Study Guide for Chapter 6

1.         Explain the essential ideas of Irving Biederman’s theory of recognition-by-components. What is a geon? What properties do geons share? What are the pros and cons to this theory?

2.         Briefly explain the main features of view-based recognition. What are the pros and cons to this approach?

3.         What is spatio-temporal coherence and what assumption does this characteristic generate?

4.         What does it mean to say that we “learn to see?” What are some examples that support the statement that we learn to see?

5.         Once again, what kind of information does the ventral stream carry? To what kind of visual stimuli do IT neurons respond?

6.         What evidence supports the idea that neurons in the IT display plasticity?

7.         What is the face-inversion effect and what does it say about perception of faces?

8.         What are affordances according to James Gibson (see Box 6.1)

9.         Explain prosopagnosia and why it is difficult to pinpoint a specific brain region associated with this disorder.

10.       What is the difference between configural processing and featural processing?

11.       What (very briefly) does the “greeble” study tell us about face recognition and the brain?

12.       What is “preattentive vision?”

13.       In what way does attention behave like a limited resource? What are the consequences of this limit?

14.       What roles does attention play in object recognition?

15.       What is object-based attention?

16.       What is change blindness? How is change blindness related to inattentional blindness?

17.       What are the differences between visual perception and visual imagery? What are the similarities? Why might people confuse the two?

18.       What area(s) of the brain is (are) involved in visual imagery?

19.       What makes reading such a complicated task?

20.       Why is reading especially vulnerable to the effects of developmental abnormalities?

21.       What is alexia?

22.       Why can we learn much about reading by studying readers’ saccades and fixations? What are some of the factors that influence the rate and duration of saccades and fixations?

23.       According to Raynor (1998), how is a fixation divided with respect to activities performed within its time frame?

24.       What is the word superiority effect?

25.       What do spaces between words contribute to reading comprehension? What happens to reading speed and comprehension when you remove the spaces? What about if you insert spaces inappropriately?

26.       Why might previewing an image by looking at a very blurry version of it hinder later recognition of the more-focused image? How does this relate to the concept of learning to see? What about the Gestalt principles?