Unit 2 AOS 2 SAC -psych. Flashcards
Sustained attention
Sustained attention involves maintenance of attention on a specific stimulus or task for a continuous period of time without being distracted.
Divided attention
Divided attention refers to the ability to distribute our attention so that two or more activities may be performed simultaneously. It may involve the use of just one sense or two or more senses .
examples of divided attention include eating dinner while watching the news
Selective attention
Selective attention involves choosing and attending to a specific stimulus whilst at the same time excluding other stimuli. Essentially, you ‘select’ what you want to pay attention to and ignore less important or irrelevant stimuli.
For example, you may use selective attention when studying in a noisy room to filter out distracting sounds
top-down processing
top-down processing, the perceptual process starts ‘at the top’ with higher level ‘processing’ in the brain and then works ‘down’ from the whole to the details
Perception is guided and influenced by cognitive processes, such as drawing on your past experience, knowledge and expectations in order to interpret and assign meaning to raw sensory information.
example:
The top-down perceptual process does not rely entirely on the sensory data alone. For example, when going for a walk in your neighbourhood on a dark night, a small vaguely seen blob on the end of a leash is recognised as a dog. Despite the low quality of the raw sensory information and lack of finer details, you recognise it as a dog because you draw on your past experience
Binocular depth
Binocular depth cues require the use of both eyes working together in order to provide information to the brain about depth and distance. These cues are especially important in determining the distance of objects that are relatively close. Consequently, if for some reason our vision is limited to the use of only one eye, tasks requiring us to focus on detail over short distances can be difficult to accomplish.
Monocular depth
Monocular depth cues require the use of only one eye to provide information to the brain about depth and distance
bottom up
bottom-up processing, the perceptual process starts ‘at the bottom’ with raw sensory information that is sent ‘up’ to the brain for higher level mental ‘processing’.
process relies entirely on the sensory data. It is entirely data-driven.
Bottom-up processing takes place as it happens and perceptions are built from the sensory input. For example, if a visual stimulus is a dog, the image on the retina is converted into electrical impulses and sent to the visual cortex in the brain where it is initially processed. Along the path from the eye to the brain, specific features of the stimulus such as colour, dots, edges and lines are detected and sorted. When the sensory information reaches the visual cortex, the different features are combined and an image may be constructed from all the available information. It is then sent to other cortical areas for even higher level processing so that it may be recognised. Then, cognitive processes take over and perception occurs when the stimulus is matched against information in memory and it is recognised as a dog.
Gestalt principles
Gestalt principles in visual perception, a way in which we organise the features of a visual stimulus by grouping them to perceive a whole, complete form
For example, if part of what we are looking at is hidden or covered, then, in order to make sense of what is being observed, we simply construct a ‘whole’ or complete form by mentally filling in the part that we cannot see. In this way, Gestalt principles help us construct a meaningful whole object from an assortment of parts that, when considered as individual bits, lack any real meaning
perceptual set
readiness to perceive stimuli in a particular way based on previous experiences, expectations, beliefs, and context.
Perceptual set is a temporary readiness to perceive something in accordance with what we expect it to be. Our expectations of what an object or event may be also make us more likely to interpret the object or event in the predetermined way. It may also predispose us to perceive certain objects or events rather than others. For example, a person driving a car is likely to have a perceptual set to identify anything in the car or on the road that might affect their safety.
Biological factors that influence perception of gustatory perception
Genetics
genetic differences make us more or less sensitive to the chemical molecules in different foods. Our genes can therefore influence how sensitive we are to bitterness, sweetness, umami or any other tastes. For example, variants of one gene (called TAS2R38) have been found to influence how strongly an individual will be able to detect bitter tastes
researchers have found that the likelihood of a person being a coffee drinker or a tea drinker is linked with the presence or absence of the gene variants that shape how bitter flavours taste.
Age:
Research also shows that children are much more responsive to taste than adults. One explanation is that they have more taste receptors than adults. We start to lose taste buds as we age, but exactly how many and when remain unclear.
a greater number of taste buds in childhood may bring with it a greater range of taste sensations and partly explain why young children seem to be ‘fussy eaters’
Agnosia
Agnosia is characterised by loss or impairment of the ability to recognise and identify objects, persons, sounds or other sensory stimuli using one or more of the senses despite otherwise normally functioning senses. The deficit cannot be explained by a problem with the sense organ itself, attention, memory, language problems, or unfamiliarity with the stimuli. As with other disorders, there is considerable variation in its experience between individuals.
Agnosia is usually limited to one sense, mostly vision, hearing or touch. For example, a person may have difficulty in recognising an object as a watch
supertaster
A supertaster is a person who is more sensitive to certain tastes than most others. They experience taste with far greater intensity than the ‘average’ person, especially bitter. This often leads them to have very strong likes and dislikes for different foods
Synaesthesia
a phenomenon that causes sensory crossovers, such as tasting colors or feeling sounds
