the
subjects’ fingers measured the separation between the fingers as the subjects grasped the lines. These two
tasks were chosen because they depend on different processing streams. The length estimation task involves
the ventral or “what” stream. The grasping task involves the dorsal or “where/how” stream.

The results of this experiment indicate that in the length estimation task, subjects judged line 1 (the longer
line) as looking shorter than line 2, but in the grasping task, they separated their fingers farther apart for line
1 to match its longer length. Thus, the illusion works for perception (the length estimation task), but not for
action (the grasping task). These results support the idea that perception and action are served by different
mechanisms. An idea about functional organization that originated with observations of patients with brain
damage is therefore supported by the performance of subjects without brain damage.

52. Identify the five areas of the brain associated with processing of faces and explain what is processed in each area.
ANSWER: Occipital cortex (OC): Initial processing
Fusiform face area (FFA): Basic face processing
Amygdala (A): Emotional reactions (face expressions and observer’s emotional reactions); Familiarity
(familiar faces cause more activation in amygdala and other areas associated with emotions)
Frontal lobe (FL): Evaluation of attractiveness
Superior temporal sulcus (STS): Gaze direction; mouth movements; general face movements

53. Discuss the relationship between neural plasticity and selective rearing as it relates to sensory functioning.

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ANSWER: The idea behind selective rearing is that if an animal is reared in an environment that contains only certain
types of stimuli, then neurons that respond to these stimuli will become more prevalent. This follows from a
phenomenon called neural plasticity or experience-dependent plasticity (i.e., the idea that the response
properties of neurons can be shaped by perceptual experience). When animals are reared in an environment
that contains only vertical lines, for example, neurons that respond to vertical lines will come to dominate.

54. (a) Describe the difference between simple cortical cells, complex cortical cells, and end-stopped cells.
(b) Explain why these cells are called “feature detectors.”
ANSWER: Cells with side-by-side excitatory and inhibitory receptive fields are called simple cortical cells. Complex
cells, like simple cells, respond best to bars of a particular orientation. However, unlike simple cells, which
respond to small spots of light or to stationary stimuli, most complex cells respond only when a correctly
oriented bar of light moves across the entire receptive field. End-stopped cells fire to moving lines of a
specific length or to moving corners or angles. Because simple, complex, and end-stopped cells fire in
response to specific features of the stimulus, such as orientation or direction of movement, they have been
called feature detectors.

CHAPTER FIVE .

1. Current computer programs can identify some objects

a. and require only brief “training” on a few images.
b. and are considered remarkably successful.
c. but they perform only slightly above chance.
d. but they often make errors that a human would never make.
ANSWER: d

2. Which problem shows that numerous physical stimuli can create the same image on the retina
a. Correspondence
b. Inverse projection
c. Occlusion
d. Ambiguity
ANSWER: b

3. 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.
ANSWER: c

4. Viewpoint invariance” means that

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.
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d. monkeys can only recognize other monkey faces from a frontal view.
ANSWER: c

5. Wundt and Wertheimer, respectively, are known for

a. structuralism and Gestalt psychology.
b. Gestalt psychology and functionalism.
c. functionalism and structuralism.
d. psychophysics and metaphysics.
ANSWER: a

6. 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. The starting point for perceptions is the sensations that make them
up.
d. Past experience plays little or no role in perception formation.
ANSWER: c

7. 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.
ANSWER: a

8. 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.
ANSWER: c

9. The Olympic symbol is an example of the Gestalt principle of

a. proximity.
b. pragnanz.
c. common fate.
d. synchrony.
ANSWER: b

10. Which principle can account for the grouping of stimuli that share orientation, shape, and/or size?
a. Segregation
b. Shape
c. Identity
d. Similarity
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ANSWER: d

11. 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.
ANSWER: a

12. 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 this
stimulus is an example of
a. perceptual segregation.
b. binocular rivalry.
c. view invariance.
d. orientation invariance.
ANSWER: a

13. In a scene, the objects in the foreground are best described with the term
a. object.
b. ground.
c. near point.
d. figure.
ANSWER: d

14. 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.
ANSWER: c

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

a. The right side is more likely to be perceived as a figure than the left.
b. Small stimuli are more likely to be perceived as ground than a figure.
c. Near the shared borders, the figure is seen as unformed material.
d. A lower region is more likely to be perceived as a figure than an upper
region.
ANSWER: d

