1. AP Psychology Perception
Essential Task 5-6: Discuss how experience, context and culture can influence perceptual processes with specific attention to perceptual set, illusions, change blindness, and selective attention.
Logo Green is R=8 G=138 B= Blue is R= 0 G=110 B=184
Border Grey is R=74 G=69 B=64

2. Perceptual Constancies
Sensation
Vision
The Eye
Theories
Hearing
The Ear
Other Senses
Smell
Taste
Pain
Gestalt Principles
Perceptual Constancies
Perception
Basic Principles
Visual Illusions
Depth Perception
We are here

3. Essential Task 5-6: Influences on perception Subliminal messages?
Outline
Influences on perception
Subliminal messages?
perceptual set
illusions
Inattention blindness
change blindness

4. What do we perceive then?
Subliminal Threshold
Outline
Subliminal Threshold: When energy of the stimulus is below one’s absolute threshold for conscious awareness.
What do we perceive then?

5. Subliminal Perception: Sensation Without perception?
Outline
Subliminal = stimuli that sensory system responds to, but due to short duration or subtle form, don’t reach threshold of cognition
Quick Survey
Do you think you are influenced by subliminal messages in advertising?
Do you think you are influenced by everyday advertisements that you perceive consciously (e.g. laundry detergent, beverages)?

6. We are not obedient to Subliminal Messages
Outline
Research shows that the effect only occurs in controlled laboratory studies for a short time. When flashed words to elicit these moods we see slightly:
More competitive participants
More critical participants
More supportive
Research outside the laboratory shows no significant effect of subliminal information
We don’t blindly obey!
Placebo Effect with subliminal self help tapes

7. Vicary’s Study New Jersey, 1957:
Over 6 weeks, 45,699 people see subliminal ads
“Eat Popcorn” – sales up 57.5%
“Drink Coke” – sales up 18.1%
“Minds have been broken and entered”
Outline

8. Except
Outline
The Vicary “Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke” Study’s significance:
In a 1962 interview, Vicary admitted that he had made the whole thing up!

9. Alleged Types of Subliminal Presentation
Outline
Flashing it on the screen so quickly you can not perceive it but you still see it. Below the sensory perception threshold
Playing it backwards
Embedding it into another image
Playing it at a low-volume masked over by other music or sounds

10. The Most Famous Backmasking Ever?
Outline
Forward
Reverse
Message - "Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, MISS HIM" The Beatles have vehemently denied this. Still fans of every generation have listened to this message and heard the same words.

11. Perceptual Set
Outline
Perceptual set is a bias or readiness to perceive certain aspects of available sensory data and to ignore others.
Listeners “hear” diabolical messages in rock music because they are prepared to “discover” certain messages, and therefore they do. Vokey and Read 1985

12. Product Placement = Not Subliminal!
Outline

13. Product Placement
Outline

14. Product Placement
Outline

15. Group A
Outline
You are going to look briefly at a picture and then answer some questions about it. The picture is a rough sketch of a poster for a costume ball. Do not dwell on the picture. Look at it only long enough to “take it all in” once. After this, you will answer YES or NO to a series of questions.

16. Group B
Outline
You are going to look briefly at a picture and then answer some questions about it. The picture is a rough sketch of a poster for a trained seal act. Do not dwell on the picture. Look at it only long enough to “take it all in” once. After this, you will answer YES or NO to a series of questions.

17. Picture
Outline

18. In the picture was there . .
Outline
A car?
A man?
A woman?
A child?
An animal?
A whip?
A sword?
A man’s hat?
A ball?
A fish?

19. Conclusion
Outline
Top Down processing – you go beyond the sensory information to try to make meaning out of ambiguity in your world
What you expect (your experiences and your perceptual set) drives this process
Today we will see what expectations we all have in common.

20. The First Step in Perception: Attention
Outline
We sense 11,000,000 bits of information per second.
We consciously only process about 40 bits (Wilson 2002).
The process by which we attend to these bits is called selective attention
Selective Attention can miss things!
(Click here)

21. Inattentional Blindness
Outline
Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999)
Participants told to count how many times the black jersey team passes the ball
50+% of the participants completely missed the gorrilla

22. Change Blindness
Outline
We are blind to changes in our environment.

23. Extrasensory Perception
Refers to extraordinary perception such as
Clairvoyance – awareness of an unknown object or event
Telepathy – knowledge of someone else’s thoughts or feelings
Precognition – foreknowledge of future events
Research has been unable to conclusively demonstrate the existence of ESP