Perception 2

Question 1

What is Gregory’s theory?

Answer 1

Gregory’s constructivist theory is a top-down theory and states that we use our past experiences to interpret and perceive the world around us, where we build our perceptions partly on incoming data and also using our past experiences of the world to construct our knowledge. Gregory’s theory says that perception is a construction and falls on the nurture side of the argument

Question 2

talk about Gregory’s theory - perception is a construction

Answer 2

according to Gregory’s theory, our brain can make a “guess” about the sensory information that we receive, where we use our past experiences to build our knowledge on the world.

Question 3

talk about gregory’s theory - inference

Answer 3

Lots of what we percieve daily is ambiguous and incomplete, where it could have many possible meanings. It is up to our brain, where it uses our past experiences to fill in the gaps from the incoming information and drawing a conclusion. The inference that is made can be correct or incorrect

Question 4

talk about Gregory’s theory - visual cues

Answer 4

Our brain uses visual cues to draw mostly accurate conclusions but when we are presented with visual illusions, we can incorrectly perceive depth cues and make incorrect conclusions. Gregory explains this as a mistaken hypothesis (our brain has drawn the wrong conclusion from the sensory information received)

Question 5

Talk about the role of nuture in Gregory’s theory

Answer 5

Gregory says that our perception is due to nurture, so upbringing and culture. Our perception becomes more sophisticated as we grow up and obtain more knowledge about our environment and interactions with the world around us. Research has shown that cultural upbringing and the way that we are raised can influence our perception

Question 6

give a brief explanation of Gregory’s theory

Answer 6

• overview => Gregory proposed that we use our past experiences to make sense of the world around us
• perception is a construction => Gregory proposed that our brain uses the incoming sensory information that we receive, as well as using information that we have gathered previously. This means that perception is a construction
• inference => most of the information that we recieve from our sensory organs is incomplete or ambiguous, so our brain has to use our past experiences to fill in those gaps, which allows us to draw a conclusion. this is called inference
• visual cues => visual cues gives us information about the depth and distance and visual illusions cause the wrong conclusions to be drawn from these cues.
• role of nurture => according to Gregory, our perception becomes more sophisticated the older we become and due to our different upbringings and cultural differences, everybody tends to perceive the world differently, meaning that perception isn’t universal, but rather personal.