16. 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
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c. The vase she saw in the illusion

d. The lower half of the image
ANSWER: c

17. 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. the meaningfulness of an image had a large effect on figure-ground
segregation.
b. meaningful images were just as likely to be seen as figures or ground.
c. inverting the entire image led to slower response times.
d. meaningfulness only had an effect when they appeared on the left side.
ANSWER: a

18. The Bev Doolittle print of “The Forest Has Eyes” exemplifies what principle affecting perceptual organization?
a. Proximity
b. Common region
c. Meaningfulness
d. Common fate
ANSWER: c

19. Humans need approximately how long to perceive the gist of a scene?
a. 250 milliseconds
b. 1000 milliseconds
c. 2 seconds
d. 5 seconds
ANSWER: a

20. 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.
ANSWER: a

21. 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.
ANSWER: c

22. Global image features are

a. individualistic.

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b. slowly perceived.
c. slowly processed.
d. holistic.
ANSWER: d

23. Suppose you were to review dozens of photographs of various natural and man-made scenes on social media. You
would expect that
a. horizontal and vertical orientations would be most common.
b. diagonal orientations would be most common.
c. the major environmental regularities would be incompatible with Gestalt principals.
d. environmental irregularities would be more salient than environmental regularities.
ANSWER: a

24. What is the term for the effect in which humans perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations?
a. Turing
b. Oblique
c. Spreading
d. Visual persistence
ANSWER: b

25. 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” assumption.
ANSWER: d

26. What do humans use to distinguish shape from shading?

a. Environmental assumption
b. Light-from-above assumption
c. Proximity principle
d. Delayed-matching principle
ANSWER: b

27. 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
ANSWER: a

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28. The theory of unconscious inference
a. replaced the Bayesian inference approach.
b. is closely related to the “likelihood
principle.”
c. describes the use of algorithms in perception.
d. is incompatible with Gestalt psychology.
ANSWER: b

29. If two eyes receive totally different images and the brain can’t combine the two images, what condition called results?
a. Delayed processing
b. Persistence of vision
c. Binocular rivalry
d. Visual masking
ANSWER: c

30. Which type of object, when seen or imagined in isolation, evokes a strong sense of surrounding space?
a. Idiosyncratic
b. Spatially-bound
c. Characteristic
d. Space defining
ANSWER: d

31. 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
a. PPA increased, but not in the FFA.
b. FFA increased, but not in PPA.
c. PPA and the FFA increased.
d. PPA and the FFA decreased.
ANSWER: a

32. 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.
ANSWER: a

33. 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 for how many of the eight gratings?
a. Two
b. Four
c. Six
d. Eight

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ANSWER: d

34. Naselaris, et al. (2009) developed what type of decoder, which is used to make predictions about the characteristics of
a scene, such as contrast and shape?
a. Form
b. Structural
c. Orientation
d. Semantic
ANSWER: b

35. What type of decoder is intended to discriminate between different categories of images, such as outdoor scenes and
portraits?
a. Orientation
b. Structure
c. Scene
d. Semantic
ANSWER: d

36. 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 by feature.
ANSWER: b

37. Perceiving the emotional aspects of a face is reflected by activation in the brain structure called the
a. amygdala.
b. medulla.
c. IT cortex.
d. superior temporal
sulcus.
ANSWER: a

38. The preferential looking technique showed that infants as young as what age will look at their mother’s face more than
a stranger’s face?
a. Two-days-old
b. One-week-old
c. One-month-old
d. Six-months-old
ANSWER: a

39. Research has shown that an infant can visually recognize their mother’s face from
a. the contrast between her eye color and face.
b. her smile.
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c. the contrast between her hairline and forehead.

d. her overall head shape.
ANSWER: c

40. The ability to recognize faces, including identifying expressions, is not fully developed until approximately
a. late infancy.
b. early childhood.
c. late childhood.
d. adolescence or early adulthood.
ANSWER: d

41. Discuss three reasons why object perception is difficult for computer vision.
ANSWER: The stimulus on the receptor can be ambiguous.
Objects can be hidden or blurred.
Objects look different from different
viewpoints.

