Perception

Question 1

What is sensation

Answer 1

• Sensation is the physical stimulation of sense receptors by the environment
• Sensations are processed by sense receptors

Question 2

What is perception

Answer 2

• Perception is the organisation and interpretation of sensory information
• It’s the combination of the info received by a sense receptor (eg the eye) and the brains interpretation of what that information means

Question 3

What’s a monocular depth cue and the types

Answer 3

• It’s a cue that can tell us approximately how far away something is, using one eye
• Height in the plane, Relative Size, Occlusion and Linear Perspective

M= HORL

Question 4

What’s a binocular depth cue

Answer 4

• It’s a cue that can tell us precisely how far away something is, using two eye
• Retinal disparity and Convergence

B = RC

Question 5

What is retinal disparity

Answer 5

• It’s the way that the left and right eye view slightly different images
• The closer an object is, the bigger the difference in the 2 images
• Further away objects cause less of a difference

Question 6

What is convergence

Answer 6

• It’s to do with how hard the eye muscles have to work to view objects
• The closer an object is, the harder the eye muscles have to work and this gives the brain information about depth and distance

Question 7

Height in the plane

Answer 7

Objects higher up in the visual field appear further away

Question 8

Relative Size

Answer 8

Smaller objects in the visual field appear further away

Question 9

Occlusions

Answer 9

Objects that are in front of others appear closer to us

Question 10

Linear Perspective

Answer 10

• When parralel lines come together
• in a way that suggests distance

Question 11

What are 2 misinterpreted depth cues

Answer 11

• The Ponzo illusion
• The Muller-Lyer illusion

Question 12

The Amez Room Illusion

Answer 12

The room is the shape of a trapezoid. When two people stand either side of the back wall, one person looks bigger than the other

Question 13

The Ponzo Illusion; what it is and why is it an illusion

Answer 13

• The illusion of depth is created by two lines coming closer together as in a perspective drawing.
• There are two equal length horizontal lines. The line that is higher appears longer because it appears to be more distant
• Our brain applies the rule of size constancy (objects in the distance appear smaller) and mentally enlarges it making the top line larger than it is

Question 14

What is ambiguity + example

Answer 14

• Different interpretations of the same image, the brain cannot decide which interpretation to choose so it will occasionally ‘flip’ between the two
• An eg Necker cube (it can be seen as facing upwards to the right or downwards to the left) or Rubin’s vase (people can normally see a vase or two faces).

Question 15

What is size consistency

Answer 15

• Is the brains ability to perceive familiar objects in the same size despite changes in the size of the image on the retina

Question 16

AO1 of Gibsons Direct Theory of Perception

everything in our visual field, optical flow patters, motion parallex

Answer 16

• Gibson states that sensation and perception are the same thing
• He said that everything in our visual field gives us all the information we need to judge depth, distance and movement without the need for past experiences
• When we are moving towards a fixed point, it stays stationary while the rest of our view seems to rush by; aka optical flow patterns
• When we are moving, objects that are closer to us in our visual field appear to be moving faster than those that are further away from us; this is known as motion parallex

Question 17

AO3 of Gibson Direct Theory of Perception

Answer 17

• A weakness of Gibson’s theory is that it struggles to explain visual illusions. Gibson proposed that we will always perceive accurately whereas illusions trick the brain into misperception. This suggests there is more to perception than his theory suggested.
• A strength of Gibson’s theory comes from a study by Gibson and Walk. They found that very few infants would crawl off a visual cliff. It is unlikely that their reluctance to crawl off the edge of the visual cliff could be something they had learned. This suggests that infants are born with an ability to perceive depth, which shows that some perception is innate.

Question 18

AO1 of Gregorys Constructivist Theory of Perception

we make sense, a lot of what we percieve, brain has help making inferenc

Answer 18

• Gregory states that we percieve based of our past experiences
• We make sense of the world around us by building our perceptions based partly on incoming data and using what we know about the world
• A lot of what we perceive in the world around is is incomplete and ambiguous – it could mean more than one thing, so our brain will fill up the gaps using inference. The brain will use the available sensory info to make a guess of what our eyes are seeing
• The brain has help when making inferences in the form of visual cues. Our perception is usually accurate but the way we interpret things could sometimes be wrong, eg when looking at visual illusions

Question 19

AO3 of Gregorys Constructivist Theory of Perception

Answer 19

• One strength of this theory is that it has good support from studies that show cultural differences in perception. Research in different parts of the world has found that people interpret visual cues differently. This means that their different experiences have affected their perception so this shows nurture plays a key role in helping
• One weakness however is that there’s research that contradicts Gregory’s theory. In the visual cliff experiment, babies didn’t crawl off the edge showing that some elements of perception must be innate. This is a weakness because Gregory believes we learn perception but if this was true the babies would’ve crawled over the edge

Question 20

Factors affecting perception: Motivation

Aim of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study

Answer 20

To see if food deprivation would make food appear brighter

Question 21

Factors affecting perception: Motivation

Method of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study

Answer 21

The study uses 2 groups:
* One group had 26 students who volunteered to go without food for 20 hours
* The other group had participants who ate as normal aka the control group
* The participants were shown four slides of a meal, each shown for 15 seconds. The pictures was shown again, and participants had to adjust the lighting so it looked the same as it did before

Question 22

Factors affecting perception: Motivation

Results of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study

Answer 22

The food deprived participants adjusted the lighting so it was brighter than before. The control group who who weren’t deprived of food didn’t perceive the food brighter

Question 23

Factors affecting perception: Motivation

Conclusion of Gilchrist and Nesberg’s study

Answer 23

Hunger is a motivating factor that affects perception. Being deprived of basic needs makes us sensitive to food related pictures, making them appear brighter

Question 24

Factors affecting perception: Motivation

AO3 of Gilchrist and Nesberg

food deprived; unethical. not like everyday life

Answer 24

• One weakness of this study is that the study involved depriving people of food. It may’ve caused participants discomfort. This is a weakness because depriving people of food for psychology could be considered an ethical issue
• Another weakness is that the study was not like everyday life. The participants were asked to judge pictures of food instead of judging real food which would’ve been more realistic. This is a weakness because the results can’t be generalised to the real world

Question 25

Factors affecting perception: Expectation

Aim of Bruner and Minturn’s study

Answer 25

To see if whether expectation is an important factor in perception

Question 26

Factors affecting perception: Expectation

Method of Bruner and Minturn’s study

Answer 26

• The study uses an independant groups design where the participants were either shown a sequence of letters or a sequence of numbers with the same ambiguous figure in the middle
• The ambiguous figure was either perceived as the letter B or 13

Question 27

Factors affecting perception: Expectation

Results of of Bruner and Minturn’s study

Answer 27

• Results found that the group who saw a sequence of letters were most likely to read the figure as B, the group who saw a sequence of numbers most likely read the figure as 13

Question 28

Factors affecting perception: Expectation

Conclusion of Bruner and Minturn’s study

Answer 28

Therefore expections affected how the stimulus was interpreted

Question 29

Factors affecting perception: Expectation

AO3 of of Bruner and Minturn’s study

Answer 29

• One weakness however is that the study was conducted a long time ago. The research was conducted in 1955 which is over 60 years ago. This is a weakness because we can’t say we’d get the similar results is we repeated this research
• Another weakness is there may be individual differences between the groups because an independent groups design was used. This is an issue as differences in perception between the groups may have been due to participant variables rather their expectations.