AP Psych, Myers, Ch. 6

 Perception - the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events  top-down processing - information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.  Starts with background knowledge to fill in gaps necessary for perception.

 The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus  Cocktail party effect Cocktail party effect  You can only focus on a certain amount of stimulus at once… advantages and dangers of multitasking

How many passes does the team in white make?

 Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere  Moonwalking bear  Change blindness Change blindness  Change deafness

 Visual capture – the tendency for vision to dominate other senses (even logic!)  When the sound from a movie projector comes from behind us, we perceive it coming from the screen  When watching a roller coaster on TV, we hold on to our seats and brace for the ride even though we are not moving Ames Room

 Figure-ground relationship - the organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground)  Whatever you are paying attention to (visual, auditory, touch stimulus) becomes the figure, and everything else is the background Reversible figure-ground images

 Emphasizes our tendency to integrate piece of information into meaningful wholes.  when people are exposed to a cluster of sensations, they automatically try to organize them into a whole  Gestalt Psych in Lemons and Space! Gestalt Psych in Lemons and Space!  26 Faces in Everyday Objects 26 Faces in Everyday Objects  We like faces (sum of the parts, rather than the pieces alone.)

 The tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups to construct meaning  Proximity  Similarity  Continuity  Closure  Connectedness

 Grouping helps us construct meaning but also can make us victims of perceptual illusions.

 Seeing objects in three dimensions; allows us to judge distance  Is depth perception innate or learned?  Visual cliff – a lab device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals Visual cliff It appears that depth perception is in part both due to nature and nurture. The capacity to perceive depth is innate, however, it is developed in part due to experience and trail/error.

 Depth cues that rely on the use of both eyes  Retinal disparity –the brain compare the images from the two eyeballs and computes the difference ▪ the greater the disparity between images, the closer the object.  Convergence –the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object ▪ the greater the strain, the closer the object.

 Depth cues that are available to each eye separately  Relative size  Interposition  Relative clarity  Texture gradient  Relative height  Relative motion  Linear perspective  Light and shadow

PHI PHENOMENON  an illusion of movement when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession  perceived when our brains fill in the gap with something.  In a sense, our brains create an object that covers the dots.  This works with any colored background or shape. BETA MOVEMENT  movement perceived when an object changes location, shape, size, angle, etc  This is where a new dot is shown slightly ahead of the previous dot, and so it seems like the dot is moving across the screen.

 the ability to perceive objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change (we can identify things even if their color, illumination, or angle change)  Shape constancy  Size constancy  Lightness constancy

 In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field  When people are given glasses that distort the world, they are initially disoriented, but soon adapt to the new context and can navigate it with ease.  We coordinate our movements in response to our environment (or perceived environment)

Mary had a a little lamb

 A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.  We see what we believe/want/think we see. Expectations, Experiences, Assumptions Schemas and Concepts Dictate Perception of Reality

 subliminal - below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness  priming - the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response. Psychological Priming - Money While we can sense subliminal stimuli, this information does not have the power to persuade us to act overtly in certain ways.

 Perception of the same stimuli can differ depending on the context in which we experience the sensation.  “eel is on the wagon” – you might have perceived “wheel is on the wagon”  “eel is on the orange” – you might have perceived “peel is on the orange”

 Simultaneous stimulation of multiple sensory experiences (i.e. Seeing Sounds, Blue smells etc.)  Affects 1 in 25,000 people

 Extrasensory perception (ESP) – the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; said to include telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition  Parapsychology – the study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis  Psychokinesis – mind over matter: levitating, controlling things with the mind  ESP ▪ Telepathy – mind to mind communication ▪ Clairvoyance – perceiving remote events ▪ Precognition – perceiving future events  Parapsychology cannot gain scientific credit because it cannot reproduce its results. Parapsychology

BiologicalPsychologicalSocial/Cultural Entry-level sensory analysis Unlearned visual phenomena Critical period for sensory development Selective attention Learned schemas Gestalt principles Emotional context effects Perceptual set Cultural assumptions and expectations Physical context effects