42. State, define, and give an example (in words and/or drawings) for each of five Gestalt principles of perceptual
organization.
ANSWER: The principle of good continuation states the following: Points that, when connected, result in straight or
smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together, and the lines tend to be seen in such a way as to
follow the smoothest path.
The principle of pragnanz, also called the principle of good figure or the principle of simplicity, states:
Every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible.
According to the principle of similarity, similar things appear to be grouped together.
According to the principle of proximity, or nearness, things that are near each other appear to be grouped
together.
According to the principle of common fate, things that are moving in the same direction appear to be
grouped together.
According to the principle of common region, elements that are within the same region of space appear to be
grouped together.
According to the principle of uniform connectedness, a connected region of the same visual properties, such
as lightness, color, texture, or motion, is perceived as a single unit.

43. Describe two image-based factors that determine what area is seen as a “figure” in an image with a reversible figure-
ground. Draw an example that demonstrates each factor.
ANSWER: One image-based factor proposed by the Gestalt psychologists was that areas lower in the field of view are
more likely to be perceived as figures. Another Gestalt proposal was that figures are more likely to be
perceived on the convex side of borders

44. Name and describe five “global image features.”

ANSWER: Degree of naturalness. Natural scenes have textured zones and undulating contours. Man-made scenes, such
as the street, are dominated by straight lines, horizontals, and verticals.
Degree of openness. Open scenes, such as the ocean, often have a visible horizon line and contain few
objects. The street scene is also open, although not as much as the ocean scene. The forest is an example of a
scene with a low degree of openness.
Degree of roughness. Smooth scenes (low roughness) like the ocean contain fewer small elements. Scenes
with high roughness like the forest contain many small elements and are more complex.
Degree of expansion. The convergence of parallel lines, like what you see when you look down railroad
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tracks that appear to vanish in the distance, indicates a high degree of expansion. This feature is especially
dependent on the observer’s viewpoint.
Color. Some scenes have characteristic colors, like the ocean scene (blue) and the forest (green and brown).

45. Describe the main finding from binocular rivalry research and explain why that finding is important.
ANSWER: Observers in Tong, et al.’s (1998) experiment viewed the overlapping red house and green face through red-
green glasses, so the house image was presented to the right eye and the face image to the left eye. Because
of binocular rivalry, the observers’ perception alternated back and forth between the face and the house.
When the observers perceived the house, activity occurred in the parahippocampal place area (PPA) in the
left and right hemispheres (red ellipses). When observers perceived the face, activity occurred in the fusiform
face area (FFA) in the left hemisphere (green ellipse). This experiment and others like it generated a great
deal of excitement among brain researchers because they measured brain activation and perception
simultaneously and demonstrated a dynamic relationship between perception and brain activity in which
changes in perception and changes in brain activity mirrored each other.

46. Define semantic regularities and describe their effect on perceptual organization.
ANSWER: In language, semantics refers to the meanings of words or sentences. When applied to perceiving scenes,
semantics refers to the meaning of a scene. This meaning is often related to what happens within a scene. For
example, food preparation, cooking, and perhaps eating occur in a kitchen; waiting around, buying tickets,
checking luggage, and going through security checkpoints happen in airports. Semantic regularities are the
characteristics associated with activities that are common in different types of scenes.

Most people who have grown up in modern society have little trouble visualizing an office or the clothing
section of a department store. What is important about this ability, for our purposes, is that part of this
visualization involves details within these scenes. Most people see an office as having a desk with a
computer on it, bookshelves, and a chair. The department store scene may contain racks of clothes, a
changing room, and perhaps a cash register. Our visualizations contain information based on our knowledge
of different kinds of scenes. This knowledge of what a given scene typically contains is called a scene
schema.

47. Describe how Bayesian inference can be used to understand perception.

ANSWER: Bayesian inference was named after Thomas Bayes (1701–1761), who proposed that our estimate of the
probability of an outcome is determined by two factors: (1) the prior probability, or simply the prior, which is
our initial estimate of the probability of an outcome, and (2) the extent to which the available evidence is
consistent with the outcome. This second factor is called the likelihood of the outcome.

Applying this idea to object perception, let’s return to the inverse projection problem. Remember that the
inverse projection problem occurs because a huge number of possible objects could be associated with a
particular image on the retina. Thus, the problem is how to determine what is “out there” that is causing a
particular retinal image. Luckily, we don’t have to rely only on the retinal image because we come to most
perceptual situations with prior probabilities based on our past experiences.

