Unit 3 - Perception

Question 1

What is bottom-up processing?

Answer 1

• An explanation of the perception that involves starting with an incoming stimulus and working upwards until the representation of the object is formed in our minds
• “What am I seeing?”
• Noticing individual elements, then the entire situation

Question 2

What is top down processing?

Answer 2

• The process of using contextual or general knowledge to understand what we perceived
• “Is that something I’ve seen before?”
• Involves looking at the bigger picture

Question 3

Bottom up processing is purely __________ driven

Answer 3

Data

Question 4

What is selective attention?

Answer 4

The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus

Question 5

What is inattentional blindness?

Answer 5

• Failing to see visible objects when our attention is elsewhere
• Famous gorilla experiment with bouncing basketball

Question 6

What is change blindness?

Answer 6

Failing to notice changes in the environment

Question 7

What is an example of choice blindness from the Swedish supermarket?

Answer 7

People tasted two jams and indicated their preference. They tasted again their preferred jam and explained their preference. However, they didn’t notice that they were “retasting” their non preferred jam

Question 8

What are the steps for transduction?

Answer 8

• RECIEVE sensory stimulation (sensory receptor)
• TRANSFORM that stimulation into neural impulses (transduction mechanism)
• DELIVER the neural information to our brain (pathways)

Question 9

What is transduction?

Answer 9

The process of converting one form of energy into another that your brain can use

Question 10

What is psychophysics?

Answer 10

The study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them

Question 11

What is the absolute threshold?

Answer 11

The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time

Question 12

Who studied our awareness of faint stimuli and called them our absolute threshold?

Answer 12

Gustav Fechner

Question 13

What is the signal detection theory?

Answer 13

• A theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise)
• Proposes that sensory thresholds are influenced by cognitive factors
• Assumes that there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly in a persons experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness.

Question 14

What are subliminals?

Answer 14

Stimuli you cannot detect 50% of the time

Question 15

What is the difference threshold?

Answer 15

• The minimum difference between two stimulus required for detection 50% of the time
• Whether we are able to determine that two stimuli are different

Question 16

The difference threshold increases with the _______ of the stimulus

Answer 16

Size

Question 17

What is Weber’s law?

Answer 17

• The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount)
• The amount of change needed to produce a just noticeable difference is a constant proportion of the original stimulus’ intensity

Question 18

What is sensory adaptation?

Answer 18

• Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation
• Causing lessened sensitivity to our environment

Question 19

What is a perceptual set?

Answer 19

• A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another
• Influences our interpretation of a stimulus
• Example produced by a perceptual set: Surprise at hearing an Oklahoma cowboy speak with a British accent
• Ex: Timmy having a mean teacher, moving, and perceiving his new teacher as mean already

Question 20

What factors influence perception?

Answer 20

• Expectations
• Context
• Emotions
• Motivation

Question 21

How do motives connect to desired objects?

Answer 21

Desired objects, such as a water bottle when thirsty, seem closer

Question 22

What is ESP (extrasensory perception)

Answer 22

• The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input
• Includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition

Question 23

What is subliminal perception?

Answer 23

• The ability to detect sensory information that is below the threshold of conscious awareness

Question 24

What is sensory habituation?

Answer 24

• The tendency to ignore a sensory stimulus
• Habituation takes place in the central nervous system and represents the brain’s effort to fill out distracting or irrelevant sensory information

Question 25

What is perception?

Answer 25

The process of taking sensory stimuli and organizing them into a meaningful item or experience

Question 26

What is the cocktail party effect?

Answer 26

• A form of selective attention where individuals are able to have their attention drawn to their name, even if they are engrossed in a conversation with another individual.
• This is because the mind may be filtering out the majority of other voices in the room but because the two-track mind is still functioning, it can draw your attention when you hear your name

Question 27

What is the stroop effect?

Answer 27

• The Stroop effect shows that people can easily become confused when an automatic and well-practiced task, such as reading, conflicts with the conscious task of trying to say the name of the ink color.
• Ex: Saying the color that the word is written in rather than the color that is spelled

Question 28

What is echoic memory?

Answer 28

• The ability to repeat the last few seconds’ worth of words and sounds

Question 29

Daisy ate bad mayonnaise and, hours later, became ill. After this incident, Daisy has an aversion to mayonnaise and becomes nauseous at the sight or smell of the condiment. Psychologists would describe Daisy as having a taste aversion to mayonnaise. What happened to Daisy?

Answer 29

• Daisy has been conditioned to associate the perception of mayonnaise with nausea and no longer enjoys the condiment.
• Classical conditioning

Question 30

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 30

• A method of learning that employs rewards and punishments for behavior.
• An association is made between a behavior and a consequence (whether negative or positive) for that behavior.

Question 31

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 31

• A learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired
• A response that is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.