Vision Science
Textbook Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Vision Science explores the biological, psychological, and computational foundations of how humans and animals perceive and process visual information. This course covers the anatomy and physiology of the eye and visual pathways, the mechanisms of image formation and color perception, as well as higher-level processes such as object recognition and spatial awareness. Students will engage with experimental methods, current research trends, and clinical applications, gaining a comprehensive understanding of how visual systems enable interpretation and interaction with the surrounding world.
Recommended Textbook
Sensation and Perception 9th Edition by E. Bruce Goldstein
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following best describes the steps of the perceptual process?
A) The steps are unidirectional, starting at the environmental stimulus and ending at perception.
B) The steps are unidirectional, starting at the environmental stimulus and ending at knowledge.
C) The steps are unidirectional, starting at transduction and ending at recognition.
D) The sequence of steps is dynamic and constantly changing.
Answer: D
Q2) Demetri is a participant in an auditory detection study using the method of constant stimuli. He never detects the 10 unit tone. He detects the 20 unit tone 25% of the trials. He detects the 30 unit tone 50% of the trials. He detects the 40 unit tone 80% of the trials. He detects the 50 unit tone 95% of the trials. His threshold for hearing tones would be taken as the
A) 15 unit tone.
B) 20 unit tone.
C) 30 unit tone.
D) 55 unit tone.
Answer: C
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Chapter 2: The Beginnings of Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) Our perception of the environment depends on
A) the properties of the objects in the environment.
B) the properties of the electrical signals in the nervous system.
C) both the properties of the environmental objects and properties of the electrical signals in the nervous system.
D) none of these are true.
Answer: C
Q2) The blind spot is located
A) in the fovea.
B) in the vitreous.
C) where the optic nerve leaves the eye.
D) at the optic chiasm.
Answer: C
Q3) There are ____different cone receptors, each with different absorption spectra.
A) 2
B) 3
C) 4
D) 7
Answer: B
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Neural Processing and Perception
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Sample Questions
Q1) The flow of information from the ___ to the ____ is the greatest amount of information flow.
A) LGN; cortex
B) retina; LGN
C) LGN; retina
D) cortex; LGN
Answer: D
Q2) Neurons in the LGN have __________ receptive fields.
A) center-surround
B) side-by-side columnar
C) ill-defined
D) ambiguous
Answer: A
Q3) Which of the following proposed representational systems is the least likely to actually be in place in the human visual system?
A) Sparse coding
B) Specificity coding
C) Representation by a small number of neurons
D) Distributed coding
Answer: B
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Chapter 4: Cortical Organization
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Q1) The EBA is activated by
A) pictures of houses and other manmade structures.
B) pictures of body parts.
C) direct eye gaze from another individual.
D) tasks that require spatial information.
Q2) _________ refers to the fact that the response properties of neurons can be shaped by an animal's or person's perceptual experience.
A) Selective adaptation
B) Experience-dependent plasticity
C) Sensory integration
D) Perceptual analysis
Q3) The ________ can be described as the electronic map of the retina on the cortex.
A) visual map
B) spatial map
C) retinotopic map
D) cortextual map
Q4) Describe research on brain damaged and non-brain damaged people that support the idea that the dorsal stream is the "how" pathway.
Q5) Describe how an object such as a tree is represented in the striate cortex.
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Chapter 5: Perceiving Objects and Scenes
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Q1) State, define, and give an example (in words and/or drawings) for each of five Gestalt principles of perceptual organization.
Q2) Discuss three reasons why object perception is difficult for computer vision.
Q3) Which of the following is a global image feature, according to Oliva and Torralba?
A) degree of naturalness
B) degree of openness
C) color
D) All of these are global image features.
Q4) Computers are better than humans at perceiving objects because
A) computers can process information faster than humans.
B) computers have higher storage capacity than humans.
C) computers can more easily determine the reasons for changes in lightness.
D) none of these; humans are better than computers at object perception.
Q5) The _______ effect is that humans perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations.
A) Turing
B) oblique
C) spreading
D) visual persistence
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Chapter 6: Visual Attention
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Q1) Which of the following is true regarding task-irrelevant stimuli?
