Perception Study Notes: Question Plans

Question 1: Object Recogntion

Theories + evidence
o Structural-Descrition (Marr & Nishihara, Biederman)
o Image Based

Structural-Descriptive models (SD)
o entail building a description of the object from retinal image
and
o matching the description to a representation stored in
memory>
Evidence for and against both theories specifically and for SD models in
general as they share some characteristics.
Also: image based theories- much evidence against SD models supports
image-based models

Marr & Nishihara (1978)
o Proposed series of reps/descriptions.
Primal sketch
2D
Info about light intensity changes, edges, contours,
blobs of visual surfaces
Viewpoint dependent
2D Sketch:
info re texture, motion, etc.
info re depth and texture
Viewpoint dependent
3D Sketch:
Viewpoint independent
Takes into account the relationships between the
elements of the object
Concavities v important for segmenting parts
Canonical coordinate frame: primitive units for
describing object = cylinders with a major axis
o Hierarchically organised
o Motivated by computer graphics.
o Challenges:
If OR is viewpoint independent, then performance on OR
tasks should be independent of viewer position or object
orientation.
However, when rotated in depth, 3D objects change
their 2D retinal projection.
Authors offered no empirical support for theory
Purely computational and not empirical model.
o Support:
According to the theory, establishing the location of the
central axis is key in OR.
Study by Lawson and Humphreys (1996):
participants had to identify objects from line
drawings.
Rotation didnt have any effect unless major axis was
foreshortened, had effect on performance
Warrington & Taylor (1978)
Brain damage to right posterior cerebral hemisphere
results in inability to recognise objects from unusual
views
o Possible explanation: inability to transform
2D to 3D representation.
Possibly due to key feature being hidden:
o Humphreys & Riddoch (1984): gave images
to patients with damage to right hemisphere
and found that performance was more
affected by foreshortening of central axis, not
due to blocking of key feature.
Overall, appears to support the view that locating the
central axis is key in OR.

Biederman (1987): Recognition by Components Theory (RBC)
o Objects can be broken down into simpler objects
36 Geons- blocks, cylinders, arcs, spheres, etc.
o Relationship between objects very important and provides scope
for many combinations of these geons
o Challenges:
No empirical support for geons being the building blocks of
object recognition
Is 36 geons enough?
There are only 44 phonemes in the English language,
but they can be combined in any way, same as geons.
Theory focuses more on edge than surface info ie it ignores
colour
Joseph and Proffitt (1996) found that colour helps
OR
o Support:
Biederman, Ju & Clapper (1985)
Complex objects can still be detected even when
some components/geons are missing.
Presented line drawing with up to of the
components or geons missing, accuracy was 90% in
recognising objects.
Biederman (1987)
Discussed study where ps were given degraded line
drawings
OR was much poorer when parts of contour info
relating to concavities were missing than when
other contour info was.
SD Theories in general:
o Focus on coding of edges, grouping or encoding into higher-order
features, matching to stored structural knowledge and access to
semantic knowledge
o Challenges
Some objects do not have easily identifiable constituent
parts e.g. clouds
Sanocki et al (1998): edge information often insufficient to
allow OR- undermines strong focus on importance of edge
extraction in low-level OR.
Participants were worse at identifying line drawings
than colour photographs, especially when they were
presented in context.
SD models/theories do not account for within description
descriminations e.g. we know a chair is a chair, but how do
we discriminate between two chairs?
Hardly any emphasis on context in OR
Palmer (1975) presented pictures in neutral context,
appropriate and inappropriate contexts. Found that
performance was best in app. and worst in inapp.
contexts.
Discrepancy in viewpoint dependency
Support for both viewpoint dependence and
independence
Tarr et al. (1998) conducted OR experiments using
the same 3D objects under various orientations and
conditions. Found that performance was close to
viewpoint invariant when task was easy e.g. a
between category distinction, a well-known object,
feedback given after each trial and viewpoint
dependent or variant when task was hard e.g. no
feedback given.
Image-Based Models
o Cost of new orientations- Greebles (Gauthier & Tarr, 2002)
Similar pattern to mental rotation tasks
o Pure existence of canonical views
Palmer et al. (1981)- scale from 1-7 on how canonical or
typical the view of an object was
Naming latency longer for views that were less canonical
o Patient studies
Humphreys and Riddoch (1984) some patients can only
recognise objects from particular views
o Context effects

