Fundamentals of Cognitive
Psychology
Chapter 2
Perception
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Perception
Sensation as transduction of physical
energy in the environment into an initial
mental representation stored in sensory
memory.
 Recognition of objects and events is the
end result of fast perceptual processing.
 Unconscious perceptual processing
actively constructs consious mental
representations.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Visual Consciousness
Transduction of the visible spectrum (400
nm to 700 nm) of electromagnetic
radiation.
 Crossing of the visual pathways from
retina to primary visual. Left visual field
represented in right hemisphere.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Visual Consciousness
A critical periods for cortical development
in cats show that primary visual cortex is
necessary for visual consciousness.
 Blindsight in humans: Damage to primary
visual cortex eliminates visual
consciousness but a second pathway
allows accurate discrimination.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Pattern Recognition
Refers to the step between the
transduction and perception of a stimulus
in the environment and its categorization
as a meaningful object.
 Agnosia—failure of pattern recognition
caused by brain lesions.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Types of Agnosia
Apperceptive Agnosia: object recognition
fails because of difficulties in identifying
the visual features of a perceptual
category.
 Associative agnosia: object recognition
fails because of difficulties in identifying
the functional features that define a
semantic category.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Top-down vs. Bottom-up
Processes
Organized knowledge representations
called schemas direct exploration of
objects and events in the environment.
 Conceptually-driven processes provide
expectations from the top-down.
 Data-driven processes sample features
from the bottom-up.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Word Superiority Effect
WORK vs. ORWK vs. K
 Surprisingly, a single letter (K) is
recognized faster in the context of a whole
word (WORK) than when presented as an
isolated letter. A nonword (ORWK)
doesn’t provide this top-down advantage.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
How are objects represented?
Distinctive feature lists may suffice for
printed letters (Z is detected faster here
OQBZPD than here TLKZMV).
 But the structural relations among features
are often as important as the features
themselves.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Modularity
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Module: automatic, fast processes that are
encapsulated from other cognitive systems.
Holistic vs. analytic processing
Faces are processed more holistically than other
objects, possibly because they activate a
specialized module.
Prosopagnosia—selective loss of face
recognition, possibly because of damage to the
face module.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Speech Recognition
Phonological segments that signal
meaning (phonemes) unfold at 12/s or
more. Fast, effortless processing of
40,000 bits/s implies a speech module.
 The structural relations among
phonemes—the context in which a
phoneme occurs—is critical to recognition.

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Why context is important?

Co-articulation: Each segment of speech
provides clues about more than one
phoneme. That is, multiple phonemes are
articulated at the same time.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Why context is important?
Co-articulation: Each segment of speech
provides clues about more than one
phoneme.
 Phonemes lack invariant distinctive
features

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Top Down Processing
Phonological segments are continuous in
speech. Pauses heard are often illusions
constructed by imposing phonemes from
the top.
 Subtle variations are ignored unless they
fall at phoneme boundaries (categorical
speech perception).

Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology, 2e by Ronald T. Kellogg ©SAGE Publications, Inc.