Chapter 1 class notes Flashcards
What are the 5 Main senses
Gustation (taste)
Olfaction (smell)
Vision
Audition (hearing)
Touch
there is no official list of what the senses are
Perception can be defined in terms of what teo things?
Sensory processes (like neural firing) or mental activity (interpretation)
What is sensation?
The process of turning energy or chemicals in the environment into neural signals that the brain can understand
What is perception?
The organization and interpretation of neural signals, making them meaningful
Perception is more concerned with __________ the stimulus
Identifying
More complex conscious experiences are produced by __________ sensations
multiple
What is the first reason to why we should study perception?
For understanding basic research
- determining for mechansims function
- its the first step in understanding cognition
- and to know why the world looks, sounds, feels, tastes, and smells the way it does.
What is the second reason to why we should study perception?
To solve practical problems (applied research)
What are 4 examples of practical problems and applied reseach that give us a reason to study perception?
1) to develop solutions for sensorily impaired (eg.glasses braille)
2) to understand illusions (eg. dazzle camouflage)
3) to produce substitutes for the world (stereo sound)
4) to produce substitutes for the observer (eg. robotic vision)
The world is three-dimensional, the image in our retina is 2-d, yet we think of the world in 3-d? What is this problem called?
Underdetermination
What type of stimulus is an actual object in the world?
Distal Stimulus
eg. an apple, a finger poking you, a vibrating string
What type of stimulus is the pattern of energy/chemicals impinging on our receptors?
Proximal stimulus
eg. sounds energy hitting your eardrum, kinetic energy on your skin, pattern of ohotons on your retina
What is the goal of structuralism?
analyze and break down conscious processes into basic “elements” and specify how elements become connected
Edward Wundt relied on ___________, which is the analysis of ones own conscious experiences
Introspection (studying your own experience)
What is a problem with the structuralism goal of studying elements
Perception is holistic, not elemental
What does “gestalt” mean?
“form” or “configuration” (putting things together, not breaking them apart)
Why did gestalt psychology oppose structuralism?
Because unlike structuralism, they believed that breaking down elementary components losses information
What was the goal of gestalt psychology?
To specify the relationship among stimuli
Gestalt psychology was a holistic approach that emphasized _______________.
Consciousness
What is the “motto” of gestalt psych?
“the whole is different than the sum of its parts” - Max Wertheimer
What is the goal of Constructivism?
To determine how “existing knowledge” influences perception
What is the main belief of constructivism?
That percieving is an active process that is affected by our knowledge and experience. We have to interpret ambiguous (open to more than one interpretation) information from the environment
What is the ecological approach?
The idea that we should study perception in natural settings. Enough information is available in the environment to make mental calculations
J.J Gibson proposed information is _____ picked up from the environment
Directly
What does the computational approach assume?
That the mind is an information processor that receives, stores, retirieves, and transforms information
According to the computational approach, there are three levels of analysis for information processing, what are they?
1) Computational theory = what is the system doing? what is vision and what does it mean to see??
2) Representation and Algorithim = how is it being processed? do the eyes function like cameras and is there an inner screen in our heads?
3) Hardware implementation = what physical machinery does this? what neural curcuits allow us to see?
David Marr defined vision _______________, using computer simulations
mathematically
The Neurophysiological approach is based on Reductionism, what does this mean?
It means that to understand behaviour, we need to study the underlying biological processes
What is the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies? (Muller)
Perception depends on which specific nerve has been activated, and different sensory nerves go to different brain regions
Which theme is this question related to?: “What is the evolutionary advantage of a particular sense’
Evolution
Which theme is this question related to?: “How are different aspects of a stimulus analysed?”
Modularity
Which theme is this question related to?: “How are different aspects of a stimulus recombined to form a whole percept?”
Integration
Which theme is this question related to?: “How do top-down and bottom-up processes interact?”
Processing
Which theme is this question related to?: “how well does our perceprual experience represent objective reality?”
Subjectivity