A) They are least distracting when you are engaged in a difficult task.
B) They are least distracting when you are engaged in an easy task.
C) They are most likely to distract you when workload is high.
D) They are least likely to distract you when perceptual load is low.
Q2) Discuss the three factors involved in determining what we fixate on in a visual scene.
Q3) The eye movements that occur as the observer shifts his/her gaze from one part of the visual scene to another are called
A) pursuit eye movements.
B) magnified eye movements.
C) saccades.
D) aperatures.
Q4) (a) Discuss how Treisman's feature integration theory addresses the binding problem.
(b) What are illusory conjunctions, and why are they support for feature integration theory?
Q5) Discuss the differences in attention between people who have autism and those who do not, from behavioral and physiological perspectives.
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Page 8
Chapter 7: Taking Action
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Q1) The neurons that signal the monkey's intention to grab an object are mostly found in the
A) hippocampus.
B) superior colliculus.
C) parietal reach region (PRR).
D) nystagmus parietal radius (NPR).
Q2) Hamid et al. (2010) had participants navigate a maze while recording their eye movements. The maze contained landmarks on the walls at corners and at other positions that would not aid maze navigation. After participants learned the maze, the researchers removed half of the landmarks. The results of this study revealed that A) performance decreased when landmarks were removed that had been viewed longer.
B) participants did not notice that the landmarks were missing and their performance was unaffected.
C) participants had been relying on all landmarks to navigate.
D) performance increased when non-informative landmarks were removded.
Q3) One research found that tennis players who have recently won a match perceive the net as being lower than those who have recently lost. Describe how these differences in perception might arise.
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Page 9
Chapter 8: Perceiving Motion
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Q1) The perceptual grouping of lights in biological motion has been shown physiologically to occur in the _______ area of the cortex.
A) superior temporal sulcus
B) lateral geniculate
C) premotor
D) anterior intraparietal
Q2) A mouse "freezes" when it sees a cat nearby. This assists the mouse's survival because
A) being motionless reduces the attention-attracting effect of motion.
B) being motionless reduces the chance that the cat will see the mouse against the background.
C) being motionless reduces both the attention-attracting effect of motion, and the chance that the cat will see the mouse against the background.
D) none of these; "freezing" does not affect the cat's hunting ability.
Q3) Camouflage can be interpreted as a problem of
A) figure-ground segregation.
B) binocular disparity.
C) induced movement.
D) the waterfall illusion.
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Perceiving Color
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Sample Questions
Q1) The edge between a dark shadow and an illuminated checkerboard is a(n)
A) reflectance edge.
B) illumination edge.
C) ratio edge.
D) Ishihara border.
Q2) Uchikawa et al. demonstrated how _________ can explain why color constancy occurs.
A) chromatic adaptation
B) the ratio principle
C) isomerization
D) neural circuitry
Q3) Two stimuli that are physically different, but are perceptually identical, are called A) complements.
B) Rayleigh stimuli.
C) metamers.
D) isomers.
Q4) Evaluate Newton's claim that the light "rays are not coloured."
Q5) Contrast the three types of dichromatism, in regard to rates, neutral points, color experience, and proposed physiological cause.
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Chapter 10: Perceiving Depth and Size
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Q1) A stereoscope provides the illusion of depth in 2-D images by A) rapidly alternating between two images.
B) presenting an image to each eye at different distances from the retina.
C) presenting an image to each eye that are from slightly different perspectives.
D) presenting an image to each eye that have different polarization filters in place.
Q2) Describe the differences in how depth is perceived in cats, insects, and bats.
Q3) The correspondence problem is best demonstrated by A) random-dot stereograms.
B) polarized 3-D images.
C) Emmert's law.
D) disparity parallax.
Q4) Motion parallax
A) is widely used to create depth in cartoons and video games. ** (page 233; factual)
B) is an important depth cue for amphibians, but not mammals.
C) occurs when near objects are perceived as moving slower than distant objects.
D) is not an effective cue for robot vision.
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Page 12
Chapter 11: Hearing
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Sample Questions
Q1) _________ is the property of increasing pitch that accompanies increases in the tone's frequency.
