COG MID

• Sensation


  Process of sensing our environment through touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell
• Perception


  Set of processes by which we recognize, organize, and make sense of the sensations we receive from environmental stimuli
• Cognition


  Occurs when information is used to determine further goals
• Sensory process


  1. Modality

  2. Distal Object

  3. Informational Medium

  4. Proximal Stimulation

  5. Perceptual Object
• An individual can never sense the exact same set of stimulus properties s/he experienced before
• Perceptual stability


  Ability to achieve perceptual stability
• Sensory adaptation


  Physiological process in which the processing of unchanging or repeated sensory information is reduced in the brain over time
• Ganzfeld effect


  Total field/complete field
• It should be ensured that sensory information varies or changes constantly to induce changes in perception
• More variations lead to in-depth perception about things/stimuli
• Perceptual illusions


  Errors of perception which occur when we perceive stimuli as something other than what they really are
• The existence of perceptual illusions suggests that what we sense (in our sensory organs) is not necessarily what we perceive (in our minds)
• Sometimes we cannot perceive things that exist
• Sometimes we perceive things that do not exist
• Visual perception


  Ability to perceive our surrounding through the light that enters our eyes
• The precondition for vision is the existence of light
• How does our visual system work

  1. Light (EMR)

  2. Cornea

  3. Iris

  4. Pupil

  5. Crystalline Lens & Vitreous Humor

  6. Retina
• Photoreceptors


  Convert light energy into electrochemical energy that is transmitted by neurons to the brain
• Ganglion cells


  Neural pathways (Optic Nerve, Optic Chiasma, Optic Tract)
• Cones


  Perception of color
• Rods


  Perception of light and dark stimuli
• Photopigments


  Convert light energy into electrochemical energy
• What-where hypothesis


  The path the visual information takes from its entering the human perceptual system through the eyes to its being completely processed

  
• What-how hypothesis


  What - VP = identification of object, How - DP = controls movements in relation to the objects
• Bottom-up theories


  Data-driven processing, perception starts with the stimuli whose appearance you take in through your eye

  
• Top-down theories


  Driven by high-level cognitive processes, existing knowledge, and the prior expectations that influence perception
• Template theories


  Suggest that our minds store myriad sets of templates, we recognize a pattern by comparing it with our set of templates
• Feature-matching theories


  We attempt to match features of a pattern to features stored in memory, rather than to match a whole pattern to a template or a prototype
• Recognition by component


  Using simple geometric shapes, observing the edges of them and then decomposing the objects into geons
• Constructive perception


  Constructing a cognitive understanding (perception) of a stimulus, using sensory information as the foundation for the structure but also using other sources of information to build the perception
• Percepts are based on what we sense, what we know, and what we can infer
• According to constructivists, during perception, we quickly form and test various hypotheses regarding percepts
• Viewer-centered representation


  What matters is the appearance of the object to the viewer, depends on the angle from which a viewer looks at it
• Object-centered representation


  Individual stores a representation of the object, independent of its appearance to the viewer, object will stay stable across different orientations
• Landmark-centered representation


  Information is characterized by its relation to a well-known or prominent item
• Gestalt principles of form perception


  Organizes the different elements into a stable and coherent form
• Feature analysis system


  Recognizing parts of objects and assembling it into distinctive wholes
• Configurational system


  Recognizing larger configurations, not analyzing parts of objects or the construction of the objects
• Fusiform gyrus


  Face recognition occurs at least in the part of fusiform gyrus of the temporal lobe
• Expert-individuation hypothesis


  Prosopagnosia - the inability to recognize faces—implies damage to the configurational system