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1. 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

2. Perception is NOT essential for

a. creating memories.
b. acquiring knowledge.
c. solving problems.
d. improving empathy.
ANSWER: d

3. 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

4. Members of a security team are stationed on rooftops surrounding a large city plaza before a scheduled rally. Suddenly,
three team members in different locations radio in to the command center, each stating that they have spotted a suspicious
box on the ground with a pipe coming from the top. What enables the security team members to report seeing the same
object despite being stationed on different rooftops?
a. Semantic regularity
b. Viewpoint invariance
c. Bottom-up processing
d. Principle of similarity
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

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
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b. top-down
c. Gestalt
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 that
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 the U.S. Postal Service 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

10. Which of the following is an example of an effect of top-down processing?

a. Recognizing a crying friend’s sounds as words in a sentence
b. Seeing a flash of lightning in a thunderstorm
c. Walking all around a car and always knowing it’s a car
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.
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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 United States, he did not understand any English. Phrases like "Anna Mary Can Pi and I
Scream Class Hick" didn't make any sense to him. Now that Carlos has been learning English, he recognizes this phrase as
"An American Pie and 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. 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

14. Which of the following is true about perception?

a. It occurs separately from action.
b. It is mostly automatic.
c. It involves rapid processes.
d. It is the result of many cognitions such as creating memories, acquiring knowledge, and solving problems.
ANSWER: c

15. 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

16. 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 size 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
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17. The process by which small objects become perceptually grouped to form larger objects is the principle of perceptual
a. conjunction.
b. organization.
c. discriminability.
d. fusion.
ANSWER: b

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Entering a church service and seeing someone selling hot dogs and cotton candy from a cart near the altar would be
perceived as a violation of
a. mirror neurons.
b. natural selection.
c. scene schema.
d. pragnanz.
ANSWER: c

22. In the text's use of the Olympic Rings example, which Gestalt law contributes to the correct perception of five
interlocking circles rather than nine separate segments?
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a. Simplicity
b. Contiguity
c. Figure-ground
d. Common fate
ANSWER: a

23. 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

24. 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

25. When does bottom-up processing start?

a. When environmental energy stimulates the receptors
b. When an electrical signal is passed to the brain
c. When motor neurons at the extremities are activated
d. When the brain encodes information received by the receptors
ANSWER: a

26. 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

27. The results of Gauthier's "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.
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d. that our nervous systems remain fairly stable in different environments.
ANSWER: c

28. 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

29. 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

30. The term semantics, when applied to perception, means the

a. meaning of a scene, often related to what is happening within the scene.
b. regularly occurring physical properties of an environment.
c. inferences made based on the likelihood of a particular stimulus.
d. statistical probabilities of one particular sound following another in language.
ANSWER: a

31. What is the process of unconscious inference?

a. When our subconscious mind interferes with our conscience
b. When our unconscious perceptions align with our conscious perceptions
c. When our perceptions are the result of inferences that we make about the environment
d. When our subconscious interferes with what we perceive from our retinas
ANSWER: c

32. 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

33. Which of the following is NOT considered a starting point for perception?

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a. feeling
b. hearing
c. seeing
d. thinking
ANSWER: d

34. Which of the following adjectives has the LEAST connection to perception?
a. interactive
b. conscious
c. supportive
d. complex
ANSWER: b

35. Which term best reflects what we do with an image projected onto our retina?
a. We infer it.
b. We confirm it.
c. We interpret it.
d. We reverse it.
ANSWER: c

36. What differentiates bottom-up processing from top-down processing?

a. the direction of scanning
b. the pattern of organization
c. the source of information
d. the pathway of action
ANSWER: c

37. The existence of transitional probabilities adds a(n) ________ quality to learning and using language.
a. cultural
b. anticipatory
c. reductive
d. intellectual
ANSWER: b

38. The saying, “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all” best reflects which of the following?
a. principle of similarity
b. law of pragnanz
c. semantic regularities
d. likelihood principle
ANSWER: d

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39. If a Gestalt psychologist was baking a cake for an event, what would they be most focused on?
a. the oven
b. the cake
c. the flour
d. the flavor
ANSWER: b

40. Which of the following would have the most semantic regularities?
a. a forest
b. a skyscraper
c. a shopping mall
d. a toll booth
ANSWER: c

41. A person with strong ________ would likely have a deeper experience of Bayesian influence.
a. principles
b. eyesight
c. sensation
d. beliefs
ANSWER: d

42. Which of the following word strings all refer to the same pathway?
a. what, action, dorsal
b. where, ventral, perception
c. dorsal, where, action
d. perception, dorsal, what
ANSWER: c

43. Explain how perception is invisible to us but it is not automatic. Give at least two examples to support your thinking.
ANSWER: Answer not provided

44. What two types of information are used by the human perceptual system? Give an example of an act of perception and
identify each of the two types in the example.
ANSWER: Answer not provided

45. Compare and contrast the four conceptions of object perception (unconscious inference, Gestalt laws, environmental
regularities, and Bayesian inference). How do these ideas differ? In what ways are they similar?
ANSWER: Answer not provided

46. Describe the function of mirror neurons. Why do you think intention plays a role in the mirroring process? Give an
example to support your thinking.
ANSWER: Answer not provided

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47. Explain how the object discrimination problem and the landmark discrimination problem help show which 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

48. Which of the following is an example of unconscious inference?

a. Perceiving that a partially covered automobile continues beneath the cover
b. Perceiving the transitional probability of a language
c. Perceiving the ringing of an alarm clock while sleeping
d. Perceiving the length of an unfamiliar object by using a familiar object
ANSWER: a

49. How does the phenomenon of apparent movement work?

a. The perceptual system creates the perception of movement from stationary images.
b. The perceptual system detects stationary images more slowly than motion is perceived.
c. The retina sends overlapping electrical signals to the brain when motion is perceived.
d. The perceptual system slows when flashing objects are introduced.
ANSWER: a

50. Which of the following is a basic principle of Gestalt psychology?

a. Many parts make up a whole.
b. Truth is relative.
c. Apparent motion is due to sensation.
d. The whole is different from the sum of its parts.
ANSWER: d

51. The fact that trees are more likely to be vertical or horizontal than slanted is an example of ____.
a. semantic regularity
b. physical regularity
c. perceptual regularity
d. orientation regularity
ANSWER: b

52. Semantic regularity refers to the _____.

a. regularity between locations
b. idea that regularities in the environment provide information we can use to resolve ambiguities
c. meaning between properties of an object
d. consistency between situations
ANSWER: c

53. What is a scene schema?

a. Knowledge of what a scene typically contains
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b. Knowledge of the meaning of a scene
c. Knowledge of the events leading to a scene
d. Knowledge of why a scene should be visualized
ANSWER: a

54. Which of the following is true about Bayesian inference?

a. The probability of an outcome is determined by chance.
b. The probability of an outcome is determined solely by the likelihood of the outcome.
c. The probability of an outcome is determined by the prior probability and the likelihood of the outcome.
d. The probability of an outcome is determined solely by our initial belief about the probability of an outcome.
ANSWER: c

55. The Gestalt psychologists believe that _____.

a. we use data about the environment to determine what is out there
b. perception is affected by experience, but built-in principles can override experience
c. top-down processing is central to perception
d. experience has no effect on perception, only sensation
ANSWER: b

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