A) Tone height
B) Tone chroma
C) Tone octave
D) Equal tonality
Q2) The outer ear consists of
A) the pinnae, the auditory canal, and the tympanic membrane.
B) the pinnea, the eardrum, and the oval window.
C) the tympanic membrane, the oval window, and the eardrum.
D) the cochlea.
Q3) A piano tone played backwards will sound more likely an organ than a piano because
A) the tone's original decay has become the attack, and vice versa.
B) the tone chroma is higher when played backwards.
C) the tone height is decreased when played backwards.
D) two middle harmonics are eliminated when played backwards.
Q4) (a) Briefly describe the major principle of Békésy's place theory of hearing.
(b) Describe two types of evidence that support Békésy's theory.
Q5) Describe how the actions of the cochlea results in transduction.
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Auditory Localization and Organization
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Q1) Seven-month-old infants listened to a regular repeating ambiguous rhythm while they were bounced up and down at two bounces per beat or at three bounces per beat. Later, they were tested to see how they had perceived the rhythm. The results suggest that
A) the infants perceived the rhythm as presented - ambiguous.
B) the infants always perceived the rhythm as occurring in twos.
C) the infants' perception was influenced by how they were bounced.
D) the vestibular system is not involved in auditory perception and movement.
Q2) Garner and Garner showed that smoothing out the nooks of the pinnae
A) results in more accurate localization on all corrdinates.
B) makes it more difficult to locate sounds along the elevation coordinate.
C) results in more accurate localization along the elevation coordinate.
D) does not affect spectral cues for localization.
Q3) The importance of similarity of timbre as auditory grouping principle has been supported by
A) implied polyphony.
B) auditory stream segregation.
C) location restoration effect.
D) compound melodic line.
Q4) Define visual capture and give examples of this concept.
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Speech Perception
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Q1) Spectrograms of sentences show
A) that clear pauses occur between each spoken word.
B) that formant transitions account for the breaks between words.
C) no clear pauses or breaks between words.
D) segmentation of words is easily accomplished by listeners in any context.
Q2) Damage to Broca's area in the frontal lobe results in difficulty
A) in speaking.
B) in understanding speech.
C) in lip reading.
D) in determining phonetic boundaries.
Q3) Saffron et al. (1996) found that 8-month-old infants listened to ______ test stimuli longer, providing evidence that infants are capable of __________ learning.
A) whole word; vicarious
B) whole word; transitional probability
C) part word; statistical
D) part word; formal operational
Q4) Describe how voice onset times (VOTs) have been used to study categorical perception.
Q5) Discuss two sources of the variability problem. Provide examples for each.
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Chapter 14: The Cutaneous Senses
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Sample Questions
Q1) The area on S1 associated with the thumb is as large as the area for the forearm. This is an example of
A) sensory substitution.
B) Braille projection.
C) cortical magnification.
D) the analgesic inversion principle.
Q2) Moving your finger across a textured surface can produce vibrations that are interpreted as texture. These vibrations are defined as
A) parietal cues.
B) temporal cues.
C) spatial cues.
D) olfactory cues.
Q3) The phenomenon of "phantom limb" is difficult to explain using the _______ of pain.
A) direct pathway model.
B) gate control model.
C) both gate control and direct pathway models.
D) neither; both gate control and direct pathway models can explain phantom limb.
Q4) Name and discuss the differences between the four types of mechanoreceptors.
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Chapter 15: The Chemical Senses
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Sample Questions
Q1) The central part of the tongue has no taste sensations because that part consists primarily of _______ papillae which do not contain taste buds.
A) filiform
B) fungiform
C) foliate
D) circumvillate
Q2) "Across-fiber patterns" is another name for
A) distributed coding.
B) specificity coding.
C) olfactory decoding.
D) common coding.
Q3) Finding the neural code for odor molecules
A) is relatively straightforward, since molecules that are similar result in similar smells.
B) is relatively straightforward, since there is a simple relationship between the chemical properties of the odor and the perceived odor.
C) has focused on what smells cause olfactory neurons to fire.
D) has focused on which chemical odorants cause the olfactory neurons to fire.
Q4) Compare three different methods for studying the physiology of olfaction.
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