GRE Reading Comprehension
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Source: NO5
Visual recognition involves storing and retrieving memories. Neural activity, triggered by the eye, forms an image in the brain's memory system that constitutes an internal representation of the viewed object. When an object is encountered again, it is matched with its internal representation and thereby recognized. Controversy surrounds the question of whether recognition is a parallel, one-step process or a serial, step-by-step one. Psychologists of the Gestalt school maintain that objects are recognized as wholes in a parallel procedure: the internal representation is matched with the retinal image in a single operation. Other psychologists have proposed that internal representation features are matched serially with an object's features. Although some experiments show that, as an object becomes familiar, its internal representation becomes more holistic and the recognition process correspondingly more parallel, the weight of evidence seems to support the serial hypothesis, at least for objects that are not notably simple and familiar.
It can be inferred from the passage that the matching process in visual recognition is
- A not a neural activity
- B not possible when an object is viewed for the very first time
- C not possible if a feature of a familiar object is changed in some way
- D only possible when a retinal image is received in the brain as a unitary whole
- E now fully understood as a combination of the serial and parallel processes