Reading Activity Week #5 (Due Monday)

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Please read chapter 4. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:

Next you will be asked what three things from the chapter that you found interesting?

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Thanks,

--Dr. M

24 Comments

Chapter 4 Reading Activity

1a)
I found the visual pattern principles to be interesting. These visual patterns include proximity, similarity, and spontaneous organization.
1b)
This was first interesting to me as it began with Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology looked at pattern organization that our mind put together to produce an impression beyond our sensations. These patterns that sparked our stimuli seemed to be spontaneously organized. The patterns of proximity, similarity, symmetry, closure, and continuity are interesting to me as each individual may perceive a set of objects differently. Proximity, for example, is when we see a set of objects close together, we tend to believe those objects belong together. This is not always true. Closure, on the other hand, is when we see a small break in a line we believe that the line continues on although there is a space between where the line begins and where the line continues on. It is fascinating as not everyone may perceive things in the same way. Also, our mind tends to interpret things how we see them when that may not always be true.
2a)
The concept of template matching was interesting to me. I can relate to experiences of my own when template matching occurred.
2b)
Template matching is a form of pattern recognition in which an internal construct matched by our sensory stimuli leads to the recognition of an object. Our textbook describes this as a lock-and-key idea of pattern recognition. This interests me because due to my life experiences, I have created a number of templates in my mind. For example, when I was a child, I was taught that a dog walks on four legs. Later, when I saw what was a horse, I believed it to be a dog as horses also walk on all four legs. Therefore, I created a template that anything that walks on four legs was a dog when that is not true.
3a)
Feature analysis was of interest to me when reading chapter 4. Feature analysis is another approach to object recognition.
3b)
Feature analysis is interesting because only after we have analyzed the simpler components of stimuli can we recognize what an object is. This makes me believe that our brain can only process a small amount of stimuli at once or we would have a “brain-overload.” Feature analysis is interesting as it illustrates that recognition of objects is a high-ordering process for our brain to comprehend certain information.
4a)
The least interesting concept from chapter 4 was the theories of prototype formation. Specifically, the central-tendency theory was least interesting.
4b)
The central-tendency theory was least interesting to me as it represents the average or mean of a set of numbers. Since late elementary, I have been learning about mean, median, and mode. I am very familiar with the central-tendency theory and therefore had a lack of interest when reading about the mean, median, and mode.
5)
Reading about bottom-up versus top-down processing, I think will really be useful in understanding Cognitive Psychology. Bottom-up processing is cognitive processing that when taking a stimulus pattern and linking it to other components, will help in recognizing a pattern or problem as a whole. Top-down processing, on the other hand, is cognitive processing that is hypothesis-driven in which you start with a problem or pattern as a whole and break it down into its simpler components. Everybody has a mind that works in a different way. Some may see things as a whole while others start with smaller components and build on the stimuli. It is interesting to think about how and why are brain works in one of these ways of processing in order to understand Cognitive Psychology.
6)
This chapter continues to build on the previous chapters as we look deeper into how human brains build on information processing. We see how individuals can enhance their memory, learning, attention span, and attitude through different processing theories. We also are beginning to analyze more of the “why” we may process stimuli in a certain why based on our perception and sensations.
7a)
I would like to learn more about feature analysis and the higher-order processing of our brain.
7b)
I am interested to learn why we break objects or problems down in our brain in order to process something in the way we do. I want to know why it takes feature analysis of analyzing simpler components to understand an object or situation. Specifically, I am curious about what is considered to be high-order processing for our brain and if there is more sensory stimuli being active in our brain when we are trying to solve a complex problem.
8)
I thought about my own past experiences while I was reading this chapter and how I have interpreted new things as I have gotten older. It is interesting to think about how we interpret things at different levels in our mind and use different theories that we may not even be familiar with to determine the answer to a simple or complex problem. I can think of many times in which I have used bottom-up processing and other times when I have used top-down processing to determine a solution. Now I wonder “why” I used a certain method over another to come to a conclusion.
9)
Visual pattern, proximity, similarity, spontaneous organization, Gestalt Psychology, symmetry, closure, continuity, template matching, pattern recognition, feature analysis, object recognition, stimuli, higher-order processing, prototype formation, central-tendency theory, mean, median, mode, bottom-up processing, top-down processing, perception, sensation

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?

I am interested in bottom-up and top-down processing because I had never thought about how we recognize things such as objects, people, or letters. I had also never realized that there is a more complex process we use to recognize things. I know what a book looks like because I have seen it before; I recognize my dogs’ faces because I see them every day. But do I recognize my dogs because I put all their facial features together; or because I hypothesize that they are my dogs, and the facial features make sense, so I recognize them? I also expect to see my dogs come running at me when I get home, so maybe my expectation contributes to my recognition of my dogs too. This part is slightly confusing at first, but it all made sense after a few more tries. It is truly amazing that we do not give what we do every day a second thought. I never questioned how and why I know things I know, and I think I should start questioning instead of taking everything I do for granted.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?

I also found template matching an interesting topic to learn more about. There are times when I encounter an unfamiliar object with an odd angle, and I have to take a minute to realize what I am looking at. However, I can recognize any familiar object with every angle I approach it at, an upside down table for example. It is also interesting that computers can do the same, as long as we give it the right information. This topic reminds me of OCR; optical character recognition is a process which turns physical materials into word processing documents to be edited or stored. I used it a few times and it is most accurate when the original document is printed, less accurate when the original document is hand written.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?

Eye movements and object recognition is another topic that I found interesting, especially the recorded eye movements of participants looking at the same image. It is obvious that people look at different aspects of the image when they look at the image with different purposes, to guess the age or to memorize the positions, for examples. By examining how people look at an image, scientists learn that perception also involves some higher order of processing in the brain, rather than just responding to the physical stimuli exposed. I became interested in this topic because I knew that they did similar studies to dogs, where they track dogs’ eye movements when dogs are looking at human faces, in order to study how dogs understand the signals that human unconsciously send out. I am also interested to know what techniques are used to track participants’ eye movements.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?

I found Geon theory to be less interesting among other topics because I do not think that I make sense of the world by combining different shapes together; maybe I do, but the theory sounds a little odd to me, like we play mental Lego every day to make sense of the world. However, I have to admit that it is interesting that I can recognize the cup shown in figure 4.9 when most of the features are missing.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?

I think that eye movement is important and can be useful in learning cognitive psychology. There are five other senses but I think that visual is the most important among all, because everything is easier to process and learned when we can physically see it, instead of feeling it or hearing the description of it. Understanding more about eye movement, and what normal eye movement is, we can figure out the eye movement of children with autism, and why autistic children perceive the world differently than normal children.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?

This chapter is very closely related to the previous chapter because it extends on the topic of perception. Recognizing things comes after we perceive it. This chapter also briefly mentioned attention, which is explained in great details in chapter 3.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?

I would like to learn more about what techniques were used to track people’s eye movements. It seems like a rather complex process to begin with. I think that with better understanding of the techniques, people can use it on children who are diagnosed with autism disorder. The techniques would be a very helpful tool for further understanding the disorder, and thus bring about better treatment.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

I thought about eye witness testimony, because it is possible that people recognize the wrong thing while witnessing an event. I also thought about face blindness, where the ability to recognize face is damaged. Lastly, I thought about the difference perspectives between children and adults, and I think that this is maybe why children are more creative than adults: they do not have much expectation of the world yet, everything is rather new to them. Maybe they see something that adults do not see, because there are not many templates and expectations set in their minds yet, so everything is possible in their world. For example, a little sister sees an upside down table as a crib, and she had fun with it for the whole day.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Face blindness, eye witness testimony, eye movements, template matching, bottom-up processing, top-down processing

1a) The first concept I found interesting in this chapter was the difference between constructive perception and direct perception.

1b) I found these theories interesting because this is what perceptual psychologists have come up with to try and figure out how humans perceive the world. All of this information is so complex and hard to understand and it fascinates me while learning about the different view psychologists hold. The constructive perception believes that people construct perceptions by actively selecting stimuli and merging sensations with memory while the direct perception holds that perception consists of the direct acquisition of information from the environment. In constructive perception we combine what comes in through our sensory system with what we have learned about the world in our own experiences while the direct perception holds believes that the information in the stimuli itself is most important and learning and cognition are unnecessary. Personally I think that the constructive perception theory makes more sense.

2a) The next thing I found interesting in this chapter was the concept of canonic perspectives.

2b) This section really grabbed my attention because of the pictures of the coffee cup on the next page. Canonic perspectives are views that best represent an object or are the images that first come to mind when you recall a form. This is something that I have thought about in real life, but never really thought there was a science behind it which fascinated me. The book then goes on to say how important research in this area is since it combines Gestalt psychology with prototype formation. Then it goes on to talk about exemplars which were also interesting because they help us form canonic representations based off of our experiences with similar objects in that category, however this isn’t based off of empirical science.

3a) One last thing I found interesting in this chapter was the blue boxed section on Face Recognition: Neurons vs. Pixels.

3b) I found this section interesting because it applied what we were learning to real life. Apparently the ability of humans to recognize faces is a pretty big deal and there have been specialized cells that have been located in our brains that are used specifically to recognize faces. Computers have also been designed to recognize faces. They do this by turning facial images into pixel values and then using factor analysis into Eigenfaces which can be stored in the computer’s memory along with information about a suspect. I found this interesting because I’ve always wondered how the FBI uses face recognition in tv shows like criminal minds and this shows a little bit of how they do this.

4a) The subject I found least interesting in this chapter was the section on prototype formation.

4b) This was the least interesting to me basically because it was so wordy and hard to understand. Also I thought the whole concept of central-tendency theory was pretty dull to essentially since it has to do with the mean which I have been learning about enough in my stats class and also the attribute-frequency theory which essentially has to do with the mode.

5) I believe that learning about Gestalt psychology will be the most important in further learning in this cognitive class. We basically got a brief introduction to the subject and how it relates to perception, but I think we will be talking about it a lot more as the year goes on and how it relates to other things involved with cognitive psychology.

