Chapter 7 - Perception and Sensation Flashcards
3 Factors of Perception
What is in the sensory field, What was just in the sensory field, What has been experienced in the past.
Parrallel Processing
The ability to process multiple sensations at the same time.
Bottom-up Processing
Processing where a whole is constructed from its parts.
Top-Down Processing
Conceptually driven processing influenced by beliefs and prior learning, filling in the blanks
Perceptual Set
A set formed when expectations influence perceptions
Perceptual Constance
Aspects of a stimulus can change dramatically but we still perceive them as the same stimulus or related in a way
Problems Perceptual Constance and Sets
They do not provide an explanation for why they occur rather they simply do.
Selective Attention
The process of simplifying sensory overload by actively ignoring or disregarding certain stimuli. Assumed to be controlled by Reticular Activating System (RAS) and cortical regions.
Filter “Theory” of Attention
More of a model to describe the process in which only certain stimuli are allowed to pass through a sort of bottleneck shape and be accurately and fully perceived. Tested using Dichotic listening.
Innatentional Blindness
Inability to detect stimuli that are in plain sight when our attention is focused elsewhere like with dichotic listening. and the gorilla in the midst of the basketball players.
Change Blindness
Failure to detect changes in a visual stimuli.
Subliminal Messaging
Pseudo-scientific theory that believes that certain hidden messages can appeal to an individuals subconscious and then have those messages affect your behaviour.
Extrasensory Perception (ESP)
Perception of events outside of the known channels of sensation, AKA parapsychology has three main types.
ESP Types
Precognition - Predicting future events
Telepathy - Reading other people’s minds
Clairvoyance - Detecting the presence of objects that are hidden from view.
ESP psychologist
Rein Used Zener Cards
Ganzfeld technique
cutting off a receiver from normal sensory overload and have them receive a message from a sender in a separate location
Reasons for prevalence of ESP belief
Illusory correlation, underestimating frequency of coincidence
Visible light wavelength
400-700 nm
Hue
Colour of light
Brightness
Measure of quantity of light
White and Black
White is the amalgamation of all colours while black is the absence of colour and light altogether.
Variability in light
Additive and substracting colour mixing different from ink which function in the inverse manner.
Eyeball
Organ that is able to convert light in electrical stimuli
Schlera
Outer protective casing of the eyeaball
Pupil
mechanism that controls the amount of light in
Iris
Coloured portion of the eyeball
Nearsighted
Myopia focal point falls in front of eye
Cornea
Bends and refracts light onto focal point
Farsighted
Hyperpopia Focal point lands beyond retina
Lens
Bends and refracts light similar to cornea but is used to focus on objects within view
Retina
Captures light contains rods and cones
Rods
Mechanisms that work best in low levels of light, cannot perceive colour, gain maximum sensitivity after light deprivation for 30 minutes, called dark adaptation concentrated most on the outer parts of retina
Cones
Used to perceive high visual acuity and colour, concentrated very highly at the Fovea centralis
Fovea centralis
Point on the retina with a high concentration of cones and a low concentration of rods, in the middle of vision.
Blind spot
Intersection between the optic nerve and retina where no cones or rods reside.
Photopigments
protein within the cones and rods that react when absorbing light creating nerve impulses, sending them down the optic nerve
Optic chiasm
Area where the information from the left field of view and the right field of cross inside the brain, right field of view information goes to left hemisphere and left field of view info goes to right hemisphere
Area of the brain that interprets visual info
V1 area in the occipital lobe discovered by Hubel and Weisel using cats
Feature Detector Cells
Cells in the brain that recognize different arrangements of simple lines and edges
Later Levels of Perception
More complex shapes and movements can be observed.