Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
1. Which of the following statements is NOT true about perception?
a. Perception occurs in conjunction with action.
b. Perception involves a process similar to problem solving.
c. Perception is affected by someone’s past experiences.
d. Perception remains stable over time.
ANSWER: d
2. According to your textbook, perception goes beyond the simple receipt of sensory information. It is involved in many
different cognitive skills. Which of the following is not one of those skills as noted by the chapter?
a. Solving problems
b. Experiencing neuromodulation
c. Communicating with other people
d. Answering questions
ANSWER: b
3. C
omputer programs have been designed that can recognize matching human faces with the same accuracy as a
human being, but the computer loses its efficiency at this process when
a. animal faces are substituted for human faces.
b. the faces are of children.
c. the faces are viewed from an angle.
d. the faces are of people with scars or deformities.
ANSWER: c
4. The task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on one's retina is called the
a. radiated wavelength paradox.
b. inverse projection problem.
c. serial location task.
d. fusiform face role.
ANSWER: b
5. Viewpoint ________ is the ability to recognize the same object even if it is seen from different perspectives.
a. consistency
b. resistance
c. constancy
d. invariance
ANSWER: d
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 1
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
6. The sequence of steps that includes the image on the retina, changing the image into electrical signals, and neural
processing is an example of _____ processing.
a. bottom-up
b. top-down
c. sequential
d. serial
ANSWER: a
7. If a word is identified more easily when it is in a sentence than when it is presented alone, this would be an example
of _____ processing.
a. top-down
b. bottom-up
c. serial
d. sequential
ANSWER: a
8. Maria took a drink from a container marked "milk." Surprised, she quickly spit out the liquid because it turned out the
container was filled with orange juice instead. Maria likes orange juice, so why did she have such a negative reaction
to it? Her response was most affected by
a. reception of the stimulus.
b. bottom-up processing.
c. top-down processing.
d. focused attention.
ANSWER: c
9. "Perceiving machines" are used by Postal services world-wide to "read" the addresses on letters and sort them
quickly to their correct destinations. Sometimes, these machines cannot read an address, because the writing on the
envelope is not sufficiently clear for the machine to match the writing to an example it has stored in memory. Human
postal workers are much more successful at reading unclear addresses, most likely because of
a. bottom-up processing.
b. top-down processing.
c. their in-depth understanding of principles of perception.
d. repeated practice at the task.
ANSWER: b
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 2
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
10. Which of the following is an example of an effect of top-down processing?
a. Speech segmentation
b. Seeing a flash of lightning in a thunderstorm
c. The response of a feature detector
d. Perceiving all of the birds in a flock as belonging together
ANSWER: a
11. Speech segmentation is defined as
a. creating a sentence from a series of spoken words.
b. ignoring the spaces between the spoken words of a sentence.
c. organizing the sounds of speech into individual words.
d. recognizing a few words out of many when hearing a largely unfamiliar language.
ANSWER: c
12. When Carlos moved to the UK, he did not understand any English. A phrase like "I Scream Class Hick" didn't make
any sense to him. Now that Carlos has been learning English, he recognizes this phrase as "Ice Cream Classic." This
example illustrates that Carlos was not capable of ____ in English.
a. speech segmentation
b. the likelihood principle
c. bottom-up processing
d. algorithms
ANSWER: a
13. Many studies have demonstrated that patients with pathological pain get real pain relief from placebos. These
findings are most often attributed to changes in patients’
a. expectations.
b. attention.
c. cognitive control.
d. all of these.
ANSWER: d
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 3
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
14. The results by Buhle et al. (2012) suggest that the pain-reducing effects of placebo and distraction are produced
by
a. different and separate mechanisms.
b. similar but unconnected mechanisms.
c. partly overlapping mechanisms.
d. a set of interacting mechanisms.
ANSWER: a
15. Evidence for the role of top-down processing in perception is shown by which of the following examples?
a. When someone can easily select a target that has a feature distinct from distracters
b. When someone cannot read an illegible word in a written sentence
c. When someone easily identifies an object even though that object is unexpected in that context (e.g.,
identifying a telephone inside a refrigerator)
d. When someone accurately identifies a word in a song on a radio broadcast despite static interfering with
reception
ANSWER: d
16. Some perceptions result from assumptions we make about the environment that we are not even aware of. This
theory of unconscious inference was developed by
a. Goldstein.
b. Gestalt psychologists.
c. Helmholtz.
d. Gibson.
ANSWER: c
17. The theory of unconscious inference includes the
a. oblique effect.
b. likelihood principle.
c. principle of componential recovery.
d. principle of speech segmentation.
ANSWER: b
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 4
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
18. The likelihood principle states that
a. we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received.
b. we perceive size to remain the same even when objects move to different distances.
c. it is easier to perceive vertical and horizontal orientations.
d. feature detectors are likely to create a clear perception of an object.
ANSWER: a
19. Which statement best summarizes the focus of the Gestalt psychologists?
a. We must understand the basic components of perception.
b. We need to identify the number of geons needed for object recognition.
c. We want to understand how elements are added up to create sensations.
d. We need to identify the neurons that create perception.
ANSWER: c
20. The process by which small objects become perceptually grouped to form larger objects is the principle of
a. conjunction.
b. perceptual organization.
c. perceptual discriminability.
d. perceptual fusion.
ANSWER: b
21. You look at a rope coiled on a beach and are able to perceive it as a single strand because of the law of
a. good continuation.
b. simplicity.
c. familiarity.
d. good figure.