Question 5
Pain exists within the brain
Touch subtopic: focus on nocioceptors, spino-thalamic pathway- describe
and illustrate.
o All info received as touch until it reaches the brain, where it can be
detected as pain once it has been processed.
Define, illustrate, evaluate
Bottom up: pathway, top down: expectation, prior learning,
affective factors.
Studies looked at in class.
o Basic outline of Pain Topic:
o Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience
associated with actual or potential tissue damage International
Association for the Study of Pain.
o 3 types of pain:
Nocioceptive: activation of skin nocioceptors (heat,
chemical, pressure, cold)
Inflammatory: damage to tissues, inflammation of joint or
tumour cells
Neuropathic: damage to nervous system
o Direct Pathway Model of Pain
Stimulation of nocioceptors -> spinal cord -> brain.
Simplistic
Does not take into account the affective or cognitive side of
pain perception.
Mental state, attention, phantom limb pain (no
stimulation of receptors)
o Gate Control Model of Pain (Melzack & Wall, 1965)
Basic Outline:
Pain signals enter the brain via the spinal cord by the
spinothalamic pathway
Small-diameter or S fibres carry information from
nocioceptors and excite T-cells, leading to pain increase
Large-diameter or L-fibres carry general non-pain haptic
information
Can inhibit T-cell activity
Element of central control: from cortex, carrying info re
expectation, attention, distraction, etc.
Closes gate, inhibits T-cell activity, decreases pain.
o Implications of Gate Control Model
Pain determined by balance between input from
nocioceptors and normal non-pain haptic input.
o Effects of Cognitive Factors on Pain Perception:
Expectation:
Post surgery patients told what to expect re pain
were sent home nearly 3 days earlier than those not
told (Finniss & Benedetti, 2005)
Perhaps some adaptive mechanism, similar to
placebo effect (Weisenberg, 2007)
Attention:
Use of virtual reality games in burns patients during
bandage changing significantly reduced reported
pain (Hoffman et al., 2002)
Content of Emotional Distraction:
Participants shown positive images able to keep
hand in cold water for longer than ps shown
negative or neutral images (deWeid & Verbaten,
2001).
o Pain and the Brain:
Pain matrix- areas stimulated by pain
Example of the distributed representation on pain in
the brain
Includes many subcortical structures e.g. amygdala,
thalamus, as well as the somatosensory cortex,
insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), prefrontal
cortex.
Pain is multimodal -> served by two different areas of the
brain
Chemicals in the brain: opiods linked with pain perception
They act on receptors in the brain that are activated
by pain-reducing endorphins
Possible link with placebos: may induce endorphin
release
Pain threshold may possibly be linked to levels of
opiod release in the brain (Zubieta et al., 2003)
o Pain in Social Situations:
Social loss may activate similar areas as stimulated by
physical pain (pain matrix)
Eisenberger et al. (2003): simulated group exclusion
and found reported distress correlated with
activation of the ACC
Similar findings by Singer et al. (2004): people,
especially women, watching their partners receive
shocks showed activation of their own ACC
o Especially in women who reported high
empathy.
o Pain Perception Tutorial:
Main points:
Pain is not perceived as more than touch until it
reaches the brain
Stimulation of skin receptors is not necessary for
pain perception
Cognitive and emotional factors can play a part
Describe and illustrate spinothalamic pathway
Signals from nocioceptors in the skin sent to the
spinal cord by axons with their cell bodies (somas)
in the dorsal root ganglion.
Axons enter the SC via the dorsal horn and ascend 1-
2 levels forming the Tract of Lissauer
Axons synapse in the grey matter of the dorsal horn
ipsilaterally
Secondary neurons may ascend further ipsilaterally
or decussate the other side of the SC via the anterior
white commissure
The axons then enter the spinothalamic fasciculus
and synapse in the ventral post lateral nucleus of the
thalamus
The neurons then project to the post central gyrus of
the cortex in the somatosensory cortex
Others extend to the reticular formation of the
medulla and to areas included in the pain matrix- the
thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex
and ACC
o These areas are related the brains central
control of pain perception and from here the
descending pathways can block the T cell
activity and reduce perceived pain in line
with the Gate Control Theory.