WEEK 1- DOES COGNITION INFLUENCE PERCEPTION?

Question 1

what is the action-specific account of spatial perception?

Answer 1

what we see is scaled to the action capabilities of our body

Question 2

what are the six pitfalls that provide a framework with which to evaluate the empirical evidence for the action specific account?

Answer 2

to ensure that effects are present when they are theorized to occur and also that they are absent when the theory deems they should not occur, to disentangle perception from judgements, to ensure effects are not due to demand characteristics or response biases, to ensure they are not due to low level visual differences, to rule out the role of peripheral attentional effects and to verify effects are due to perception rather than memory

Question 3

what is modularity?

Answer 3

the assumption that different processes are carried out in anatomically separate, speciialist brain areas which function quite independently of each other (Fodor, 1983)

Question 4

what is an example of a module?

Answer 4

a module for recognising faces

Question 5

what did Fodor’s strong version of modularity suggest?

Answer 5

processing in a module is: 1. mandatory (we have no conscious control over it). 2. encapsulated (it is not influenced by processing in other parts of the brain). 3. takes only restricted types of inputs (e.g. only faces). 4. cognitively impenetrable (you cannot introspect on it). 5. hard wired and innate

Question 6

why do most psychologist hold a weak version of modularity?

Answer 6

The criteria for Fodor’s strong version of modularity seem much too hard to satisfy

Question 7

what is an example of modularity?

Answer 7

the stroop task- automatically see the colour and read the colour not the word

Question 8

what is the modern day phrenology?

Answer 8

modularity

Question 9

what does everyone agree about perceptual processing and what is still being questioned?

Answer 9

we have bottom up inputs to perceptual processing but still a question whether we ALSO have top down inputs to perception

Question 10

what does top down inputs mean?

Answer 10

biases that influences perception

Question 11

what is an example of top down inputs

Answer 11

stereotyping

Question 12

what happens if there is too much top down processing

Answer 12

could obtain a perception that is false

Question 13

what is the difference between perception and cognition?

Answer 13

percerption is the way things make us feel ie seeing the yellow of the banana or feeling the breeze. Cognition is knowing the price of the banana or certain dates of events.

Question 14

what is the argument proposed by Firestone & Scholl 2015?

Answer 14

we still perceive illusions despite knowing cognitively that this is not reality so perception must be modular

Question 15

what is an example of motivational effects influencing what we see?

Answer 15

if something is desirable it looks closer to you

Question 16

what is an example of emotions influencing what we see?

Answer 16

thinking negative thoughts makes the world look darker

Question 17

what is an example of how we categorise things influences what we see

Answer 17

knowing the typical colour of an object makes grey scale images of those objects appear tinged with colour

Question 18

what is an example of ability to act or intention to act influencing what we see (action-specific account of perception)?

Answer 18

tired or unfit participants over estimate slant of slopes and distances compared to fresh or fit participants

Question 19

what example illustrates the pitfall of only seeking confirmatory evidence (pitfall 1)?

Answer 19

the El Greco Phenomenon- art historians said that el greco painted obejcts to be very elongated due to him having an astigmatism. later realised it could not be because of this because if el greco saw the world as vertically stretched then he would also see his paintings as vertically stretched and this would cancel out the effect.

Question 20

what is an example that proves pitfall 2 (confusing judgements and inferences with perceptions) to be true?

Answer 20

woods et al replicated the witt et al 2004 study (participants estimate target to be further away when throwing a heavy ball compared to a light ball) they asked one group how far the target visually appeared to be and another how far away they felt the target to be taking into account all non visual factors. ball weight only influenced distance estimates in second group.

Question 21

what is an example proving pitfall 3 (task demands)?

Answer 21

Durgin et al 2009, 2012 found that if participants were told that the backpack they wore contained equipment for monitoring their ankel muscle their estimates of the hill slant did not differ from participant who did not wear a backpack (cover story) - suggests before participants knew the backpack was suppose to influences their estimates

Question 22

what is an example proving pitfall 4 (low level perceputal differences)?

Answer 22

in real life example there may be confounds such as if steep slopes are also longer or cover rougher ground

Question 23

what is the only example that proves perception may influence cognition

Answer 23

Levin and Banaji 2006- African American faces appear darker than whtie faces even when the faces have been matched for luminance. - can rectify low level perceptual differences by choosing comparison stimuli more carefully

Question 24

what is an example proving pitfall 5 (changing the focus of attention)?

Answer 24

able to voluntarily choose which interpretation we see for an ambiguous stimuli like the duck-rabbit figure. so changes in our interpretations are only indirectly altered by our top down intentions with the changes mediated by where we look

Question 25

what is an example proving pitfall 6 (confusing memory and recognition with perception)?

Answer 25

Gantman and Van Bavel 2014 conducted study where it was found participants were better at detecting the morally relevant words (blame) compared to irrelevant words. however this could have been due to semantic priming as all the relevant words were related but all irrelevant words not related.