Deck 4: Disorders of Perception and Attention

Question 1

When perceiving sensory events, individuals with synaesthesia will

A) consistently have difficulty recognising the stimuli presented
B) fail to recall these events at a later date
C) consistently and deliberately be able to identify isolated, independent sensations
D) consistently and automatically perceiving another sensory event which is paired with it

Answer 1

D

Question 2

The evidence from Barton's (2008) review of 10 patients suggests that bilateral lesions to the fusiform gryi results in

A) severe impairments in the ability to form an image of a face
B) minor impairments across a range of abilities required for facial recognition abilities
C) severe impairments in the ability to recognise facial expressions, while still being able to form an image of a face
D) minor impairments in the ability to recognise individual features of a face

Answer 2

A

Question 3

The fusiform face area (FFA) varies between individuals in its

A) function
B) importance
C) location
D) both a and c

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Why are there limitations to the conclusions that can be drawn from prosopagnosia research?

A) because it is difficult to find suitable non-face control stimuli
B) because prosopagnosic patients are rare and therefore there are few participants to test
C) because only a very small amount of research has ever been done
D) both a and b

Question 5

Patients with congenital prosopagnosia show

A) very little variability in face-processing impairment
B) quite considerable variability in face-processing impairment
C) have no problem processing faces
D) only recognise the faces of animals and not humans

Question 6

The 'disinhibited-feedback' theory (as it relates to synesthesia) proposes that

A) connections between different sensory pathways exist in 'normal' brains, but are usually inhibited
B) connections between different sensory pathways do not exist in 'normal' brains, as they are inhibited at a young age
C) neural connections between different sensory pathways exist only in the brains of synesthetes
D) connections between different sensory pathways are inhibited in cases of synesthesia

Question 7

Your textbook describes four stages of cognitive processing: Perception, Learning and Memory, Retrieval, and Thinking. It's useful to break things down this way, but it's also an oversimplification. Why is it an oversimplification?

Question 8

Give one example of how top-down perception causes errors, and one example of how top-down perception helps us perceive better.

Question 9

What does it mean to say that searching for simple features is a parallel process, while searching for conjunctions is a serial process?

Question 10

Explain the difference between form agnosia and integrative agnosia, and explain how you could classify a patient as one or the other.

Question 11

List 3 characteristics of Synesthesia.

Question 12

What is the mechanism underlying the phenomenon of Blindsight (as discussed in class)?

Question 13

What is Unilateral Spatial Neglect? How does it differ from visual field loss?

Question 14

Congenital prosopagnosia is thought to occur

A) as a result of neurological trauma in the womb
B) as a result of neurological trauma in early childhood
C) as a result of neurological trauma in late childhood
D) without any apparent brain injury

Question 15

When comparing a case of form agnosia with a case of integrative agnosia, Riddoch et al. (2008) found

A) qualitatively different types of processing in the two types of agnosia
B) both patients had injuries in the region of the dorsal route
C) both patients tended to process only at a 'global' level
D) both patients tended to process only at a 'local' level

Question 16

The ventral stream (travelling to the temporal lobe) is thought to be responsible for

A) processing spatial information and helping generate skilled movements
B) identifying objects and events and helping attach meaning to them
C) face recognition and identification of familiar objects and events
D) processing information about objects and events and helping to generate skilled movements

Question 17

It is often the case that for synaesthetes the apparent colour of a word is determined by

A) the day of the week
B) the last letter of the word
C) the first letter of the word
D) the length of the word

Question 18

For synaesthetes completing a Stroop task, when the inducer colour matches the synaesthetic colour

A) responses are faster than on trials with an incongruent inducer
B) responses are significantly slower than on trials with an incongruent inducer
C) response speed is exactly the same as on trials with an incongruent inducer
D) response speeds are both significantly increased and significantly decreased in different individual cases

Question 19

Currently in fMRI studies, the brain regions most commonly activated in the critical synaesthesia response study conditions lie in

A) the frontal and temporal lobes
B) the occipital and parietal lobes
C) the frontal and parietal lobes
D) the parietal and temporal lobes

Question 20

Grossenbacher and Lovelace's (2001) 'disinhibited-feedback' theory proposes that

A) connections between different sensory pathways exist in 'normal' brains, but are usually inhibited
B) connections between different sensory pathways do not exist in 'normal' brains, as they are inhibited at a young age
C) neural connections between different sensory pathways exist only in the brains of synaesthetes
D) connections between different sensory pathways are inhibited in cases of synaesthesia

Question 21

Weiskrantz et al. (1974) coined the term 'blindsight', to describe how patient DB could

A) report details of objects appearing in the blind areas of his visual field despite having no conscious experience of seeing them
B) temporarily see objects in the blind areas of his visual field, which would normally not be visible
C) be able to describe details of some objects, despite apparent total blindness for most objects
D) report being able to consciously experience seeing objects, despite them being in the blind areas of his visual field

Question 22

Unilateral spatial neglect' or 'hemispatial neglect' refers to

A) being unable to respond to any objects or events in the entire visual space, despite having normal vision
B) having impaired vision, and being completely unable to view one side of space
C) failing to react to objects or events to one side of space, despite having normal vision
D) failing to react to objects or events to one side of space, because of impaired vision

Question 23

Unilateral spatial neglect' occurs at a remarkably high frequency following

A) myocardial infarction
B) stroke
C) damage to the eyes
D) damage to the occipital lobe

Question 24

Being able to draw an object, match similar objects and describe the component parts, but yet not recognise the object, is termed

A) apperceptive agnosia
B) integrative agnosia
C) prosopagnosia
D) form agnosia

Question 25

Goodale and Milner (1992, 2004) suggested that the unconscious processes of 'action' and 'recognition' abilities might be

A) facilitated by different brain areas
B) both facilitated by the same brain area
C) intact in all cases of visual agnosia
D) impaired in all cases of visual agnosia

Question 26

An inability to recognise faces despite adequate visual acuity is termed

A) apperceptive agnosia
B) integrative agnosia
C) prosopagnosia
D) form agnosia

Question 27

In agnosia research, the term 'individuation' refers to

A) the variation in characteristics between individuals within each type of agnosia
B) recognising seperate items which are clearly quite different from each other
C) a change in the expression of agnosia within the individual over time
D) recognising one specific item from other members of that class of item

Question 28

Bruyer (1991) demonstrated evidence of covert recognition in some cases of

A) blindsight
B) prosopagnosia
C) unilateral spatial neglect
D) form agnosia

Question 29

What is Visual Agnosia? What level of processing in visual perception is affected?