Visual perception process

Question 1

Sensation

Answer 1

a physiological process involving sensory receptors detecting and responding to the presence of stimuli

Question 2

Perception

Answer 2

the mental process of organising and interpreting sensory stimuli sent from the senses so it achieves a meaningful form

Question 3

Feature detector cells

Answer 3

– neurons specialised to respond to specific perceptual features of a stimulus pattern

Question 4

Perceptual features

Answer 4

basic elements of a stimulus pattern (lines, shapes, colour)

Question 5

Visual perception principles

Answer 5

Rules our brain automatically applies to visual stimuli to help organise and interpret them in a consistent and meaningful way

Question 6

Reception:

Answer 6

• stimulus is detected at sensory receptor sites in a sense organ
• if not intense enough to activate a response, no further processing occurs

Question 7

Transduction:

Answer 7

• receptors convert received energy into electrochemical energy required for neural impulses
• information about the various features of the energy received is coded into a neural impulse

Question 8

Transmission:

Answer 8

• begins when electrochemically charged neural impulses leave their receptor site
• travel along specific nerve fibres (neural pathways) that connect to a particular location in the brain

Question 9

Basic neural pathway

Answer 9

– left portion of each eye’s retina connects to occipital lobe in the left side of brain, right to right side, with the crossover point called the chiasma. This results in each eye supplying visual information to both right and left occipital lobes (back of the brain)
Selection:

Question 10

Selection:

Answer 10

• feature detector cells filter visual stimuli
• specialised to respond to specific perceptual features (eg line, shape, edges, spots, colours)
• select perceptual features for further processing, ignore less important ones
• not enough time to fully process all stimuli
• further higher level selection occurs in occipital lobes

Question 11

Organisation

Answer 11

• selected stimuli arrive individually, with no meaning
• the brain must organise stimuli into meaningful pattern to know what they represent
• involves the application of visual perception principles to help organise and interpret the stimuli in consistent and meaningful way

Question 12

Interpretation

Answer 12

• assigning meaning to sensory stimuli so we understand what it represents about the external world
• information often incomplete or inconsistent
• we have to make an initial guess (perceptual hypothesis) as to what stimuli represent
• first impression of stimulus sometimes wrong
• influenced by which features were selected for further processing
• psychological factors such as past experience, expectations, and motivation
• psych. factors are unique to individual, so perceptions are all different n