Section three, Lesson 2: Perception

Question 2

What is the perceptual system?

Answer 2

How the brain interprets sensory input to build coherent representations of the environment.

Question 3

What is the inverse projection problem?

Answer 3

The challenge of inferring 3D objects from 2D retinal images.

Question 4

What is viewpoint invariance?

Answer 4

Recognizing objects regardless of viewing angle/perspective.

Question 5

What is bottom-up processing?

Answer 5

Data-driven perception starting from sensory input.

Question 6

What is top-down processing?

Answer 6

Perception shaped by expectations, knowledge, and context.

Question 7

What is speech segmentation (again, perception section)?

Answer 7

Detecting word boundaries in continuous speech.

Question 8

What are transitional probabilities?

Answer 8

Likelihood that one sound follows another; helps segment speech.

Question 9

What did Saffran and coworkers study?

Answer 9

How transitional probabilities support speech segmentation using artificial language exposure experiments.

Question 10

What is Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious inference?

Answer 10

Perception uses unconscious assumptions/inferences based on sensory data.

Question 11

How did Gestalt psychology impact perception?

Answer 11

Perception is organized; we perceive wholes using principles like proximity, similarity, closure.

Question 12

What is the principle of good continuation?

Answer 12

We perceive lines/contours as following the smoothest continuous path.