Perception

Question 1

What is sensation?

Answer 1

Physical stimulation of the sensory receptors is processed by sense receptors.
Our brain interprets the information from our five senses which leads to perception.

Question 2

What is perception?

Answer 2

Organisation and interpretation of sensory information by the brain.
Information received from sense receptors is combined with the brain’s interpretation of what that information means.

Question 3

What is the difference between sensation and perception?

Answer 3

Sensation is the detection of a stimulus in the environment, such as light or sound waves.
Perception is the brain interpreting and understanding these sensations.

Question 4

What is the Ponzo illusion?

Answer 4

Misinterpreted depth cue.
Two separate horizontal lines of the same length, one above the other, surrounded by two lines converging into the distance.
People perceive the higher horizontal line as longer than the one below.

Question 5

What is the Müller-Lyer illusion?

Answer 5

Misinterpreted depth cue.
Two separate vertical lines of the same length, side by side, one with ingoing fins and the other with outgoing fins.
People perceive the vertical line with outgoing fins as longer than the vertical line with ingoing fins.

Question 6

What is Rubin’s vase?

Answer 6

An ambiguous figure.
Image of two faces and a vase in the same picture.
Both are correct so your brain can’t decide which one it is.

Question 7

What is Ames room?

Answer 7

Misinterpreted depth cue.
Invented by Ames (1934).
Room looks normal but is actually the shape of a trapezoid.
When two people stand on either side on the back wall, one appears to be much bigger than the other even though they are both the same size.

Question 8

What are visual cues and consistencies?

Answer 8

Visual cues = features of the environment that give us information about movement, distance, etc.
Visual constancies = seeing objects as the same despite seeing them from different angles and distances.

Question 9

What is retinal disparity?

Answer 9

Binocular depth cue

Each eye sees things differently as they are positioned on the face about 6 cm apart. Retinal disparity is the difference between the left and right eye’s view which the brain receives to give information about depth and distance.

Question 10

What is convergence?

Answer 10

Binocular depth cue

The eyes become closer together (converge) when objects are close to us.
Muscles round our eyes work harder when objects are close. This information is sent to the brain to give information about depth and distance.

Question 11

What is height in plane?

Answer 11

Monocular depth cue

Objects that are higher up in the visual field appear further away.

Question 12

What is relative size?

Answer 12

Monocular depth cue

Smaller objects in the visual field appear further away.

Question 13

What is occlusion?

Answer 13

Monocular depth cue

Objects that are in front of others appear closer to us whilst objects behind other objects seem further away.

Question 14

What is linear perspective?

Answer 14

Monocular depth cue

When parallel lines converge in the distance, the point at which they come together is perceived to be further away.

Question 15

What is size constancy?

Answer 15

The brain perceives familiar objects as a constant size despite the size of the image they produce on our retina changing with distance.

Question 16

What is misinterpreted depth cues?

Answer 16

Objects in the distance that appear smaller are scaled up by our brain so they look normal size.
Sometimes the brain perceives distance when there isn’t any which creates a visual illusion.

Question 17

How does the Ponzo illusion work?

Answer 17

Converging lines give the illusion of distance.
The brain uses size constancy and mentally scales up the more distant line while mentally scaling down the closer line.

Question 18

How does the Müller-Lyer illusion work?

Answer 18

Ingoing fins are shaped like the outside of a building projecting out.
Outgoing fins are shaped like the inside corner of a room which is stretching away from us.
This gives the illusion of distance/nearness.
We mentally scale up the line that appears closer (outgoing fins) so it appears longer.

Question 19

What is an Ambiguous figure?

Answer 19

A type of visual illusion where there are two possible interpretations of the same image, and the brain cannot decide which one to choose.

Question 20

How does the Necker cube illusion work?

Answer 20

The same image of a cube can be perceived as either pointing upwards to the right, or downwards to the left.

Question 21

What is fiction?

Answer 21

A type of visual illusion that causes the brain to perceive something that is not there.

Question 22

How does the Kanizsa triangle work?

Answer 22

Illusory contours to create the impression that a second triangle is overlapping the first one.

Question 23

What is Gibson’s direct theory?

Answer 23

Gibson’s theory suggests that the environment gives us all the information required for perception.
Gregory’s theory suggests that perception is to do with past experiences.

Question 24

What is direct perception?

Answer 24

Sensation and perception are the same thing.
The eyes detect everything we need to judge depth, distance and movement. We don’t need past experience.

Question 25

What is optic flow patterns?

Answer 25

When moving, the point we are moving towards stays stationary and everything else rushes away from it.
This is detected by our eyes which tells the brain that we are moving, so we know the speed and direction that we are travelling in.

