Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition

78 • CHAPTER 3 Perception

● FIGURE 3.42 Is a giant hand about to pick up the horse?

Kristin Durr

If You WANT TO KNOW MORE

1. “Top-down” processing in the visual cortex. Some research
   has shown that the responding of neurons in the visual
   receiving area of the cortex can be affected by factors
   such as attention, which suggests that top-down process-
   ing can influence responding in this area of the cortex.

Mehta, A. D., Ulbert, I., & Schroeder, C. E. (2000). Intermodal

selective attention in monkeys: I. Distribution and timing of

effects across visual areas. Cerebral Cortex, 10, 343–358.

2. Gestalt psychology. The ideas of the Gestalt psychologists
   dominated the field of perception in the mid-20th cen-
   tury and are still important today. Wolfgang Kohler was
   one of the founders of the Gestalt school.

Kohler, W. (1929). Gestalt psychology. New York: Liveright.

3. Organization in hearing. The process of perceptual orga-
   nization is usually illustrated using visual examples, but
   it occurs in hearing as well.

Bregman, A. S. (1990). Auditory scene analysis. Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press.

Deutsch, D. (1996). The perception of auditory patterns. In

W. Prinz & B. Bridgeman (Eds.), Handbook of perception

and action (Vol. 1, pp. 253–296). San Diego, CA: Academic

Press.

4. Perception as problem solving. A number of modern
   researchers have proposed that perceptual mechanisms

are similar to the mechanisms involved in cognitive pro-

cesses like thinking and problem solving.

Ramachandran, V. S., & Anstis, S. M. (1986, May). The percep-

tion of apparent motion. Scientific American, pp. 102–109.

Rock, I. (1983). The logic of perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press.

5. Interactive activation model of word recognition. A model
   of word recognition, proposed in the 1980s, proposed
   that recognizing words is based on activation of feature-
   detector-like units that are arranged in layers. Units that
   respond to simple features, such as line orientation or
   combinations of lines, are in lower layers, and units that
   respond to words are in the upper layer.

Goldstein, E. B. (2008). Cognitive psychology (2nd ed.,

pp. 61–66). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

McClelland, J. L., & Rumelhart, D. E. (1981). An interactive

activation model of context effects in letter perception: Part

1. An account of basic findings. Psychological Review, 88,
   375–405.

Rumelhart, D. E., & McClelland, J. L. (1982). An interactive

activation model of context effects in letter perception:

Part 2. The contextual enhancement effect and some tests

and extensions of the model. Psychological Review, 89,

60–94.

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