ANSWER: a
22. You are at a parade where there are a number of marching bands. You perceive the bands that are all in the same
uniforms as being grouped together. The red uniforms are one band, the green uniforms another, and so forth. You
have this perceptual experience because of the law of
a. simplicity.
b. similarity.
c. pragnanz.
d. familiarity.
ANSWER: b
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 5
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
23. The notion that every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible is
called the law of
a. common fate.
b. similarity.
c. pragnanz.
d. continuity.
ANSWER: c
24. "Every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible" refers to which
Gestalt law?
a. Good figure
b. Similarity
c. Familiarity
d. Common fate
ANSWER: a
25. When you listen to someone speaking a foreign language with which you are unfamiliar, the words may all seem to
sound the same. You may find yourself wondering how those speakers are communicating when they are using the
same words over and over again. The Gestalt law that is affecting you here is the law of
a. similarity.
b. familiarity.
c. nearness.
d. good continuation.
ANSWER: a
26. Which of the following is NOT an example of a physical regularity in your text?
a. The oblique effect
b. The light-from-above assumption
c. Angled orientation
d. Having one object that is partially covered by another "come out the other side"
ANSWER: c
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 6
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
27. People perceive vertical and horizontal orientations more easily than other orientations according to the
a. principle of size constancy.
b. oblique effect.
c. law of pragnanz.
d. law of good continuation.
ANSWER: b
28. The "textured wall" example from your text, demonstrating that we perceive textured surfaces differently when
turned upside down, illustrates
a. semantic regularities.
b. the oblique effect.
c. size constancy.
d. the light-from-above heuristic.
ANSWER: d
29. The demonstration in your text that asks you to visualize scenes such as an office, a department store clothing
section, a lion, and a microscope often results in more details in the scene of the office or department store than the
scene with the lion or microscope. The latter two tend to have fewer details because most individuals from modern
society have less knowledge of _____ in those scenes.
a. physical regularities
b. semantic regularities
c. pragnanz
d. double dissociation
ANSWER: b
30. Palmer's (1975) experiment, in which he asked people to identify objects in a kitchen, showed how _______ can
affect perception.
a. illusory conjunctions
b. context
c. naming associations
d. attention
ANSWER: b
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 7
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
31. The notion that our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by (1) our initial belief about the
probability of the outcome and (2) the likelihood of the outcome, is also known as
a. Bayesian inference.
b. the apparent likelihood principle.
c. the law of semantic regularities.
d. the Helmholtz principle.
ANSWER: a
32. Which of the following approaches to perception believes most strongly that built-in principles can override
experience?
a. Helmholtz's unconscious inference
b. The Gestalt laws of organization
c. Regularities in the environment
d. Bayesian inference
ANSWER: b
33. The results of Gauthier et al.'s (1999) "Greeble" experiment illustrate
a. that neurons specialized to respond to faces are present in our brains when we are born.
b. that training a monkey to recognize the difference between common objects can influence how the monkey's
neurons fire to these objects.
c. an effect of experience-dependent plasticity.
d. that our nervous systems remain fairly stable in different environments.
ANSWER: c
34. Gauthier et. al.'s (1999) experiment showed that after extensive "Greeble recognition" training sessions, FFA neurons
had a(n) _______ response to faces and an _________ response to Greebles.
a. unvaried; unvaried
b. decreased; increased
c. unvaried; increased
d. increased; increased
ANSWER: b
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 8
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
35. The experimental technique that involves removing part of the brain is known as
a. brain lesioning.
b. dissociation.
c. fMRI.
d. EEG.
ANSWER: a
36. Amhad is doing an experiment in which he has to choose between the object he has been shown previously (the
target object) and another object. Choosing the target object will result in a reward. What sort of task is Amhad
doing?
a. Landmark discrimination problem
b. Dissociation task
c. Greeble recognition task
d. Object discrimination problem
ANSWER: d
37. The landmark discrimination problem is more difficult to do if you have damage to your _____lobe.
a. frontal
b. temporal
c. parietal
d. occipital
ANSWER: c
38. The pathway leading from the striate cortex to the parietal lobe is known as the
a. what pathway.
b. where pathway.
c. landmark pathway.
d. ventral pathway.
ANSWER: b
39. The perception pathway corresponds to the _____ pathway, while the action pathway corresponds to the _____
pathway.
a. where; what
b. what; where
c. size; distance
d. distance; size
ANSWER: b
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 9
Name: Class: Date:
Chapter 03: Perception
40. The pathway leading from the striate cortex to the temporal lobe is known as the
a. what pathway.
b. where pathway.
c. landmark pathway.
d. action pathway.
ANSWER: a
41. Damage to the temporal lobe makes the _____ more difficult.
a. object discrimination problem
b. landmark discrimination problem
c. double dissociation problem
d. single dissociation problem
ANSWER: a
42. Explain how BOTH bottom-up and top-down processing are involved in the "Emma running on the beach" example.
ANSWER: Answer not provided
43. Discuss and give examples of three specific principles noted in your text that make it very difficult to design a
computer or other machine that would show perception that is equivalent to or better than that of a human being.
ANSWER: Answer not provided
44. When a picture of an object is partially covered, humans can still easily identify the object. Name and explain how
three Gestalt principles are at work when humans identify the obscured object.
ANSWER: Answer not provided
45. Explain how the object discrimination problem and the landmark discrimination problem help show what pathways in
the brain are responsible for different cognitive abilities. How does damage to different lobes of the brain make these
tasks more difficult, and what pathways are involved?
ANSWER: Answer not provided
Copyright Cengage Learning. Powered by Cognero. Page 10
