Perception  Selective Perception  Any moment our awareness focuses like flashlight beam on limited aspect.  One estimate is our 5 senses take in 11 million bits of information per second, of which we consciously process about 40.  Cocktail party effect. Ability to attend to one stimuli out of the millions available.

Selective Perception  At level of conscious awareness, our attention is divided. (driving - talking)  Gorilla Videotape -- umbrella woman > are examples of “inattentional blindness”  Change Blindness  Choice Blindness  Some stimuli are so powerful we experience “pop-out”. Stimuli that demands our attention.

Perceptual Illusions The Muller-Lyer illusion

Perceptual Organization  The Gestalt Laws of Organization –Series of principles that focus on the ways we organize bits and pieces of information into meaningful wholes. –Gestalt means “whole”

Perceptual Organization  The Gestalt Laws of Organization –The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. –Our brains do more than merely register info about the world. Not just like camera shutter letting things in. We constantly filter sensory information and infer perceptions in ways that make sense to us. Mind matters.

Perceptual Organization  Figure - Ground > our first perceptual task is to perceive any object, called the figure, as distinct from the surroundings, called the ground.

Gestalt Organization  Closure - We fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object  Proximity - We group nearby figures together

Gestalt Organization  Similarity - Figures that are similar to each other, we group together.

Gestalt Organization  Continuity - We perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinued  Connectedness - when seeing things uniformed and linked, we see them as a single unit.

PerceptualOrganization: Closure  Gestalt grouping principles are at work here.

PerceptualOrganization: Grouping Principles

Depth Perception Seeing objects in 3 dimensions Two -dimensional objects fall on our retinas, yet we organize 3 dimensional perceptions.

Perceptual Organization: Depth Perception Visual Cliff

Depth Perception  Retinal or binocular disparity.  Retinas receive slightly different images. When brain compares these images, the difference provides important cues to the relative distance.

Sensory Restriction: Blakemore & Cooper, 1970  Kittens raised without exposure to horizontal lines later had difficulty perceiving horizontal bars.

Monocular Cues  Relative size  Interposition  Relative clarity  Texture Gradient  Relative height

Monocular Cues  Relative Motion  Linear Perspective  Light & Shadow

Motion Perception  Phi Phenomenon - When two adjacent stationary lights blink on-off in quick succession, we perceive movement or motion.

Perceptual Interpretation  Perceptual Adaptation  (vision) ability to adjust to an artificially displaced visual field  prism glasses  Perceptual Set  a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

Perceptual Adaptation  What determines perceptual set? Through experience we form concepts or schemas, that organize & interpret unfamiliar information.

Is There Extrasensory Perception?  Extrasensory Perception  controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input. Parapsychology  Telepathy - mind to mind  Clairvoyance -- Ability to gain information about person through a sixth sense  Precognition -- Ability to predict future events  Psychokinesis -- ability to control/move objects

~ Joseph Campbell ~  People say that what we're seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.