Question 26

What is motion parallax?

Answer 26

This is another monocular depth cue which tells the brain the speed we are moving.
When we are moving, objects closer in our visual field appear to move faster than objects further away.

Question 27

What is the influence of nature in perception?

Answer 27

Our ability to perceive is inborn – we don’t need to learn it.
The eyes detect fine changes in light, texture, movement and depth so we can understand distance and depth.

Question 28

What are Gibsons theory evaluation points?

Answer 28

A strength of Gibson’s theory is that it has real-world meaning.
Research was based on the experience of pilots from the Second World War.
This makes it more relevant to explain how we perceive the world on a daily basis.

A weakness of Gibson’s theory is that it struggles to explain visual illusions.
Gibson proposed that we will always perceive accurately whereas illusions trick the brain into misperception.
This suggests there is more to perception than his theory suggested.

A strength of Gibson’s theory comes from Gibson and Walk’s study.
They found that very few infants would crawl off a ‘visual cliff’.
This suggests that infants are born with an ability to perceive depth, which shows that some perception is innate.

Question 29

What is Gregory’s constructivist theory of perception?

Answer 29

This contrasts with Gibson’s theory that sensation and perception are the same thing.
It proposes that we use past experience to make sense of the world around us.

Question 30

What is interference in perception?

Answer 30

The brain uses sensory information that is available and then fills in the gaps.
Past experience means we can infer what should be there and can draw a conclusion about what is being seen.

Question 31

What are visual cues?

Answer 31

When making inferences, features of the environment (visual cues) give the brain information about depth, distance, etc.
Visual illusions occur because the brain has drawn the wrong conclusion from these cues.

Question 32

What is the role of nature on perception?

Answer 32

Perception depends on experience which is learned.
For example, some visual cues are learned.
The more we interact with the world, the more sophisticated our perception becomes.

Question 33

What are the evaluation point’s for Gregory’s theory of perception?

Answer 33

One strength is that Gregory’s theory has good support from studies that show cultural differences in perception.
Research in different parts of the world has found that people interpret visual cues differently (e.g. Hudson’s study).
This means that their different experiences have affected their perception.

One weakness relates to Gregory’s use of visual illusions to support his theory.
They are artificial two-dimensional (2D) images that are deliberately designed to fool us.
As a consequence, his theory may not tell us much about how perception works in the real world.

Another weakness is that Gregory’s theory cannot explain how perception gets started in the first place.
Research has shown that babies have some perceptual abilities at birth, such as they prefer human faces to random patterns (Fantz).
This suggests not all perception is the result of our experience.

Question 34

What is perceptual set and culture?

Answer 34

Perceptual set = the tendency for our brain to notice certain aspects of the environment more than others.
Culture = the social world that surrounds you.

Question 35

What was the aim of Hudsons study?

Answer 35

Hudson aimed to find out whether people from different cultural/educational backgrounds perceived depth cues in 2D images differently.

Question 36

What was Hudson’s method?

Answer 36

He showed 2D drawings to participants in South Africa – native black people who were either schooled or unschooled; and white people of European descent who were either schooled or unschooled.
The participants had to say which animal the man was trying to spear.
The spear was pointing at an elephant and an antelope but depth cues suggested it was actually being aimed at the antelope.

Question 37

What were the results of Hudson’s study?

Answer 37

Despite the picture using height in the visual field and relative size to indicate depth, many believed the spear was pointing to the elephant.
Both black and white schooled participants were more likely to perceive depth than unschooled participants.
White schooled participants were more likely to perceive depth than black schooled participants.

Question 38

What was the conclusion of Hudson’s study?

Answer 38

People from different cultural/educational backgrounds use depth cues differently and have a different perceptual set.
This supports Gregory’s theory as it shows that depth cues are learned.

Question 39

What are the evaluation point’s of Hudson’s study?

Answer 39

One weakness is the instructions may not make sense.
The language barrier means translations of the method may have been unclear.
This will therefore affect the validity of the results.

A weakness is that some of the participants may have been confused by seeing drawings on paper.
When more familiar materials such as cloth were used they gave different answers.
This shows representation affects results.

One weakness is that the research is from a long time ago and may be poorly designed.
Early cross-cultural studies of perception often did not include things like proper control groups.
This caused the results of cross-cultural differences in perception to lack validity.

Question 40

What is perceptual set and emotion?

Answer 40

The tendency for our brain to notice things that are exciting, interesting or unusual.
But also block things that make us anxious or we find threatening.

Question 41

What was the aim of McGinnies study?

Answer 41

McGinnies wanted to see whether things that cause anxiety are less likely to be noticed than things that are emotionally neutral.