6) This chapter builds off of previous chapters in many different ways. The biggest being that it expands even further on our sense of perception and it brought up and elaborated on illusions, eye tracking, bottom-up/top/bottom processing, and visual processes.
7a) I would like to learn more about face recognition and how it is used in law enforcement.
7b) I’ve always been really into tv shows based on solving crime scenes and I think that there is still a lot of information I do not know about it that would be interesting to learn about.

8) Mainly the whole time reading through this chapter I was thinking about how these psychologists became so interested in perception because personally I am not all that interested in it and I wouldn’t really think that it related all that much to psychology. Also when I was reading about symmetry involved with the human face I was wondering if anyone did have a perfectly symmetrical face. When I read about face recognition and how we have specialized cells that help us recognize faces I was wondering if anyone didn’t have these types of cells so they couldn’t recognize faces.

9) Terms: constructive perception, direct perception, stimuli, canonic perspectives, Gestalt psychology, exemplars, perception, face recognition, eigenfaces, prototype formation, central-tendency theory, attribute-frequency theory.

1a) What did you find interesting? 1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the idea of canonic perspectives was very interesting because we see so many objects from so many different perspectives but there is one view that seems to be iconic for all people. It is also interesting that this seems to be true across cultures.

2a) What did you find interesting? 2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the Geon theory was interesting. This was interesting to me because it relates the human information processing to a structure that we are very familiar with, the alphabet. I found it very interesting that everything we recognize might just be only recognition by components and as few as 24 components at that.

3a) What did you find interesting? 3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the eigenface was interesting because it is astounding that all faces might be compromised of the same basic components considering how many different faces there are in the world. This reminded me of learning about proportions of the human face in art and how there is a difference between knowing those proportions and actually seeing someone’s face. If you draw solely based on the proportions, your drawing will look nothing like the person in front of you.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I thought distinction between direct and constructive perception was the least interesting part about the chapter. This interested me the least because the introduction of the chapter was confusing and I had trouble thinking of these concepts as they relate to my life.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
I think this chapter illustrated that there are many theories in cognitive psychology about one topic very effectively. This chapter showed how some theories have more support than others and they all build on each other which I think is useful in understanding cognitive psychology.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter built on previous chapters by narrowing the subject of perception to object recognition.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 7b) Why?
I would like to know more about eye movement and object recognition because eye tracking is gaining a lot of popularity in research and it is being used in a lot of applied contexts.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I was thinking about how amazing it is that we are able to perceive, integrate, and interpret written language. Words are just tiny lines that form symbols yet we can derive so much meaning from them.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Canonic perspective, constructive perception, direct perception, geon

1)A concept I found interesting in the chapter was illusory contours. It’s fascinating how our brain fills in parts of pictures that aren’t actually there. In the floating triangle example in the book our brain even sometimes adds details to something we see that’s not actually there. The book suggests this may be partially caused by lateral inhibition, where our retina causes accentuations of contours of images. It was also really neat to learn of a potential evolutionary reason for our minds seeing things that aren’t necessarily there, because of things we may need to see that are camoflauged. Our brains may pick out various images and accentuate contours as to see through camoflauge.

2)I really enjoyed reading about the Gestalt Psychology view on object recognition. I think it’s really interesting how our mind performs some of the concepts discuess, such as proximity, closure, or symmetry. The idea behind proximity makes more sense as it seems logical to look at things that are closer together and assume they’re associated, because that’s how many things naturally are in the world. I really thought closure was interesting too and how, as I mentioned in the last question, or brain fills in things that aren’t actually there and still allows us to see an image that makes sense. Symmetry is also a concept that makes sense as many things in the world are naturally that way, but I really enjoyed the example of seeing Dr. Maclin’s face in the textbook and understanding how our brains sometimes see symmetry when it’s not actually there.

3)A new piece of information I found really interesting was the Cognition in Everyday Life box that talked about Eigenfaces. Eigenfaces was the name of what a computer stores in it’s memory in order to recognize a face. The blurb discussed how a computer obviously processes and recognizes a face much differently than human brains do, using pixels rather than neurons. The face has to be reduced to pixel values and then computed using factor analysis, creating what is then called the Eigenface. The computer can use the reduced pixelized version of the face to recognize the face in various similar forms only if this initial template has been developed. This is really a neat technology advancement that has a lot of potential in protection services.

4)Something I read that I didn’t find all that interesting was about the priming effect. I’ve learned about the priming effect and what it could do in various other classes. I didn’t learn any new information about this particular concept and how it can influence what we think. It is in general an interesting concept, however I just didn’t find it all that interesting since I’d already been introduced to it in several other circumstances.

5)In this chapter I learned some theories about how our brain processes, understands, and recognizes objects. This will be helpful in understanding the broader field of cognitive pyschology as we must use our cognition to perform these functions. I think being aware that there are a few different ideas out there and variations on how people think we process object recognition will be most helpful from this chapter to understand the broader field. It’s important to know that not all knowledge is set in stone and further research can yield interesting results and we can always be learning more on how our brain actually works.

6)This chapter again simply expands what types of knowledge we’ve covered in the field of cognitive psychology. This chapter helps us recognize and understand how our brain functions when it comes to recognizing the world around us. This is building on the previous chapters because they also helped give insight in a particular area and how our brains may work and function in regards to that area.

7)I wouldn’t mind learning more about bottom-up processing and top-down processing. Both ideas make sense and as you’re learning so much information over your lifetime things tend to blend and it’s hard to discern what process you used to learn a particular piece of information. I’d be curious to learn about if we use a certain process for different types of learning, if some people use one process more than others, or if it varies depending on what types of education and environment you had growing up.

8)During this chapter I was, like in some others, thinking about the individuals I work with. I work with people with mental and physical disability and many of these topics have already made me wonder how these processes may function in their brains that is different from my own. It’s clear in many situations that they don’t recognize everything in their surroundings even if they’ve encountered it countless times before. There is apparently a flaw of some sort in the process in their brains and I can’t help but wonder what exactly is being hindered and how it could possibly be helped.

9)Illusory contours, lateral inhibition, Gestalt Psychology, proximity, closure, symmetry, priming effect, bottom-up processing, top-down processing

1a&b) One topic I found interesting was the Canonic Perspective. It interests me because I don’t really think about our perspective of objects that we aren’t seeing but just thinking about. It’s interesting how similar our perspectives are. The text gives the example of having asked people from around the world to draw a cup and saucer and the drawings are almost identical. Some of them vary with which view you are looking at it from but they are remarkably similar. This is a term that I haven’t been introduced to previous to reading this text. It’s a good reminder of just how complex our brains are but how similar we are regardless of location and ethnicity.

2a&b) I also found the topic of face recognition to be interesting. I think it is incredible how many people we are able to recognize. But the technology that they have created so that a computer can recognize a face is even crazier to me. The text says that we have cells in our infero-temporal cortex specifically for recognizing people’s faces. In order for a computer to recognize a face it has to reduce the facial image into pixels and then analyze them. But they now use that technology at casinos and in public to find criminals and people wanted for certain things. I honestly didn’t know that they used them on public computers so that was really interesting to me. I am however, aware of the basic face recognition technology because I had it on my last phone where it served as a type of password.

3a&b) The third thing that I found interesting was feature analysis. It is another approach that has been formed to help explain how we are able to break down information from complex stimuli. It asserts that this process is a higher-order thinking step that requires the complex stimuli to be recognized and identified by smaller, simpler features. The text goes more in depth with feature analysis and explains how when we see a word we break things down as far as to analyze each letter used to spell the word. These processes are just so quick and efficient that we really aren’t made aware of them. I really find interest in situations where my brain is able to do extensive work without me even noticing it. I’m always interested to learn how that is able to happen and the areas of the brain responsible for it.

4a&b) I think one of the topics that I wasn’t particularly interested in was the section the theories of prototype formation. I think one reason I didn’t find this interesting was because it involved math and simple math at that. I do really like math in certain forms but in this particular chapter I was more interested in recognition topics than in central-tendency theory and attribute-frequency theory which involve finding the mean or mode.

5) In this chapter we were introduced to a lot of theories. I believe knowing about these theories is going to be extremely helpful when we build on their ideas in later chapters. Many of the theories I read about are strongly supported and I think they are all an important part of better understanding how our visual cortex, with the aid of other various areas of our brain, is able to recognized objects and faces.

6) Chapter four builds on the previous three chapters because it takes our perception a step further and looks much closer at how our brains specifically handle what it perceives. It zones in on how we process information and gives a much more detailed look into how our brains understand the complexity of the stimuli it is experiencing.

7a&b) I thought it was very interesting that our brains break down the stimulus it receives so much. I am not aware of my brain doing that which makes it something I would really like to learn more about in order to have a better understanding of how and why my brain needs to do that. I would like to take a closer look at feature analysis and hopefully learn even more about the need for our brains to simplify stimulus before it is processed.

8) While reading this chapter I really just started thinking about how much more complex our brain processing is than we are ever aware of. It also made me think how crazy we would be if we were made aware of all of the steps it takes between the point in which we receive information and when I actually experience my brain’s perception of that information. It also made me more aware of how our perceptions change as we learn new things or gain more experience with certain stimuli.

9) Terminology: stimuli, processing, complex, perception, feature analysis, theories, visual cortex, recognition, prototype, central-tendency theory, attribute-frequency theory, infero-temporal cortex, Canonic perspective

I liked the section on constructive perception. This is the theory that when we perceive something we are forming and testing hypotheses based on what we know and what we sense. When a stimuli changes we are still able to recognize it through unconscious inference. This allows us to integrate information from different sources to create a new interpretation of the stimuli. This theory relates closely to top-down processing and is accepted by many cognitive psychologists. I enjoyed this section because it explains something to me that I haven't thought much about. I take for granted that when my friend cuts their hair I can still recognize them. I also think it's interesting that we use previous knowledge combined with current sensations to perceive something.