One of the priors you have in your head is that books are rectangular. Thus, when you look at a book on your
desk, your initial belief is that it is likely that the book is rectangular. The likelihood that the book is
rectangular is provided by additional evidence, such as the book’s retinal image, combined with your
perception of the book’s distance and the angle at which you are viewing the book. If this additional evidence
is consistent with your prior that the book is rectangular, the likelihood is high, and the perception
“rectangular” is strengthened. Further testing by changing your viewing angle and distance can further
strengthen the conclusion that the shape is a rectangle. Note that you aren’t necessarily conscious of this
testing process - it occurs automatically and rapidly. The important point about this process is that while the
retinal image is still the starting point for perceiving the shape of the book, adding the person’s prior beliefs
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Chapter 01 Introduction to Perception

reduces the possible shapes that could be causing that image.

48. Describe the decoders developed by Naselaris, et al. (2009), how they were established, and what they can be used for.
ANSWER: Thomas Naselaris and coworkers (2009) created a brain reading device by developing two methods for
analyzing the patterns of voxel activation recorded from visual areas of an observer’s brain.
The first method, called structural encoding, is based on the relationship between voxel activation and
structural characteristics of a scene, such as lines, contrasts, shapes, and textures. Naselaris’s structural
decoder was calibrated by presenting a large number of images and determining how voxels responded to
specific features of each scene, such as line orientation, detail, and the position of the image. These data were
used to calibrate the structural encoder so it could use patterns of voxel responses to predict the features of
the image that the subject was viewing.

The second method for analyzing patterns of voxel activation, called semantic encoding, is based on the
relationship between voxel activation and the meaning or category of a scene. The semantic encoder is
calibrated by measuring the pattern of voxel activation to a large number of images that have previously been
classified into categories such as “crowd,” “portrait,” “vehicle,” and “outdoor.” From this calibration, the
relationship between the pattern of voxel activation and image category is determined. This semantic decoder
then uses the pattern of voxel responses to make predictions about the type of scene the subject is viewing.

49. Explain how grouping and segregation work together to organize perception.
ANSWER: Perceptual organization is the process by which elements in the environment become perceptually grouped to
create our perception of objects. During this process, incoming stimulation is organized into coherent units
such as objects. The process of perceptual organization involves two components: grouping and segregation.
Grouping is the process by which visual events are “put together” into units or objects. The process of
grouping works in conjunction with segregation, which is the process of separating one area or object from
another. Thus, seeing two buildings as separate from one another, with borders indicating where one building
ends and the other begins, involves segregation.

50. Describe what is known about the ability of infants to perceive human faces.
ANSWER: Human faces are among the most important stimuli in an infant’s environment. As a newborn or young infant
stares up from the crib, numerous faces of interested adults appear in the infant’s field of view. The face that
the infant sees most frequently is usually its mother’s, and there is evidence that young infants can recognize
their mother’s face shortly after they are born. Using preferential looking in which 2-day-old infants were
given a choice between their mother’s face and a stranger’s, Ian Bushnell and coworkers (1989) found that
newborns looked at their mother about 63 percent of the time. This result is above the 50 percent chance
level, so Bushnell concluded that the 2-day-olds could recognize their mother’s face. To determine what
information the infants might be using to recognize their mother’s faces, Olivier Pascalis and coworkers
(1995) showed that when the mother and the stranger wore pink scarves that covered their hairline, the
preference for the mother disappeared. The high-contrast border between the mother’s dark hairline and light
forehead apparently provided important information about the mother’s physical characteristics that infants
use to recognize the mother.

There is also evidence for the role of experience in infant face perception. Ian Bushnell (2001) observed
newborns over the first 3 days of life to determine whether there was a relationship between their looking
behavior and the amount of time they were with their mother. He found that, at 3 days of age, when the
infants were given a choice between looking at a stranger’s face or their mother’s face, the infants who had
been exposed to their mother longer were more likely to prefer her over the stranger. The two infants with
the lowest exposure to their mother (an average of 1.5 hours) divided their looking evenly between the
mother and stranger, but the two infants with the longest exposure (an average of 7.5 hours) looked at their
mother 68 percent of the time. Analyzing the results from all of the infants led Bushnell to conclude that face
perception emerges very rapidly after birth, but that experience in looking at faces does have an effect.
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Although the infant’s ability to recognize faces develops rapidly over the first few months, these impressive
gains are only a starting point because even though 3- to 4-month-old infants can recognize some facial
expressions, their ability to identify faces does not reach adult levels until adolescence or early adulthood.

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