Study Guide for Chapter 5

1.         How would you describe the differences between detection,  discrimination, and identification?

2.         Describe analytic introspection.  What are the problems with this approach?

3.         What is a spatial scale?

4.         What is the multichannel model?

5.         How do researchers create sinusoidal gratings?

6.         What are the four defining characteristics of gratings? Be sure that you can describe what each means (being able to sketch an example might be helpful).

7.         What can be done by manipulating the various aspects of a grating?

8.         What is a transfer function? For what  purpose is this function used?

9.         What does it mean when the frequency in a target exceeds the cut-off frequency? Does this have any application to changes in optics (e.g. the cornea or the lens) as a function of aging? What about other applications to human vision?

10.       Keeping in mind that Fourier analysis is a mathematical approach to determining how frequencies are combined, how might you apply this type of analysis to a visual scene?

11.       What is a contrast threshold? How do you use contrast thresholds to determine contrast sensitivity functions?

12.       Is the human visual system more or less sensitive to very low spatial frequencies than to intermediate ones?

13.       Considering what you have read about CSFs, why is it harder to read in dim light than in bright light? What aspects of your reading material could you adjust to compensate (assuming you couldn’t turn on a brighter light)?

14.       Why does a cat seem to see things that “aren’t really there?”

15.       How does an infant’s CSF compare to that of an adult?

16.       What impact does experience have on the development of a normal CSF? What are some conditions that will impair that development and how might they be prevented or corrected?

17.       What determines the shape of an overall contrast sensitivity function? What impact does selective adaptation have on this shape?

18.       What is a metamer?

19.       What kind of information do discontinuities in texture (texture contrast) provide? What kinds of relationships are apparent from this information?

20.       What are the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization?

21.       Why do you think that humans seem to have a preference for symmetry? Do you think this is an innate or learned preference?