I also enjoyed the section on subjective organization. Constructivists believe that the brain is interpretive and uses heuristics along with carious algorithms to process information. Heuristics are are assumptions based on patterns that result in the correct outcome. Algorithms are specific rules that lead to a predictable outcome. Because our brains use heuristics it will continue to make errors. One such error is seeing things that do not exist. Illusory contours involve a person seeing a form not because it exists in the stimulus, but because it exists in our perceptual-cognitive system. These items appear in front of other shapes and have a real perceptual presence, though they feel "not real" to the observer. Lateral inhibition may be the cause of this. I liked this section because it shows how our brains can mislead us and what we perceive is not always what we see with our eyes, but what our brain interprets.

Another section that I liked was the section on canonic perspectives. This is the image that comes to mind when you think of an object. We all tend to view objects in the same way: facing front, clean, and by itself. We do not see the object as it might be at home: dirty, cramped, upside down. Canonic views of items are identified more quickly than bird's eye views or views from farther away. We normally view objects from one orientation, so showing us the object from a different view makes it harder to distinguish what it is. I liked this section because it was something that we all do without thinking about. I like when the book is able to point out things about myself that I was not aware I did.

One thing I found less interesting was the section on bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing is when the parts of an object lead you to recognize the whole thing. Top-down is when the whole object leads to recognition of the parts of it. Some theorists believe you can do both of these at the same time. Top-down processing is thought to be learned and children often have difficulty with it. This section was less interesting to me because
I learned about these methods in previous psychology classes.

I think that learning how you process information and the errors that can arise are important to understanding cognitive psychology because these things affect our cognition and how well it works.

This chapter builds on the previous ones in that the last chapter talked about sensation and perception and this chapter delved more into those topics, giving more examples and showing how processing leads to perception.

I would like to learn more about feature analysis, because it is an approach that I had never heard of before.

While reading this chapter I thought about how this information relates to other classes that I have taken. I also applied the methods and processes to myself and tried to recall times that I used each process. I also wondered how these processes were discovered.

terms:
constructive perception, hypothesis, stimuli, unconscious inference, top-down processing, cognitive psychologists, sensation, subjective organization, constructivists, heuristics, algorithms, illusory contours, lateral inhibition, canonic perspectives, orientation, bottom-up processing, feature analysis

1) One thing from the chapter that I particularly found interesting was the Gestalt Theory. The Gestalt Theory looks at the way we organize and classify visual stimuli in Gestalt psychology during the early 20th century. This is something that interests me because I am always curious to find out how we actually know what we are seeing is actually what we are calling it, like calling a pencil a “pencil” how did the first person actually come up with the name of it. Although perception is only part of the theory pattern organization is used by involving all stimuli working together to produce an impression that went beyond the sum total of all the sensations. Our mind often looks at the law of proximity when looking at simple objects like two lines of dots top line not colored in and the bottom colored in if one of the dots in the top line were colored in the brain would no longer see the two separate lines because we would now see four separate dots along with the pattern. Another part to the theory that was really interesting was faces are perceived as symmetrical when often they are not. This I found very interesting especially after attending Dr. M's talk last Thursday on perception and identification recognition. Often times we may look at a photo and see one person and think that hey that looks like “Bob” and say that is who is in the photo but in reality “Chris” is really in the photo.

2) Another thing that I found interesting from the chapter was canonic perspectives which are views that best represent an object or are an image that first come to mind when you recall a form of that object at mind. I found this interesting because often times we use exemplars when we recall an object and are trying to describe and or draw it out to someone who may have never seen this object that we are trying to describe. When doing this we are actually trying to put what we are seeing in our mind down on paper and being able to show an object that we have experienced in the past. Theoretical explanation of the generality of canonic perspectives is that, through common experiences with objects we develop these permanent memories of the most representational view of an object and a view that discloses the greatest amount of detail and information about it to another person. But as time goes on we have to continue to have the experience with the objects to have that permanent memories to be able to use them as exemplars.

3) The third thing that I found interesting from the chapter was template matching. I found this part particularly interesting because once again it helps us to understand what our brain does when recognizing and constructing stimuli’s and giving the objects an individual name. Template matching is a theory of pattern recognition which has some strengths as well as some weaknesses. One positive thing about template matching is it recognizes shape, a letter, or visual forms on the negative side a literal interpretation of the template matching theory meets with some difficulty. As we go through our lives we are building templates and we uses them daily to put names with object and with these templates we are able to match up with some that may be distorted backwards or off. Like looking at handwriting or reading if you are reading the word CARD you know what that means after many of years of learning to read and developing that template in your brain. But if someone was to write D-R-A-C it may take your brain time to think about it but eventually it would use the template from the word CARD and template match it and recognize that DRAC is just CARD backwards.

4) There really wasn’t anything from this chapter that I didn’t find interesting. I was really interested in the whole thing. Perception and the visual stimuli’s is something that I have recently became more and more interested in and by reading this chapter it gave me a better understanding of how the process is actually working. If I had to pick one thing that I really didn’t like reading about the most would probably be the part about chess players. The only reason that I didn’t find this part real interesting is because I am not a big fan of chess after being forces to play it in a English class for a grade and if we lost the games the highest grade we could get in the professors class was a C. But other than that I honestly found this chapter very interesting and wouldn’t say that anything was boring or not interesting to me in particular.

5) I don’t thing that I can just pick one thing that I read in the chapter that is useful to cognitive psychology because I personally feel that the whole chapter is really important to cognitive psychology. I feel that if we are unable to understand how we perceive information in the world and how our brain processes it then we are not really understanding what is really going on. Most of us are in the psychology field because we want to do research or we want to help people and I really think that to do either we have to one hundred percent understand object recognition as a whole because if we are unable to understand how the brain processes this information then how will we be able to understand what we are researching or even how to go about helping someone in the community with a problem that they are perceiving if we are unable to understand how they even may have went about beginning to have that perception in the first place.

6) This chapter builds on from the previous very closely by talking more in depth about perception. This chapter looks at illusions in detail and also looks at how the brain perceives things and how the brain uses feature analysis. This chapter goes deeper into illusion by looking at the top-down/ top-up processing and the way that our brain processes the illusions that are in the pictures as examples of those types of processing’s, and by looking at the proximity and closure.

7) The topic from this chapter that I would like to learn more about is pseudomemory. This is something that I would like to look into because to me it is a very complex thing and the book makes it harder for me personally to understand. I would like to look at pseudomemory in a real world situations and how they would apply to our field of study and it may relate to what I want to personally want to do with my own life after school because it is an interesting topic to me.

8) Things that I thought about while reading the chapter were really mostly relating back to my sensation and perception class and how we are talking about how the eye really works and perceives information and just trying to really understand how and why we get names of the objects in the world that we do like computers, books, cell phones, food, signs, doors, teacher, parents, shoes, and friends. How and why did the first person even come up with the names or even thoughts to give these things names what were they thinking and how did we truly even learn what we know today about everything that we do know was it our culture or our parents was it schools were we really born with some knowledge?!?!

9) Gestalt Theory, Gestalt psychology, pattern organization, law of proximity, faces are perceived as symmetrical, canonic perspectives, exemplars, template matching, cognitive psychology, perception, feature analysis, illusions, top-down/ top-up processing, pseudomemory.

1a) What did you find interesting?

I was interested in the section about canonic perspectives.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
It was interesting to me, because when people are asked to draw a cup, they all draw the same cup. Of course there are variations in drawing style, but all draw a rather ordinary cup from the same perspective. This is interesting, because out of the infinite possibilities of things they could conceptualize from cup, they all draw the same thing. It makes sense when put under the framework that that is the particular angle that provides the most information showing that it is in fact a cup, but it is still intriguing.
2a) What did you find interesting?

I thought the geon theory of object recognition was kind of cool.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
The geon theory said that all objects are made from combinations of simpler geometric shapes. There are 24 of these geometrical ions, or geons, which can be combined in a number of ways to make any form, the same way that the 26 letters of our alphabet can be arranged in different orders to make up any word. In an art class in high school the teacher made us draw something as made up only by basic geometric shapes and I thought it was pretty stupid, but apparently that is a legitimate theory about how objects are actually represented.
3a) What did you find interesting?

I enjoyed the little section about eye movement and object recognition.
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I enjoy reading about things that are directly, objectively measured. That is why behaviorism holds a certain allure to me as does neuroscience. So in this chapter about object recognition, I liked the section that traced the actual saccades of the eye to determine what they looked at while trying to interpret different things.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
If there was something in this chapter that I was less enthused to read it would have to be Gestalt theory. This isn’t because Gestalt theory is boring, but because I have already read about gestalt principles in several other classes and although repetition is key for learning, it is also a bit boring.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
I think the most important thing to take away from this chapter would be that the eyes and brain work efficiently. Tracing the eye movements showed distinct places the participant looked when scanning for information, and the section about canonic perspectives talked about how our mental images form based on the most information that can be portrayed.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter had an extensive focus on models, which were discussed in the first chapter. Also, the parts about gestalt theory and geon theory, as well as the top-down bottom-up approaches all talked about the object being represented as parts that make up a whole and how that must be interpreted. This reminded me of the chapter on cognitive neuroscience where we discussed the brain being made up of neurons, but it still must be considered in a holistic way.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 
7b) Why?
I would like to learn more about the specific neuronal responses of object recognition. I think it would be interesting because we have already seen that there is an area in the brain for detecting faces (FFA) and an area in the brain for detecting places (PPA). I even read in a national geographic that they found a specific neuron that fires when recognizing Jennifer Aniston. I think it would be interesting to learn more about how the brain identifies, stores, and accesses things this specific.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I was thinking about things that would complicate these models, like synesthesia, or hallucinations. They wouldn’t interfere with the models themselves, but I was interested in understanding if synesthetes would recognize things differently and if someone who had taken say psilocybin would have significantly different eye movements.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
canonic perspectives, geon theory, gestalt theory, object recognition, saccades,

