Chapter: Chapter 02: Perceptual Processes I: Visual and Auditory Recognition
Multiple Choice
1. The visual information registered by the sensory receptors of the retina is known as the
a) distal stimulus.
b) wavefront.
c) dorsal stream.
d) proximal stimulus.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 36
2. The study of object recognition or pattern recognition focuses on ways in which:
a) sensory processes transform and organize raw information provided by sensory receptors.
b) previous knowledge always gives rise to accurate perception of environmental stimuli.
c) template-matching processes underlie the direct perception of objects and patterns.
d) sensory receptors use a proximal stimulus to manufacture a new distal stimulus in the external world.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 36
3. Which of the following is not one of the lobes of the brain?
a) frontal
b) parietal
c) bactal
d) occipital
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 38
4. Recognition of standardized stimuli, such as the numbers printed at the bottom of a check, can be
accomplished by using an extremely simple:
a) template-matching process.
b) recognition-by-components process.
c) top-down process.
d) change-blindness process.
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 40
5. According to the feature analysis theory, we recognize most stimuli by
a) assembling geons.
b) comparison with exemplars.
c) identifying “distinctive features”.
d) forming a cognitive map.
Ans: c
Feedback: See pages 41 - 42
6. The way people recognize simple visual patterns (such as letters of the alphabet) is partially explained
by a feature-analysis process, which involves the analysis of combinations of distinctive features.
Similarly, the way people recognize complex objects (such as coffee cups) is partially explained by a
recognition-by-components process, which involves the analysis of combinations of:
a) templates.
b) perceptrons.
c) figure-ground relationships.
d) geons.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 44
7. The recent viewer-centered approach to object perception was proposed to explain why people are:
a) prone to suffer from change blindness and inattentional blindness.
b) unlikely to rely on top-down processing in many real-world perceptual contexts.
c) unlikely to rely on bottom-up processing in many real-world perceptual contexts.
d) relatively good at recognizing objects that appear in unusual perspectives or at unusual angles.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 45
8. Findings revealing that a person's concepts, expectations, and memory help in identifying objects
show that:
a) bottom-up processing is the only kind of processing needed for object recognition.
b) top-down processing is too slow and inefficient to account for object recognition.
c) object recognition involves top-down processing as well as bottom-up processing.
d) top-down processing must begin at the top of an object for it to be recognized.
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 47
9. _______________ processing emphasizes how concepts and memories influence object recognition.
a) Bottom-up
b) Top-down
c) Orthogonal
d) Feature
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 47
10. The word superiority effect is to the finding that people can identify:
a) a word better when it appears in isolation than when it appears at the end of a meaningful sentence.
b) a word better when it appears in upper-case (capital) letters than when it appears in lower-case (small)
letters.
c) a single letter better when it appears in a meaningful word than when it appears by itself or in a
meaningless string of letters.
d) a single letter better when it appears by itself than when it appears in the middle of a meaningful
word.
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 48
11. The same stimulus (e.g., "beans" or "bears") may be perceived in a different way depending on the
sentence context (e.g., "The farmer raised . . ." vs. "The zookeeper raised . . ."). This supports the view
that word recognition involves:
a) bottom-up processing.
b) top-down processing.
c) both bottom-up and top-down processing.
d) processes in addition to bottom-up and top-down processing.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 49
12. When a person is reading, a word is identified relatively fast if the:
a) letters forming the word are indistinct, because that speeds up bottom-up processes.
b) other words that the person has already identified form a meaningful sentence.
c) identification of the individual letters forming the word is relatively slow.
d) person is distracted by irrelevant auditory information, such as music.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 50
13. Research on change blindness and inattentional blindness reveal that people:
a) tend to make cognitive errors because they do not use a rational information-processing strategy.
b) often fail to notice when an object in a scene has changed or when a new object has appeared.
c) will usually notice the appearance of a new object only if they are attending closely to another object.
d) All of the above are correct.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 52
14. People recognize features of human faces relatively better (compared to features of other complex
objects, such as houses) if the features appear in the context of a whole face, rather than in isolation.
This kind of finding supports the view that face recognition:
a) is "special."
b) involves holistic processing.
c) has a special status in the human visual system.
d) All of the above are correct.
Ans: d
Feedback: See page 54
15. A condition known as prosopagnosia, in which a person can visually recognize objects but cannot
visually recognize human faces, may be caused by damage in part of the brain known as the:
a) occipital cortex.
b) prefrontal cortex.
c) inferotemporal cortex.
d) cingulate cortex.
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 55
16. __________ is a condition in which people cannot recognize faces.
a) Prosopagnosia
b) Capgras delusion
c) Korsakoff’s amnesia
d) Myesthenia gravis
Ans: a
Feedback: See page 55
17. Under a variety of real-world viewing conditions, people have been found to be:
a) quite accurate in identifying unfamiliar faces but more inaccurate in identifying familiar faces.
b) quite accurate in identifying familiar faces but more inaccurate in identifying unfamiliar faces.
c) quite accurate in identifying both familiar faces and unfamiliar faces.
d) very inaccurate in identifying both familiar faces and unfamiliar faces.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 56
18. Research on face identification of people with schizophrenia suggests that those people:
a) are less likely to use top-down processing in visual perception, including face perception.
b) make more errors in face recognition than do control (non-schizophrenic) people.
c) have relatively greater difficulty identifying emotional expressions, especially to the extent that they
do not vary much in their own emotional expressions.
d) All of the above are correct.
Ans: d
Feedback: See pages 57 - 58
19. In most ordinary conversations, the acoustical boundaries between adjacent words are:
a) clear and distinct.
b) not usually very distinct.
c) separated by pauses in which the speaker takes a breath.
d) marked by distinct facial expressions.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 60
20. It is thought that there are about ______ phonemes in the English language.
a) 20
b) 30
c) 44
d) 57
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 60
21. Speech sounds provide information to a listener that is less than perfect. A major finding on speech
perception is that people:
a) nevertheless perceive speech with remarkable accuracy.
b) are remarkably inaccurate in identifying speech sounds.
c) must receive extensive training in order to perceive speech accurately.
d) are able to identify ambiguous speech sounds only if no contextual or visual cues are provided.
Ans: a
Feedback: See pages 60 - 61
22. In face-to-face conversations, ambiguities concerning word boundaries in speech are partly resolved
by:
a) a special phonemic restoration mechanism.
b) analysis of the pauses that always separate adjacent words.
c) visual information from the speaker's lips and face.
d) the McGurk area in the left cerebral hemisphere.
Ans: c
Feedback: See page 62
23. Evidence suggests that the human ability to perceive speech sounds is based on:
a) a special, inborn speech production mechanism.
b) general perceptual skills and other cognitive abilities.
c) visual cues to the exclusion of auditory cues.
d) a phonetic module that is not involved in other kinds of auditory perception.
Ans: b
Feedback: See page 65