Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Attention, perception and media Hoorcollege - Using Media week 2

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Agenda  Aim of college  Learning goals  What is perception?  The problem of perception  Attention and perception  Perception as problem solving  Perception as pattern recognition  Models of perception  Summary

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Aim  I argued in week 1 that persuasion will often (perhaps mostly) be your goal when using media  Persuasion is an ethical way of trying to change the receiver’s behaviour  However, achieving this goal is complicated by the workings of the human cognitive system  My aim therefore is to highlight how the cognitive system can affect your ability to persuade via media

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Learning goals  By the end of this hoorcollege you should:  Understand of what attention and perception involve (from one theoretical position)  Know what is meant by top-down and bottom-up models of perception  Be aware of the selective nature of attention  Understand perception as a purposive (doelgericht) activity involving the recognition of patterns in order to solve problems  Be in a position to think about how these theories might apply to your own use of media

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media What is perception?

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Perception and human cognition Week 1 Week 2

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media What is perception?  This seems to be an easy question to answer  Perception is what we receive through our senses from the external world  Perception is reality  However…

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media What do you see?

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media What do you see?

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media What do you hear? Destudentzeidedocentiseendwaas De student, zei de docent, is een dwaas De student zei: de docent is een dwaas You probably hear… Or this… But definitely not this…

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media The problem of perception  Philosopher used to use examples like these to suggest scepticism about the existence of an external world  Many ancient Greeks, Hume, Descartes, etc., etc.  Perception is not reality, because we cannot be sure reality actually exists  However, even if reality exists it is remarkable it is that we perceive anything at all… How on earth do we do this?

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Attention and perception

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media We do not perceive everything we are exposed to  Attention is seen as a filter on the all the stimuli we are exposed to  Attention is selective and is usually based on our purposes  This means that perception is not a passive activity  It is active with the perceiver actively (though unconsciously) choosing what to let through the filter

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Types of attention

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Some examples of the purposefulness of attention  Fixation tracking based on two separate tasks  Split earphone listening

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Perception as problem solving

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Making sense of the external world  One way of thinking about perception is that it is a way for us to make sense of the external world  We never see the thing itself  We translate the reaction of our retina to light striking it into a mental representation  We never hear a real sound  We translate the changes in pressure on our ear-drums caused by movement a medium  Perception involves solving the problem of translating this strange data into something we can understand

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media How do we distinguish all the items here?

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Perceptual parsing  Parsing means breaking something into smaller parts or groups  Perceptual parsing methods  Figure - ground  Perceptual grouping

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Figure-ground

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Figure-ground

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Perceptual grouping (Gestalt theory)

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Perception as pattern recognition

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Pattern recognition  Perceptual parsing shows us how we separate external stimuli, but how do we work out what it is that we perceive  Pattern recognition helps us understand this

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Models of pattern recognition  The bottom-up model  Stimulation activates component features and build up to an overall thing  E.g. Geons  The top-down model  Stimulation activates higher level concepts and ideas that affect units lower down

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Bidirectional processing  Today many psychologists believe the process of recognition is bidirectional  We use top-down and bottom-up processing  We tend however, to use top-down processing when we are in a hurry or stressed

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Bi-directional processing Top-down

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Bi-directional processing Bottom-up

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Summary  Attention is a filter on all the stimuli  People can control their attention  Attention is purposive  Perception is a remarkable thing  Perception is can be seen as pattern recognition aimed at solving a problem (“what is that?”)  These factors can be important to keep in mind when using media

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Some links on perception  Try some perceptual experiments  (click on the zaps demos - they’re free!)  Look at some visual illusions  h05article1.asp h05article1.asp  Videos used in experiments on change blindness and inattentional blindness   Also here is the gorilla/basketball passes video to amaze your friends and family (get them to count how many passes the team in white make to each other - it’s 14 BTW and then ask them first how many passes and secondly whether they saw the gorilla) 