Chapter 4
The first couple things that I found interesting about chapter 4 were the concepts of constructive perception and direct perception. Constructive perception and direct perception are the two major theories that perceptual psychologists have come up with. These are the two main ways that we perceive things. The theory of constructive perception states that we actively select the stimuli and we connect it with our personal memories. Constructive perception has to do with what we have learned and what we have previously perceived. This is different than direct perception. Direct perception states that what we perceive comes directly from the environment. With direct perception, we don’t need any previous knowledge or memories to perceive what is around us. I think that these two concepts are very interesting in that they are so different from one another. I can understand both of them, but I can also disagree with both of them. When reading about these two main theories of perception, I was reminded of the nature vs. nurture issue. Are we genetically wired with the information that we know, or are we taught this information throughout our lives? The same debate could go for direct perception vs. constructive perception.
The second thing I found interesting from chapter 4 was the concept of Gestalt psychology. There are a lot of different laws concerning Gestalt psychology. These laws include the law of proximity, similarity, closure, symmetry, continuity, and common fate. All of the laws are very interesting to me. The law of proximity states that we perceive things because of how close they are to each other. If I have a row of black dots and a parallel row of white dots, I will see two rows. If I arrange the dots so they are in a certain pattern, I will see the pattern, and I will not see the row. The reason that this happens is because of the proximity of the dots that are relative to each other. The law of similarity also has to do with this. We see the dots in two rows because the each row has dots that are similar to each other. In seeing this, we automatically group them together. The law of closure shows a shape that has a gap in it. Even though the shape isn’t whole, we can still determine what shape it is. The law of symmetry says that when objects are symmetrical they stand out. The law of continuity makes us see patterns even after they thought. The law of common fate says that objects going in the same direction tend to stay together and should be grouped together. These are all pretty obvious, but it’s something that we don’t realize while it’s happening. That’s why all of these laws are so interesting to me. It’s something that we don’t consider and it’s something that we don’t think about. But once I read about them, I realized that they are kind of obvious. They are all laws that are only obvious once stated.
The third thing that I found most interesting about chapter 3 is the canonic perspective. The canonic perspective is what most people automatically view when they are asked to think about a common object. The example the book gives is a blender. If someone asks you to think about a blender or even draw a blender, you would most likely think as if you were looking straight at it on eye level. You would not think that you were viewing the blender from the top of it. This goes for all objects. This is really interesting to me much like the Gestalt laws were. This isn’t something that people consciously realize that they do. If I were asked to draw a cup and saucer (the example the book gives) I would draw it from the front. I would never think to draw it from the top or any other angle. The reason that this is, is that we see these objects so often like that, that that’s how they become stored in our memories. The view of the cup and saucer from the front gives the most information about that object. If we see a drawing that is looking down that the cup and saucer it would take us longer to recognize what the object is.
The thing that I found the least interesting to read about in chapter 3 was the information about the Geon theory. The term “Geon” is short or “geometrical ions”. The theory states that we know a certain amount of shapes. These shapes that we know can be put together to make forms of everything around us. For example: a square with a triangle on top of it is the universal sign for a house. The little squares in the bigger square would represent windows. It is a pretty simple concept. The reason that it was my least favorite part of this chapter was because I think everything is more complicated than that. It is simple to explain things and see things in their simpler forms. If you break everything down into shapes, it makes it easier. But there are so many more complicated things in the world than houses that look like squares with triangles on top. It’s almost as if I feel this concept is too simple. And maybe it’s because I think that the world is a very complicated place. This theory does make things easier to understand, and it’s easy to interpret, but I just don’t see how there isn’t more to everything than shapes.
I think all of this chapter will be really helpful in my learning about cognitive psychology. There are a lot of really good concepts about perception. There are good concepts about why we see things the way we do. And there are many different theories and perspectives. I think the main things I will take from this chapter are the things I wrote about in this blog. I have learned a lot about the canonic perspective, Gestalt psychology and it’s laws, and the different between direct perception and constructive perception. All of these topics helped me to understand why we perceive things the way we perceive things. I also know now that there are so many different ways to perceive things. These are never really concepts or ideas that the average person thinks about and considers throughout the day. But in reading these chapters, I am starting to become more and more aware of how our cognitive processes work.
This chapter built on the last chapter in a lot of ways. The last chapter (chapter 3) was all about sensation, perception, and attention. All of the topics discussed in chapter 4 are things that go more in depth with what was discussed in chapter 3. Everything discussed in chapter 4 has to do with perception. It is all about the different types of perception, the different theories of perception, and the different perspectives.
I would really like to learn more about the canonic perspective. This was a very interesting topic to me and I think that it’s something I could really get in to. I would like to learn about specific studies that were done with the different drawing. I would also like to learn more about who came up with this perspective and started these studies. I really like how all of this information about the canonic perspective is obvious, but never thought of. I would like to know who came up with the ideas about the canonic theory and why.
When I was reading this chapter I was mainly thinking about how in depth all of this information was. I really enjoyed that aspect of this chapter. Chapter 3 was really interesting for me to read. And I feel like chapter 4 was similar to all of the information in chapter 3, but it was much more in depth. Also, there were several times where I thought to myself, “Well… ya – that’s obvious.” There were a lot of things that seemed like common sense to me. Things that happen when I perceive things every day. But I never realized that it was a subconscious task until I read further and further into the chapter. I was reading information that I felt like I had previously known, but I had never learned any of it in my other classes.

Terms: Constructive Perception; Direct Perception; Gestalt Psychology; Laws of Proximity, Similarity, Closure, Symmetry, Continuity, and Common Fate; Canonic Perspectives; Geon Theory; Geometrical Ions; Cognitive Psychology

While reading this chapter there were plenty of sections that were interesting to me. The section on Depth perception was interesting because I have learned a little about depth perception in other classes, so it was cool to see it in another context. Another section that I found interesting was the section on symmetry. There were some key points throughout the section that made me understand a little more about symmetry. The last section that I thought was interesting was the section on top down versus bottom up processing. This was a new topic to me so I did not quite understand what the section was about at first, but made much more sense after reading. The way that this section is laid out made it easier for me to understand what I see in everyday life, and how what my cognitive process is. A topic that I did not like throughout the chapter was the section on feature analysis. I did not understand the section that much, and had a few questions while reading. The example that the book talked about was the word arrow and how people see the two vertical lines and then another line going through. I tried to picture this and it did not make sense. I will also talk about how this chapter helped in my understanding of cognitive psychology, how the chapter related to the last, what was the most interesting section, and then some thoughts that I had while reading the section.

I liked the section on depth perception because I had learned about the topic in a developmental class that I had taken. The section was not very long, but I found the information easy to comprehend. My developmental class talked about depth perception relating to babies. When in the early stages of development a baby will crawl across a glass to get to the other side. When depth perception develops in a child it will not cross the glass plane to get to the other side because it notices that there is a change in depth and may fall in between the two stages. The example that the book talked about was two children that are hunting a goat. The goat is far away and looks smaller than the two children hunting. What the book says is that the animal is the same size as the children but depth perception makes it hard to notice. What scientists goal was to make depth perception easy to understand to an alien species. The scientist created a silhouette of the three characters in the picture and used a numerical system to help demonstrate depth perception. This was even difficult to portray, and further clarifies how lucky we are as humans with our ability to detect depth in space.

The next section that I found was interesting was on symmetry. What made this section interesting to me was the pictures that are on the page of the bird, horse, and the human. None of these pictures are full pictures. When I say full I mean that none of the pictures have complete lines to them. The bird is made up of incomplete lines, but what my brain did when I looked at the pictures was connect those lines. This is because continuity allows the brain to connect lines that sometimes come to a complete stop. Another trick that our brain makes is common fate. This means that things going in the same direction belong to each other. The example that the book gives is a flock of birds. Even though the birds are not connected our brain will think that the birds are a complete line. The example that came to my mind relating to this section was putting in golf. I can create a line in my head that leads to the cup. I know that there is no line to begin with that would be ideal for the continuity theory, but it is along the same concept. When lining up a a putt I can draw I line from my ball to the cup. I believe that this starts at an early age. Another example that I could think of when relating to developmental psychology was that babies recognize better with faces that are more symmetrical. The book talks about that people believe that faces are fairly symmetrical. This belief is false because as the book states and with the example of Otto's face, faces are often times unsymmetrical. The reason that we think that most faces are symmetrical is that our eyes are constantly trying to form things into symmetry.

The next section that I enjoyed reading about was the section on bottom up versus top down processing. At first the concept was confusing to me but as a read further along I began to understand more completely. The debate is whether it is primarily initiated by a hypothesis about the whole, which leads to its identification and subsequent recognition of the parts. The scientist came to conclusion that most recognition is the equal sum of both top down and bottom up processing. The example that is given is how can someone recognize a face without seeing the ear, nose, or eyes. Or how can someone recognize a face without seeing the structure of the face? The researcher from Harvard that the book talks about says that people recognize features. And that people but parts into figural patterns. She states that this is hard for children to do, and most take time to develop this task. Often when it comes to facial recognition in court cases, children tend to mess up faces especially when there is a clothing item with the person such as a scraf. Children see the scraf and think that if that scraf is put on another face that the two faces are the same because they both are wearing the scraf.

Now that I reread the section on feature analysis it is actually kind of cool. It was not the easiest for me to figure out at first, but now makes more sense. Feature analysis is a higher level of processing than most object recognition that the chapter previously talked about. The example that the book gave was the word arrow. The theory states that we do not first think of the definition while reading the word arrow, but what we see is lines in the word arrow. The letter A in the word arrow is broken down into to horizontal lines that have a vertical line that intersects those lines. This did not make sense to me because the idea seemed to be absurd. I could not make sense of the theory until the next example that the book talked about. The book said that when a tennis ball is coming in for us to swing at we only have a half second to react, and in that time we have to judge the size and how fast it is going. So it makes more sense that in the arrow case that our brain picks up on the smallest of detail such as the struture of the letter first. Another example that I could think of was a baseball. When a picture delivers a baseball a hitter only has a small amount of time to react to the pitch. In the time that batter has to judge if the ball is going straight or is curving. If the ball is high or low. Feature analysis would suggest that in the time the ball is coming in that the hitter has already made the judgement, and chooses to swing or not. I guess that this section was more interesting than I thought, and was much easier to understand once I reread about it.