Question 42

What is the method of McGinnies study?

Answer 42

Eight male and eight female students were shown neutral and offensive ‘taboo’ words flashed on a screen.
After each word was shown participants had to say it out loud.
The amount of emotional arousal was measured through their galvanic skin response (GSR) which records electrical changes in the skin.

Question 43

What were the results of McGinnies study?

Answer 43

Participants took longer to say offensive words like ‘bitch’ and ‘penis’ than neutral ones like ‘apple’ and ‘dance’.
Taboo words produced bigger changes in the GSR than neutral words.

Question 44

What was the conclusions of McGinnies study?

Answer 44

This shows that emotion affects perceptual set.
Perceptual defence is used by the brain when confronted with words that are offensive or cause anxiety.

Question 45

What are the evaluation point’s of McGinnies study?

Answer 45

One strength of this study is that it used an objective measurement of emotion.
A scientific method was used – the galvanic skin response – to test biological anxiety responses.
This produces results that are less open to bias than, for example, rating scales.

One weakness is that delayed recognition may be more to do with embarrassment.
Participants may have hesitated in giving their response as they were uncomfortable repeating rude words in a study.
This suggests that awkwardness may have been an extraneous variable.

One weakness of studies in this area is that the results are contradictory.
This is because sometimes they suggest we are more likely to notice emotional material, and sometimes we are less likely.
This makes it difficult for psychologists to draw firm conclusions.

Question 46

What is perceptual set and motivation?

Answer 46

The force that drives your behaviour (motivation) can affect how you perceive things in the environment.
Wanting something can increase its attractiveness.

Question 47

What was the aim of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study of motivation?

Answer 47

Gilchrist and Nesberg aimed to find out if food deprivation affects the perception of pictures of food.

Question 48

What was the method of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study?

Answer 48

Two groups of students: one group deprived of food for 20 hours and a control group (not hungry).
Students were shown four slides, each one showing a meal.
The slide was displayed for 15 seconds.
The picture was shown again, but dimmer, and participants had to adjust the lighting to make it look the same as it did before.

Question 49

What were the results of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study?

Answer 49

Participants perceived the food as brighter the longer they were deprived of food.
The control group (who were not deprived of food) didn’t perceive the food as brighter.

Question 50

What was the conclusion of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study?

Answer 50

Being deprived of food increased perceptual sensitivity.
This shows that hunger is a motivating factor that affects the way food-related pictures are perceived.

Question 51

What are the evaluation points of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study?

Answer 51

One strength is that similar studies have found similar results.
Sanford deprived participants of food and showed them ambiguous pictures. The longer they were deprived of food the more likely they were to see food.
This increases the validity of the Gilchrist and Nesberg results.

A problem with studies in this area is that they are unethical.
This is because depriving participants of food and water could cause them to feel uncomfortable.
This is an issue as you should not do this in psychological research.

A problem with the study is that it was not like everyday life.
Participants were asked to judge pictures of food rather than real food.
This makes it harder to apply the results to situations in the real world.

Question 52

What is perceptual set and expectation?

Answer 52

The belief about what is likely to happen based on past experiences can affect how much we attend to or notice things in the environment.

Question 53

What was the aim of Bruner and Minturn’s study of expectation?

Answer 53

Bruner and Minturn aimed to find out whether an ambiguous figure was seen differently if the context of the figure was changed.

Question 54

What was the method of Bruner and Minturn’s study?

Answer 54

An independent groups design was used where participants were either presented with a sequence of letters or a sequence of numbers with the same ambiguous figure in the middle.
The ambiguous figure could be seen as either the letter B or as the number 13.
Participants had to report and also draw what they saw.

Question 55

What were the results of Bruner and Minturn’s study?

Answer 55

Those who saw a sequence of letters were more likely to report the figure as being the letter B and tended to draw a ‘B’.
If shown numbers they were more likely to say it was the number 13 and drew a ‘13’.

Question 56

What was the conclusion of Bruner and Minturn’s study?

Answer 56

This shows that expectation of what the figure represented was affected by the context that the figure was presented in.

Question 57

What are the evaluation point’s for Bruner and Minturn’s study?

Answer 57

One weakness of the study is that it used an artificial task.
An ambiguous figure is designed to trick perception.
This makes the results lack validity.

One weakness relates to the fact that there were individual differences between groups.
This is because an independent groups design was used.
This is an issue as differences in perception between the groups may have been due to participant variables rather their expectations.

One strength of this study is that it has real-life application.
It can explain errors that people make as the results suggest that expectations can influence perception.
This helps to explain why people make sometimes serious mistakes on tasks in the real world.