PS124- Introduction to Psychology – Unit 8 Seminar

 Perception  How we identify and interpret our sensations and how we organize them into our thought processes  Sensation  vehicle through which we take the information in

 Motivation  Culture  Upbringing  Religion  Gender  Profession  Geography

 Does our perceptions remain relatively stable, or change throughout the lifespan?  Embodied Perception –  Profitt’s runner experiment  Superbowl phenomenon

 Gestalt –the whole is more than the sum of its parts (unified whole)  Figure and Ground  Similarity  Continuity  Proximity  Closure  The following figures were taken from ess/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm

 Figure Ground – We organize visual images to have a figure, and a background, resulting in an initial image, but upon further examination, the background can become the image

 Similarity – Similar Stimuli tend to be grouped together  Proximity – grouping figures in close proximity to one another

 Continuity – perceiving stimulus in smooth, continuous ways  Closure – filling in the gaps of an image to form a whole unified image

 Five senses  Sight  Smell  Taste  Hearing  Touch  Failures in our senses  Effect on first impressions  Sensation disorders – CIPA

 Taste  Picky eaters? – Taste Receptors  Taste disorders  Smell  Pheromones  Smell disorders  Synesthesia

 Alternate senses can step up and compensate for lost sensation – for example a blind person having an acute sense of hearing  Sensory adaptatoin  Why doesn’t my garbage stink anymore?