I think that this chapter is useful in me understanding cognitive psychology in the sense that I now more about how my brain functions. The area of cognitive psychology is interesting to me because once I have read a chapter I have that much more understanding of how my brain works. The section on symmetry was probably the most helpful because it is something that I probably encounter everyday. There are plenty of things that I encounter visually that I connect together even though they come to a stop just because my brain believes it should do so. This can either be involuntary or voluntary.

I think that this book does a great job of building off previous chapters. It does a good job in the sense that the functions become more developed. In the first couple of chapters the book talked about the areas of the brain, but now we are learning about the functions that those areas of the brain use. Things are becoming more advanced as I am reading, but it becomes more and more interesting to read about. An example that I can think of is that last chapter the book talked about the eye. The basic simply structures of the eye. In this chapter the book talks about the eye reorganizing things to make them more symmetrical.

I want to learn more about gestalt theory. I know that I did not talk about it in my blog. I read about gestalt theory in history and systems, so I was familiar with the idea, but it was interesting to read about the topic when it related to cognitive psychology. I think that further research on the topic in my topical blog may be in the future.

Ideas that I had while reading the chapter came in the form of examples. When I was reading about depth perception and symmetry I remembered some of the other classes that I had taken here at UNI and tried to relate the idea to the idea discussed in the chapter. A question that I had while reading was how this relates to the court systems. When a child is on the stand is is asked to point out a face does the court know that the child might not be able to do so because the feature analysis might not have developed for them?

terms: depth perception, gestalt theory, symmetry, continuity, common fate, bottom up versus top down, feature analysis, features,

The first thing I found interesting in Chapter 4 were the ideas of continuity and common fate. The chapter defines continuity as allowing our mine to continue a pattern even after the pattern physically stops; the chapter says common fate suggests things going in the same direction belong together and therefore should be grouped together. I think these terms are interesting because it makes me consider the question of nature and nurture. One could argue that we were born with these abilities to continue patterns and make sense of such things, but on the other side, it is possibly, like many things, the brain is not doing much work here and our learned behaviors (nurture) are so strong that it only makes sense we could have these types of abilities. I guess a good way to know this for sure would be to test young children, somehow, on the subject.

The second thing I found most interesting in Chapter 4 was the cognition in everyday life section about face recognition. This section talks about how humans are capable of remembering thousands of faces in our lifetime and how this is possible through specialized neurons in our brain. The section continues on to talk about how computers now can recognize faces through breaking the face down to thousands of pixels. These types of computers are used by places like casinos and other places of public gathering. I found this interesting because I was mostly unaware of this type of technology and it kind of scares me. With the advanced technology our world is now seeing, I start to feel like I am losing any privacy I think I have. However, I can see the benefit of computers that have the ability to recognize faces.

The third thing I found particularly interesting in Chapter 4 was the prototype matching theory. The book says prototype matching is an alternative to template matching. The chapter says prototype matching happens when some kind of abstraction of patterns is stored in the memory and that abstraction serves as a prototype. So, when your brain sees a patter and the prototype already exists, your brain will recognize it. The book then goes on to explain that prototype matching is more relevant to humans than template matching. I found this interesting because when I was reading about template matching, I did not necessarily agree. I was puzzled until the prototype matching was introduced, which I agreed with more.

The part of Chapter 4 I found least interesting was the geon theory. I am not sure if I found this un-interesting or if I just do not agree with the theory. I do not feel that we make sense of the world by combing different shapes together. The theory just seems a little off to me. Maybe with further research I could understand the concept more and be more accepting of it.

There were so many parts of this chapter that I felt would be useful in understanding cognitive psychology. There are so many theories presented in Chapter 4 about the same topics. I think the theories work well together and build on each-other nicely, which is definitely helpful in understanding different topics in cognitive psychology.

The topic I am most interesting in learning more about in Chapter 4 is the geon theory, as I mentioned earlier. Because I am so skeptical of this theory, I think I would benefit from researching the topic further. I am hoping there are some informational and interesting videos or articles about the topic, further explaining it and proving this theory to be true.

Something that kept popping up in my mind throughout Chapter 4 was, once again, the question of nature and nurture. Chapter 4 presented many theories in a very scientific, logical way. It seems as though there was no consideration of nurture in any of these theories. Maybe there was small mention of the topic, but not much. I just keep wondering how many of these theories are correctable by adding the idea of nurture. I am aware perception is a very scientific topic that involves a lot of brain activity, but there must be room for nurture that was not mentioned in Chapter 4.

Terms: Continuity, Common Fate, Theory, Face Recognition, Prototype Matching, Template Matching, Geon Theory, Nature vs. Nurture

1) One topic I found to be interesting is constructive perception and direct perception. What helped me understand more about this is how perception was explained as a combination of how our sensory system brings in information using our senses, and also what we have learned through experiences we have had. So stimuli are coming together with a person’s memory, whereas direct perception is the stimuli and the information it holds. I feel like much of our perception comes from constructive perception, because going through life we experience so much which much goes to our memory, which is also how we gain information. For example constructive perception when riding a roller coaster we feel, see, and hear what is happening, if a person screams and is scared of the roller coaster and pukes after, their perception of such a ride might be a negative one.
2) The second topic I found interesting was the section on the Gestalt Theory and symmetrical images. These psychologists say that humans look for symmetry when looking at or for patterns. I thought it was interesting how the book talked about how most people think of the face as symmetric, but it actually has asymmetrical features. Our mind is able to use continuity. It is able to continue patterns even after the actual image stops.
3) Another topic I found interesting was the topic of bottom-up versus top-down processing. I have never read about this topic before. According to the text, some theorists believe that we see parts and wholes of objects from top-down and bottom-up directions simultaneously. I liked the example that was given in the book about how children have problems understanding their visual perception and recognition of a person’s face, like adults do. When seeing a person’s face for the first time or one that they have not seen very much, they take objects they have seen before on someone they know and use that as their reference, which makes them think they know the person when they really don’t. By just seeing pieces of a face at a time, such as an eye, nose, ear, ect., a person is unable to gain recognition by just that sight alone. Visual perception needs more features put together to be able to recognize the physical features.
4) One topic that I found to be least interesting was the prototype formation section. I’m not really sure why I found this least interesting; I just kept rereading it over, because I was having a hard time staying focused.
5) In this chapter, I think that the section on constructive perception. I feel that this is important, because it explains how both stimuli and senses along with a person’s experiences affect our perception on things. We gain memories from everything we do, so the environment has a huge impact on our lives.
6) This builds on from previous chapters, because it gets more into detail about perception, and the different types of perceptions such as constructive and direct perception, along with how the brain processes the information.
7) I would like to learn more about constructive perception, because I want to learn more about how the brain breaks down the stimuli, and how both that and the environment affects our experiences.
8) One thing I thing I thought of when talking about the bottom-up, was if I could recognize my significant others nose for example out of a few people. I also understand the constructive perception section, because I know that both my senses and the environment have an effect on my perception, because the stimuli in the environment affects our senses, which helps us create memories.
9) Bottom-up, top-down processing, perception, constructive perception, direct perception, stimuli, Gestalt Theory, symmetry, continuity

1.
a. I found canonic perspectives as an interesting topic from the chapter.
b. I think it is cool how your mind creates images of things when you think of it. To be able to recall an image of an item is very useful in life. If you are looking for something you can’t really find it if you don’t know what it looks like. If you are thinking of things you kind of want, to be able to recall what you need to get what you are doing done. You have to be able to recall a lot of things in your life and being able to have the skill of canonic perspective. I like when I think of an object that it comes to mind so I can be more aware of what I am thinking of. When our mind has the ability to recall the images we use in our everyday lives, it makes our lives much easier to live. Without canonic perspective we wouldn’t be able to explain how things look when they come to mind. Everyone would talk to others saying “the thingy that does that thing, so you can have that hot liquid.” That would make life a lot harder to have conversations of things in common when we can’t tell what anyone is talking about.
2.
a. I like template matching because it makes it easier for us to recognize things.
b. Being able to realize that the stimuli that you are looking at are really something you know what is, is a good thing. Agnosia is when you find difficult to be able to recognize objects. I like being able to recognize objects that are around me. Being able to have our minds pass electrical signals through neurons that make synapses fire, that pass knowledge through our brain so that we can realize our surroundings. I really think we are lucky to be able to recognize the objects around us. Life would be way harder without template matching, because we wouldn’t be able to recognize anything important around us. So in that right we would never have any idea of the things around us doing anything important because we would never have any idea of the things around us doing anything important because we wouldn’t recognize objects that are around us. Objects that have meanings to other things and other people. Template matching is very important to have as a skill, or rather a processing system.
3.
a. I like how the grandmother cell works, because it helps us know the people around us. And personally I enjoy knowing all the people around me.
b. Ever wondered what it would be like to never know anyone around you ever? It wouldn’t be a good experience. Prosopagnosia is not being able to recognize faces. So you would have a very hard time knowing that random person who walks up and stars talking to you on the street because their grandmother cell is functioning perfectly fine and they realize that you two graduated high school together. Now, having a functioning grandmother cell is a great thing, firstly because you will recognize that random person, and secondly because you wouldn’t have an awkward situation to deal with. I really like that my grandmother cell is functioning because not recognizing all the people that I care for would really not be very fun.
4.
a. I didn’t find the lateral inhibition very interesting.
b. The way that lateral inhibition is explained is very hard to remember because the information to get from the page to the brain. I get how it actually works, but that doesn’t mean I like how it actually works, but that doesn’t mean I like how it is working in the Brain. Our brain is very odd in its functioning systems in the brain. Some times when you are looking at objects you see some lines that aren’t there. The things that happens is your eyes sees the objects (lines) that aren’t actually there.
5. I think that the grandmother cell is very important to cognitive psychology. I think this because with the grandmother cell we can tell all the infamous people in psychology and many other fields. That is why the grandmother cell is so important.
6. This chapter builds on the last because they integrate illusions work in the brain. Life is very interesting with the illusions that are created by our brain. It also shows how the brain functions and weather things are top-down processed or bottom-up processing.
7.
a. I would like to learn more about the grandmother cell.
b. I really liked the content on the grandmother cell, so learning more about it would be fun. It would also let me know more about how the brain processes faces.
8. I thought about how a lot of the parts of this chapter intertwine to make an interesting mix of knowledge that is shared now with us.
9. Illusions, top-down processing, bottom-up processing, grandmother cell, lateral inhibition, Prosopagnosia, synapses, Agnosia, stimuli, template matching, canonic perspectives

