Perception & attention Flashcards
What do we need to perceive?
We need our senses: touch, sight, taste, smell, and sound.
What is sensation?
the processing of the information that comes from our sensory system.
What is perception?
the organisation, identification, and interpretation of sensory information to represent and understand the environment –> this is the brain process
sensation ≠ perception
What are the principle of perception?
- Constancy –> the tendency to perceive an object you are familiar with as having a constant shape, size, and brightness despite the stimuli changes that occur
- Grouping (Gestalt) –> the tendency to perceive patterns in and between objects based on certain rules (regular,orderly,simple)
- Proximity: things close in proximity seem as a whole
- Similarity: things similar seem as one thing
- Contrast effect –> objects are not perceived alone, but in the context of other objects and their features, the percept changes.
What is salience?
The level at which an object stands out from other objects based on one or more features.
When a stimulus is more distinct, we pay more attention to it.
What is visibility and is it the same as salience?
The state of an object being able to be perceived per se.
Visibility ≠ Salience
When is salience small?
When you are searching for an particular object or person.
What are the two models of attention?
- Anne Treisman - Feature Integration Theory
- Wolfe - Guided Search Theory
What is the Feature Integration Theory?
Attention combines features to recognize objects.
Attention is a process where a search light like a beam scans this map and selects the relevant object for further processing, so working directly on this ‘overall’ objects map/field.
If you’re looking for something specific you need to move the flashlight to combine the features and find it
What is the Guided Search Theory?
Attention prioritizes certain features to make objects stand out more.
Attention is not a process that searches the ‘overall’ map, but assigns more weight to certain feature maps (e.g., color), resulting in a different ‘overall’ map where an attended object does stand out.
Attention is as an amplifier –> Imagine a concert soundboard with sliders for different instruments (e.g., color and shape). If nothing clearly stands out, attention adjusts the sliders, turning up the volume for important features so that what you’re looking for becomes more noticeable.
Top-down and bottom-up processes are quite like S1 and S2, which is which?
- Top-down is system 2: slow and effortful and guides your attention based on what you want to focus on (internal)
- Bottom-up is system 1: fast and requires no effort and reacts to what’s happening around you (external)
What is attentional capture?
Task performance can be disrupted by automatic processes in attentional selection. Something that is very salient, but task irrelevant, can break your attention.
If you present a salient distractor, that is task irrelevant, your attention get broken and you’re a bit slower.
Also called attention grabbing
What is inattentional blindness?
When attentional selection is too strong, an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits
Also called perceptual blindness, blindness perception or change blindness
How to incorporate inattentional blindness in situations where people choose unhealthy options?
- Make the healthy options closer in appearance and task relevance to the unhealthy options
- Coca Cola Zero’s new can, not black anymore but looks like the ‘normal’ coca cola, placing this closer to the normal can, can nudge people to grab the zero version
