Lecture 4 - Perception and attention Flashcards
Sensation
The processing of the sensory system
Perception
The organization, identification and interpretation of sensory information, to understand the environment
Principles of perception
- Constancy
- Grouping
- Contrast effects
Constancy
The tendency to perceive an object you are familiar with as having constant shape, size, and brightness despite the stimuli changes that occur
Grouping
The tendency to perceive patterns in and between objects based on certain rules
Different types of grouping
- Proximity: we tend to see things that are close as a bigger whole.
- Similarity: we tend to see things that are similar as one thing
- Enclosure
Contrast effects
Objects are not perceived as alone, but in the context of other objects and their features changes percept.
Salience
The level at which one object stands out from other objects based on its surroundings
Two models of attention
Feature integration theory - Anne Treisman & Guided Search Theory - Wolfe
Feature Integration Theory - Anne Treisman
Attention is a top-down active search light moving over a combined features’ map.
It is more parallel
Guided search theory - Jeremy Wolfe
Selection of salient objects happens by prioritizing certain feature maps and thus changing the map of combined features.
Attention is amplifier o important feature map that can lead to a clear salient combination
Are these theories based on top-down or bottom-up processes?
Both theories are based on top-down processes, in which you deliberately tell your brain to search from something
Difference top-down and bottom-up
Bottom-Up Processing is stimulus-driven and involves building a perception from the ground up based on the data from your sensory organs. It does not rely on prior knowledge or expectations.
Top-Down Processing is driven by prior knowledge, expectations, and context, influencing how we interpret incoming sensory information, often allowing for faster or more efficient understanding of complex stimuli.
Attentional capture
Task performance being changed by bottom-up grabbing of attention
What is the take-home message of the article of Wang et al
The perceived positive/negative value of a stimulus can act as a distractior in attentional capture just as any other salient feature.
What about mind-set in attention?
Based on perceptual set of factors such as context, your perception of a stimulus can be different.
Inattentional blindness
When attention selection is too strong. E.g. in a movie in which you are asked a question you are focussing so hard on finding the solution that you don’t notice changes in the surroundings.
When designing a nudge you should be aware of
- Perception and its princples
- Attention and how this can lead to blind perception (attention too strong) or attention grabbing (attention too weak)