1.One thing I found interesting in this chapter was Gestalt's theory of object recognition and the several different components that make it up. This is a direct perception theory which argues that our perceptions of the world subjective due to the fact that our brains seek "simple, familiar figures of good form in our environment, also known as Pregnanz. Pattern organization of stimuli is a major area of this theory and it is believed that some patterns are naturally organized. The Gestalt theory provides a number of components that explain why and how we perceive stimuli in certain patterns. The proximity of objects and their patterns effects the different ways that the same stimuli can be perceived. I found it extremely interesting to think about the number of different ways the same stimuli can be processed and perceived simply due to differences in how they are organized and arranged. I think it is amazing how human brain generally use other processes such as closure, symmetry, continuity, and common fate to allow for us to perceive stimuli and objects in a particular way. The ability to do this allows for us to recognize a vast amount of stimuli that does not necessarily precisely match what we have seen or known before.

2. Another commonality among human brains and perspective that I found to be interesting was the canonic perspective. This is the perspective that comes to mind during recall because it is the best representation of the thing that is being recalled. This perception forms from experience with that object in the past. The perception of that object which becomes the canonic perspective is that which is most commonly experienced and generally is the perspective that gives the most information about the object. The experiment with the cup and saucer sketches from around the world was really eye opening. I really enjoyed seeing the examples of the cup and saucer sketches as well as the horse recognition experiment for this concept. It really helped to show how canonic perspectives function and why they form to the certain perspective. More information is available in these perspectives which allows for recognition to happen faster, which of course makes it the most advantageous perspective to have readily available for recall.

3. I found it interesting to learn and understand the difference between prototype matching and template matching theories of object recognition. Template matching gives explanation as to how our brains make precise distinctions between two similar stimuli and objects. This theory argues that our brains have an extremely large number of internal representations which allow for us to recognize incoming stimuli by making a complete match to that existing template. The trouble with this is that even the slightest difference in the stimuli from the created template would cause failure of recognition. Many argue that this would make it hard for our brains to possibly recognize everything that we do so easily, even with variations in aspects of the stimuli. This is where the prototype theory shines. The prototype theory argues that the internal representations are more abstract in pattern than compared to those in the template theory. This allows for the brain to recognize stimuli that resemble the prototype rather than solely recognizing the stimuli that match the representation one hundred percent. The argument against this powers template theory asking how we make distinctions between two objects such as the different between the letters O and Q which are quite similar but have two completely different meanings. I would be very interested in further research about which of these two theories gains more support or if a completely new theory comes about to trump them both.

4. This has been one of my favorite chapters thus far and so to say a chapter was the least interesting is difficult. The part of the chapter that was the least interesting to me was the section on pattern recognition among experts. The ending outcome which showed the importance of meaningful context and grouping for memory and perception is important for this chapter and fit well, but I did not get into the example as much as I did the others provided in this chapter. Not being a chess player allowed for me to understand how the experts were able to better group the pieces but I feel as though there could be a better example that better relates to a larger variety of readers. I did still enjoy learning the main points of the section that were presented.

5. I think that understanding the differences between bottom up and top down processing is useful in understanding cognitive psychology. Bottom up processing first recognizes parts of the pattern and object and uses that as a basis to recognize the whole pattern and object. Top down processing first recognizes the whole pattern and object and then uses that information to break down and recognize the pieces and parts of the pattern and object. These are processes that are not simply used for object recognition, but in almost all areas of cognition and processing of stimuli. I anticipate seeing these processes mentioned again in later chapters. It is a constant debate as to whether we understand and process information as a whole or as pieces first to get a complete understanding and perception of the stimuli presented to us.

6. This chapter directly builds onto the previous chapter which laid out the groundwork of perception and the basic understanding of the overall process. This chapter branched off and dove deeper into the specific aspect of object recognition through perception. The chapter continued to reinforce that the perceptions that are brains produce do not always match what truly is in the real world. Examples of how our brain creates illusions and perceptions of things that are not truly are fully there are given in this chapter. This chapter also added onto the section previously discussed about neurons. We previously learned that neurons that are fired more often become stronger which is similar to what happens for perceived features. Frequently perceived features are the ones that are more likely to be stored in memory and become the canonic perspective. Another aspect that was continued on in this chapter was the study of split brain patients to show function of each hemisphere of the brain. It was found that the left hemisphere is more important for pattern recognition while the right hemisphere is more important for the analysis of spatial information.

7. I would like to learn about how and to what degree individual people's perceptions differ from one another. Reading about how processes shape our perceptions of stimuli makes me want to know if most of this is done universally among humans as a species or if there is variation and to what degree if so. As mentioned in the chapter, one culture that is used to seeing boxes perceived a incomplete figure to be a box while other cultures that do not see boxes as frequently may not. How often does this occur and to what extent?

8. One thing that I thought about while reading this chapter was how different the actual world is compared to the perceptions that we create of it. Seeing all of the different ways that our minds complete the stimuli and manipulate them to create our perceptions makes me curious as to things such as what do people's faces truly look like, especially my own. It also made me think about how reliable witnesses for events truly are due to the way that environment and past experiences and knowledge can effect how things are recognized. Knowing from previous classes and discussion that eye witness testimony is not as reliable as once thought, this chapter had me pondering why that is and what mistakes witnesses can make without realizing or intending to do so.

9. Terms Used- Gestalt theory, direct perception, Pregnanz, perception, pattern organization, proximity, closure, symmetry, continuity, common fate, canonic perspective, prototype matching, template matching, stimuli, cognition, top down processing, bottom up processing

1) Eye Fixation was very interesting to me for in the book showed a study in which a psychologist showed people a picture and then showed the subsequent eye movements. They were instructed to then analyze this picture for things like class of the individuals, their ages, their clothing, etc. Their eye movements were recorded and displayed in the book. It was fascinating to see how depending on what they were asked to look for, eye movements were different. For instance, when first shown the picture, the participant’s eye movements showed the most amount of movement, and was all over the page. However, when asked what they thought the people were doing before the arrival of their visitors, the eye movement is limited to a small part of the picture. Research mentioned that when we have a context for a relationship by the feature, the eyes tend to stay fixed on it. Also, when given goals, the eyes stay fixed on reaching that goal. The perception of features doesn’t only depend on the physical part of it, but also incorporates cognitive function such as memory, attention, and goals.

2) Pseudomemory I have heard stories in which individuals, especially when in high stress situations, tend to remember things that aren’t true. I have taken psy law before, and in the class we talked about pseudomemory. We talked about it quite a bit and gave several examples, but reading about this in this chapter explained how this happens much more to a person. Pseudomemory is what happens when we identify with certain characteristics, as it is something that we see a lot. In an experiment, participants falsely recognized the prototype as previously seen with greater confidence, then the actual prototype that was actually seen. The lines and features of the human face are stored in our memory, and the strength of this memory is based on the frequency in which we see these traits. This would help explain why we tend to remember some people’s faces more than others, as we see common features and are able to store that in our memory.

3) Prototype matching I found this explanation of why we recognize objects to be the most interesting to me, as well as it made the most sense. Prototype matching is an abstraction of stimulus patterns stored in longer term memory against which similar patterns are evaluated in terms of how closely they fit the model. Meaning, when we see an object, we use stored patterns to see if we recognize what the object is. This would explain why even in unusual patterns, we are able to pick out pieces that are recognizable. The book gave a great example of how this works, with letters of the alphabet. There are many different fonts that can be used to write the letter S, but we are still able to recognize that it is an s, even if the font is one we haven’t seen before.

4) The Gestalt theory, I have read about it over and over in several other psychology classes, but I feel as it I just really never understood it very well.

5) What I feel will be useful in understanding Cog Psychology would just be how our brain interprets new information is important to understanding why humans perceive things the way they do. We see new stimuli and try to match it with stimuli previously seen. Context is also an important piece of how we interpret information, as well.

6) This chapter relates to the other chapters by going into much more detail of perceiving and recognizing our world.

7) Pseudomemory I find to be the most interesting topic that I would possibly like to learn more about I learned of a case in which a man was sent to prison for many years, for a crime he didn’t commit, based on false identification. Even when the person who actually committed the crime was shown to the woman, she still identified the first individual. Not only are we searching for characteristics that look familiar; we also are going to only recognize the face we identified as being the one, once that is in our memory, even if it is false.

8) While reading this chapter, I tried applying the concepts to how I also perceive something and it helps me make sense of the concepts.

Terms: eye fixation, eye movement, pseudomemory, prototype memory, gestalt theory.

