Perception Flashcards
transduction
making meaning out of sensory input/stimuli
The experience resulting from stimulation of the senses.
perception
perception seems automatic and effortless but involved active and constructive processes, drawing on higher level _____________ (2) to resolve the many ambiguities in what we perceive.
cognitive abilities
Inverse projection problem
the task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on the retina
- which shape/image on the retina goes with which object in the environment?
- any 2D image formed on the retina could be formed by many 3D objects in the environment
BRAIN HAS TO FIGURE OUT THE TRUE FORM OF AN OBJECT BASED ON THE 2D image the retina is getting
- think about those catfish sims - we think we’ll know what they look like straight on based on the harmony of features but then you turn it to the side and well…
perception difficulties (list 3):
objects can be blurred, hidden, obscured, things are uncertain
-> perspective, lighting, angles -> this is why perception is so complex because we have to figure out all of those to understand the TRUE form of what we’re seeing
Viewpoint invariance
a cognitive mechanism that allows us to recognize an object as equivalent or the same from different perspectives (perspective changes depending on orientation, lighting, etc.)
Direction perception theories focus on what type of processing? Which is:
bottom up -> observe first, THEN transduce/get meaning
Direct Perception Theory:
- perception comes from getting pieces of stimuli in the environment, and then putting them together like a puzzle so recognition can ocur
Construction perception theories involve which type of processing? This type of processing is:
Top-down processing - higher level cognition focused on constructing perceptions using information based on prior expectations
- eg: if you read the word “Laurel” right before hearing the Yanny/Laurel audio, you’ll hear “Laurel” but if you read “Xanny” first you might hear that one instead
Bottom up processing with example
perceiving something starts from the senses and THEN making a conclusion from that
- eg: -> You see your friend slap you -> nerve receptors activated too harshly -> conclusion: feeling pain
Top-down processing with example:
Perception starts with the brain, knowledge, experience, and expectations which SHAPES what is perceived.
Eg: if you’re a beginner magician watching a magic trick, if you want to figure out how the trick works, you’ll use your prior magician knowledge to analyze the trick closely which will affect how well the trick works on you/affects you/surprises you
In practice, both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms tend to be involved in more perceptional experiences, but what is the main difference between them put simply?
Bottom-up - what you see
Vs.
Top-down - what you expect
The phrase “you see what you wanna see” is related to which type of processing because it’s based on ___________ (1).
top-down
expectations
Audiovisual speech perception
The idea that you don’t only perceive what you’re hearing when transducing speech, but the way you also take into account the way the mouth moves (visually) to get a hint to what the sound could be.
The McGurk Effect experiment in which the audio “Ba” is played with a clip of a person making the shape for “Fa, making it hard to distinguish whether or not you’re hearing Ba or Fa is an example of _____________ (3).
audiovisual speech perception
the visual input changes the perception of the sound:
overall this aligns with the idea that:
audiovisual speech perception.
sensory info converges
eg: if you eat something crunchy WITHOUT hearing the crunch, this may affect how it feels and tastes in your mouth
Speech segmentation
when we divide the acoustic signal/sound we hear, into individual words that we can understand
if you’re native to a language, even if you’re hearing someone speak with little to no breaks in between words, you’ll still understand do to your ability of ____________ (2).
However, if you’re not native, you won’t understand the individual words, or where one word starts and begin and it’ll sound like a continuous stream of sound because you cannot do _____________ for this language (same answer for both blanks).
speech segmentation
Helmholtz’s Theory of Unconscious Inference
some of our perceptions are a result of unconscious assumptions and inferences we make based on prior knowledge and personal history
- classic top-down thinking -> letting expectations and what we’ve experienced affect what we perceive
Likelihood principle
we perceive the world in the way that’s most likely based on our past experiences (more top-down)
structuralism
breaking down psychological processes - eg: what does each brain structure do on it’s own to achieve this one structure
- think of how a chemist would break down a compound into it’s constituent (separate) elements
Gestalt
school of thought that rejected the structuralist approach - the meaning isn’t inherent to the blocks, it’s HOW the blocks are put together to make the BIG PICTURE - more about grouping