1a) What did you find interesting?
I found the section on bottom-up versus top-down processing.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I like this section because it is interesting to think about. Do we see the pieces of a face first and know it is a face or do we see a face and then know the pieces that come along with it? I also thought the part about children seeing familiar items and thinking they know the person was interesting. This section was easy to relate to because I can relate to going into a room, such as a kitchen or an office and expecting to see a fridge or a desk.
2a) What did you find interesting?
I also thought the concept of Pseudomemory was interesting.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
Pseudomemory is when a prototype is formed on the basis of frequently experienced features. I think it is interesting that certain features of something get stored in your memory and then once you see those features again, they help you recognize an object. I also thought this section was interesting because of how they tied it into police work and what it takes to identify a witness. It got me thinking of what it takes to sketch a witness just from what somebody else can recall about them.
3a) What did you find interesting?
Lastly, I thought that the idea of a grandmother cell was interesting.
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
It is cool to think that a single neuron may fire when it receives visual signals constituting someone familiar to them. I liked this idea and thought it was interesting because it was the whole basis for the chapter. I also think it is interesting to think about how we know someone looks familiar. Is there a template in our mind that only a certain person fits? Is there a generalized prototype allowing us to recognize that certain person under certain circumstances?
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
The one thing I found least interesting in this chapter was the section on the Geon Theory.
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I did not like this section because it bored me and I kept losing focus. I don’t really remember what the Geon Theory was because I got bored with reading the section. This theory seems too confusing and too elaborate as well. I am also still unsure of what a geon is.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
I think the thing that I read in this chapter that will be the most useful to me in my understanding of Cognitive Psychology is the information on visual pattern recognition. I think this will be the most useful information to me because this is what most of the chapter was about and it was mentioned that this will come up later in the book so this is obviously an important concept to understand in Cognitive Psychology.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter built very well on the last chapter because it talked about visual perception. The last chapter focused heavily on visual perception, such as the discussion on selective attention. The last chapter also expanded on auditory and this chapter expanded on the visual side of things.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about how we process if someone looks familiar to us.
7b) Why?
I am interested to know if we use bottom-up processing or top-down processing.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
This chapter got me thinking about how I see things. When I go into a certain room, I expect to see a specific item or when I look at something, it is easier for me to identify it if I am looking at it from an angle I am used to looking at it from. Little things like that made it easy for me to relate to the information in this chapter.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Bottom-up processing, top-down processing, Pseudomemory, grandmother cell, neuron, Geon theory, visual pattern recognition, selective attention

1. Something that was interesting was canonic perspectives. I find it interesting that when asked to picture something very simple, most humans would come up with the same general view. The book gives the example of a blender, and how most people would “pull up” a picture of a blender from the front, at a slight angle. The book shows how the only experiments that have been used to test this theory asked participants to draw a cup and saucer. Most people drew (to the best of their ability) a cup on a saucer from the front at a slight angle to show the depth (called an exemplar). However, with all experiments there are some outliers, as the book shows of one of the participant’s drawings from a bird’s eye view.
2. Another thing that I found mildly interesting in this chapter were the ideas of bottom-up and top-down processing. As I was first reading through it sounded as though the two are separate and represent the functionality of two opposing theories, however I found it interesting that in most perceptual cases they have to work together to give full meaning to a perception. Bottom-up processing is basically the idea that you take in the stimulus, and build up what you know from that stimulus. Top-down processing is almost the opposite where you take information you know about a stimulus and apply it during the process of building a perception. The two best examples of these come from optical illusions. The Herman Grid Illusion works mainly on bottom-up processing (black and white grid lines where you see gray spots at the intersections), and the Dalmatian Dog Illusion is mainly top-down processing (where you see black and white spots until someone tells you that it is a Dalmatian dog at a park, and your brain organizes the information into the dog.)
3. One of the other things I found interesting in chapter four was the idea of pseudomemory. I find it fascinating that your brain can create a memory so strong that it actually fools you into believing that it truly happened. Every time I think of the pseudomemory phenomenon, I think of the experiment that my Psych 1001 professor did with us where she would give a list of words relating to windows (glass, pane, curtains, sun, etc) but she never actually said “window”. Then she would have all of us write down as many words as we could remember, and almost a third of the class had the word window.
4. To be completely honest, I found the majority of this week’s chapter extremely boring. Many of the theories were boring and complex, which is unusual for me. I usually find most of the chapter interesting and have a hard time picking only three things to write about, but this week I found almost all of the theories boring and tedious to read.
5. I think that almost of the information in this chapter is extremely important to the understanding of cognitive psychology because so much of it has to do with our visual perceptions, which is where most of our information about the world comes into the brain. However, if I had to choose one concept from the chapter I would say bottom-up and top-down processing, because I believe that foundation information is extremely important. Without understanding the very basis of perception, it is impossible to gain any higher knowledge about it, and even if you do have that knowledge it is far less meaningful if you can’t explain why something happens.
6. One of the major ways that this chapter builds on the last few is the focus on perception and cognition as a team. This chapter in great detail explains the perceptive process that has only been touched on in past chapters to help explain cognitive patterns. The perceptive process is complex and probably the most frequent higher process that we perform, and this chapter explains how cognition works to make sense of our perceptions.
7. I would personally be interested in learning more about pseudomemory and understanding how the brain is able to essentially fool itself.
8. One of the things that I have pondered in the last few chapters have been who comes up with all of the optical illusions that they present. And also, how do you create an optical illusion without completely freaking out your own brain.
9. canonic perspectives, exemplar, bottom-up and top-down processing, stimulus, The Herman Grid Illusion, Dalmatian Dog Illusion, pseudomemory, cognitive psychology, visual perceptions, perception, cognition, perceptive process, cognitive patterns, higher process, optical illusions

1.A. Constructive Perception.
B. I found constructive perception to be interesting due to what this school of thought asserts about our brain’s processing power. With direct perception and it’s bottom up approach, we experience everything directly. Constructive perception asserts that our memory and knowledge actually influences how we view an object. I also find it interesting if one applies the concept of constructive perception to other areas. With respect to audibly hearing an argument, (even a short one with two premises and a conclusion) I think it is interesting to think about if there is a similar direct and constructive process that people may go through.

2.A. Top Down Processing.
B. I found top down processing to be interesting because of its ability to inform how we view the world. With this type of processing we first recognize an object or as the text describes it the whole. This type of processing explains why we make mistakes when we see things. For example it would be plausible to see a four legged furry creature from a distance and due to a combination of constructive perception and top down processing, believe we see a dog. Then, upon getting much closer one could realize this is actually racoon. However it is doubtful that bottom up processing is entirely overriden by top down processing otherwise our building perceptions of previously unseen objects would be bizare or impossible.

3.A. Geon Theory.
B. Geon theory purports that we interpret objects by parsing them for specific shapes. I find this interesting because the way the text describes it, it appears as though this construct is universal to all humans. This would likely entail that our brains are a priori wired to see the world in this manner. It also entails that we have limited choice in how we percieve objects and interpret visual stimuli. It’s also interesting just how many of shapes different combinations of geons can make. The text says three with all possible combinations can make a total of 1.4 billion 3 geon objects.

4. Template Matching.
I found tmeplate matching to be uninteresting due to repition within the chapter. There is some amount of similarity between certain concepts in this chapter. For example constructive perception and direct perception are related to top down and bottom up processes. With respect to the theories of object recognition that make up the chapter template matching did not seem as interesting as the less specific but broader theoris such as top down and bottom up processing.

5. Bottom up vs top down processing.
B. I feel this is the most important as all of the mini theories that make up either camp have something meanigful to say about how we percieve objects and patterns.

6. The last chapter was all about the 5 sensory inputs in a broad way. This chapter focuses specifically on building off of what previous information was deliniated about visual perception.
7. Template processing. I feel that this theory is key to understanding top down processing. I felt like I personally needed more examples to understand the concept. As a result it is something that I feel I need to learn more about.

8. While reading this chapter I thought a lot about how these concepts might relate to facial perception and prejudice. I also wondered if in future chapters we will learn about theories of the other senses that have parrallels with visual perception theories.

9. Perception, template processing, bottom up, top down, constructive perception, direct perception, geon,

1. The first thing that I found interesting in the chapter was the section on subjective organization. I found this section interesting because it expanded upon the subject of illusions from chapter 3. The subject of illusory contours is brought up in this discussion as one of the methods cognitive psychologists use to study perception. The Kanizsa Triangle example used in the explanation of illusory contours was particularly interesting and a good example of how the phenomenon works. Lateral inhibition is also used to explain why this illusion occurs and it is one of the things that came to mind while I was reading the example due to the fact that the subject came up when I was in biopsychology as well.

2. The section on Gestalt Theory was also very interesting to me. Things such as pattern organization have always been interesting to me. I've always wondered why we interpret things the way we do and throughout my college career and especially thanks to classes such as this one, that question has slowly been answered over time. Things such as proximity, symmetry and closure are all interesting explanations of pattern recognition and the example brought up with face interpretation is also very interesting as I also find eyewitness identification to be an interesting subject and wonder how these things may influence that.

3. The third thing that I found interesting was prototype matching and pseudomemory. I found this interesting also due to my interest in eyewitness identification. The experiment by Solso and McCarthy was a particularly interesting example of these subjects as it studied the subject directly. It is also interesting to think about how our own memory of things may be distorted and how much we can trust our own recollections.

4. Much like last week, I didn't find anything uninteresting in the chapter and had a difficult time picking out 3 things to list as the most interesting in the chapter.

5. I don't think that I can pick just one thing that will be the most useful in understanding cognitive psychology. All of the information and theories presented in the chapter are very interesting and I feel that they are also all important and build upon each other and the information presented in the previous chapters. So, I'm going to cheat and say the whole chapter will be useful.

6. This chapter expands upon how the brain interprets visual information, which relates well to the subjects presented in chapter 3 related to sensation, perception and attention. The subject of illusions was also brought up again and expanded in this chapter.

7. If I had to pick one thing to learn more about from this chapter I think it would have to be the experiment performed by Solso and McCarthy relating to facial recognition and pseudomemory. I have already stated multiple times that I find the subject of eyewitness identification and facial recognition to be interesting and this experiment sounded particularly interesting to me while I was reading about it. The chapter gave a fairly good review of the experiment but I would like to find out if any information was left out of the chapter's review of the subject and also look at other experiments that have been done on the subject.

8. The main thing that I thought about while reading the chapter was how the information related to the subject of eyewitness identification, like I've said many times at this point in my post.

Terms: subjective organization, illusions, illusory contours, perception, Kanizsa Triangle, lateral inhibition, Gestalt Theory, pattern organization, proximity, symmetry, closure, prototype matching, pseudomemory, sensation, attention

1a) What did you find interesting?
Pattern recognition
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
What interested me most about pattern recognition was the fact that we do this every day without thinking about it and it happens within fractions of a second. As humans our pattern recognition is very complex and it involves an interaction between many faculties to work. Some of the different faculties at work include sensation, perception, memory and a cognitive search for identification and clarification of the experience. I remember from last chapter how much information is constantly being flooded into our perceptional field and the fact that our pattern and object recognition is so finely tuned really amazes me.
2a) What did you find interesting?
Closure and symmetry.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
Sometimes patterns or stimuli are classified the same by a number of people, this may occur when an image is left slightly unfinished and your brain fills in the holes for you. This filling in of the holes allows you to interpret the image and brings closure. According to Gestalt psychologists we look for symmetry when understanding patterns, especially if they are left unfinished. It is when objects in our environment are not symmetrical that they stand out. Most people often look for symmetry in the face/body of a potential mate as well. It is interesting to me how even though there are slight changes or differences in our environment the mind can cover them up or hide them from our perception so we see what we want to see or what we have been primed to see from past experiences.
3a) What did you find interesting?
Canonic perspectives
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
When we look at an image or see an object in our environment almost everyone forms a picture of that object in their mind’s eye. The interesting part is that almost everyone would picture the exact same image. The experiment within the book demonstrates how this works very well, individuals are told to imagine and then draw a blender or coffee cup, most if not all individuals tested drew a very similar representation of the object. The image they drew was a front on image of the objects with very small degrees of detail changed. The images that were drawn are known as canonic, these are the most recognizable perspectives of those objects. The coffee cup or blender could have been drawn from many different perspectives like looking down into the cup or from the bottom but the most recognizable view was the most chosen. These representations are formed through experience with similar stimuli called exemplars.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Font Perception
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
It is interesting that we are able to distinguish and still decipher the difference between the many fonts used in computer programs today but it was very brief and did not detail as much about how this is done.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding Cognitive Psychology?
This chapter talked a lot about object recognition, visual perception and distinguishing stimuli in the environment which is always helpful when navigating your daily life. The thing I was most blown away by was how much information our brain misses, fills in or just decides not to tell us.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter built on the previous chapters by going deeper into our perceptual abilities, more specifically vision. The previous chapter laid more of the groundwork for what was discussed in this chapter.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Geon theory
7b) Why?
This was an interesting topic to me because I had never heard of the theory before but also because it made me wonder about all the different shapes that I can’t see or distinguish as separate shapes from the ones I already know.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While I was reading this chapter I kept thinking about how many things in my immediate environment my mind shrugs off on an average day. Our brain in constantly being bombarded with information and it is a miracle to me that we are still able to function at such a high level with so much going on inside and out.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
- Geon theory, exemplars, canonic perspectives, closure, symmetry, pattern recognition, constructive perception, font perception

1a. I found the subject matter on ILLUSORY CONTOURS to be interesting. Illusory contours are forms that we see cognitively but actually do not physically exist in the stimulus. The forms tend be perceived in front of other shapes, not the background. The example given in the book is the Kaniza Triangle. It consists physically of a myriad of different shapes and it creates the illusion of a white triangle in the forefront that we perceive perceptually. The interesting thing is the perceptual triangle persists even after we cover up the shapes that create the illusion. The persistence of the perceptual triangle is a result of LATERAL INHIBITON in where adjacent neurons inhibit surrounding cells making the contours of the shape more defined.
1b. I found this interesting because the example in the book was so vivid and striking. I stared at the example for several minutes, not believing that it was an illusion. At first I thought the triangle was physically present, but when I covered up the surrounding shapes and looked closer I realized that it was really just blank white space and my mind created the contours of the triangle. It was one of the more interesting parts of the chapter.
2a. The concept of CANONIC PERSPECTIVES is rather interesting. A canonic perspective is the image we conjure up in our minds of any given object. For example think of what a chair looks like, the first image that pops into your head is your canonic perspective of a chair. The interesting thing about canonic perspectives is that we tend to see the object from a certain viewpoint, that is, if we envision a blender we see it in our mind as if we are looking at it straight on instead of from a bird’s eye view for instance. The image we create in our mind of an object has to do with EXEMPLARS that we have in our mind, or past images we have seen of that object. The really interesting part is that in a study they had people from all over the world draw a teacup on a dish and generally everyone drew the same teacup and dish from the same perspective.
2b. I found this interesting because of the example the showed. People from all over the world drew the same cup and before I even looked at the drawings the same image was conjured in my head. It makes me wonder if other representations, such as a chair or clock, would be similar across cultures.
3a. I found the conversation on top down vs. bottom up processing to be interesting. When we look at an object, say a clock, do we see the parts of the clock and then realize it is a clock (BOTTOM UP PROCESSING) or do we see the clock as a whole and then recognize its parts (TOP DOWN PROCESSING). The difficulties that arise from using purely one type of processing and not the other is called the parsing paradox. As the book mentions, how can we distinguish a face without recognizing its features first and how can we recognize its features without recognizing the face. What I think this section is alluding to is that we use these processes together.
3b. I found this topic interesting because there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer as to whether which kind of processing we use most. There seems to be a lot of debate in this area and it is something I may investigate further in the topical blog.
4a. If I had to choose something that was the least interesting to me I would say it was the section on eye movements and eye fixations.
4b. I found it least interesting because it started talking about vision on a cellular level, which is pretty dense reading.
5. The part from the chapter that will be most helpful I believe is all the different theories on how we process images and visuals. There are all these different models of processing out there and I believe we need to know about all the major ones in this field to have a really good understanding of how our perception of visuals might work and where to take to the research from this point as there seems to be no clear consensus on how we exactly attend to objects visually. From the reading it seems that is an interplay of various theories in different contexts that make up our visual processing.
6. This chapter continues to build our fundamental knowledge on Cognitive Psychology. While the previous chapters were more broad in scope this chapter seems to narrow itself to the specific topic of we recognize objects. The previous chapters discussed cognition as it related to various topics and now this chapter focuses specifically on our visual processing.
7. I would like to learn more about the different theories in Gestalt psychology regarding object recognition.
7b. I feel as if these theories are some of the most important in respect to visual processing and understanding them on a more comprehensive level would be beneficial to understanding this subject in general.
8. I thought about how I viewed the world and how I could recognize some these processes happening in my visual cognitive world.
9. Illusory contours, lateral inhibition, canonic perspectives, exemplars, bottom up/top down processing.

1)I found the gestalt theory to be interesting this is the way we organize and classify how visual stimuli was studied. Patterns of stimuli tend to be naturally organized. Gestalt laws are: law of proximity, similarity, closure, symmetry, continuity, and common fate. These are all about how we perceive things around us. On page 119 there is a line of dots depending on where the dots are place can put them to be totally things. Our first look at anything has a dominant way of how we see things until we view them again. The organization of a pattern is a natural function od the stimulus itself and is minimally related to past experiences with the object.
2)Canonic perspective is another are in this chapter that really caught my attention. In this perspective views are best represented an object or are the images that first come to mind when you recall a form. The example for the book they use is “blender” when you think of the word you see the item like it would be on the box. You wouldn’t be viewing the object from the top or the back of it. Instead you would think of it like others from the front. When viewing an object or a bunch of objects your reaction time is faster with a canonic view. This comes with recalling many things. I find it interesting how the mind reacts to such objects.
3)The third topic I found interesting was eye movement. I think it is interesting that the eye makes saccades that relate to visual information being extracted. The longer you stare at an object the more information you gain from it as opposed to just scanning a crossed it. We focus on the main details of something rather than just looking at the whole item. Looking at an object the more detailed the object is or has the most too it the more time we spend looking at it.
4) I thought that perceptual theories were not very interesting. I cannot say that I did not like that all together but it was not an easy read. This section just couldn’t keep my attention. I wasn’t my favorite part of this chapter.
5)I think just about everything in this chapter would be useful in cognitive psychology. Visual perceptions are very important to everyone. We see things and process lots of visual information every second.
6)This relates to other chapters because in previous chapters it has started with thinking and the brain. In this chapter it is a broken down part of the brain, which is vision. It also relates to how we interpret that items we are viewing.
7) I would like to learn more about pseudomemory. They found that people were more likely to falsely identify someone based on them having the same features as something previously seen. I think that this is really interesting that just because something looks fimilar that we assume it is it just based on the few features.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
9) Gestalt theory, law of proximity, similarity, closure, symmetry, continuity, and common fate, canonic perspective,


1)i really like Gestalt Psychology view on object recognition. i really think its neat how the brain sees things and tells you what youre seeing. the idea of patterns and proximinityI think it’s really interesting how our mind performs some of t. then how the brain fills in lines so that you can see the whole picture.
2)eye movement i thought was interesting. it is neat and interesting that the eye makes saccades that relate to visual information being extracted. the longer you look or stare at something the more stuff you learn about it then if you just take a quick look at it. maybe thats why i don't do so well in school
3)it’s awesome how our brain fills in parts of pictures that aren’t actually there.how this may be caused by lateral inhibition, where our retina causes accentuations of contours of images. also to think how evolutionary stuff may be the reason for our minds seeing things that aren’t necessarily there,

4)i never like this question cause for the most part i like it all
5)how the processes and understand things i think will be useful in looking at Cog. in a whole. its good to know that we are always learning new things and that there still may be hope for me and my outside the box mind

6)this chapter is very closely related to the previous chapter because it extends on the topic of perception and attention.

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