Perception Flashcards
What is perception?
Becoming aware through senses, but more than sensory discrimination. It is the organisation and interpretation of the information given through senses. It is an active process that requires high levels of cognitive ability such as memory and thought.
What is the adaptation effect?
Adaptation effect = brain adapts to an image and develops an after-image. This after image is positive (in colour) or negative (black and white; e.g. looking at the black dot in the centre of the image).
What is depth perception?
Depth perception = interpreted through binocular disparity (the difference between the image of an object from the right and left eye – helps understand location) and monocular cues (using aspects of the image using reflect learning such as linear perception, texture gradient, interposition and relative size as hints to its location)
Depth perception- interposition, relative size and texture gradient
Interposition- know that the right block is closest to us as in front of the other two
Relative size- differ in size to see which is further
Texture gradient- height and feel is a closer view to depth
What is Gestalt (whole perception)
Describes the brain’s basic organisational tendencies in perception. It tries to seek meaningful groups in visual information such as proximity and differentiation between foreground and background (lamp or 2 faces) – the figure ground effect
What are the two processes to perception?
Top-down processing = perception constructed by cognition (knowledge, experience and expectations). The brain applies what it knows and what it expects to perceive and fills in the blanks
Bottom-up processing = sensory driven. Processing sensory information as it is coming in and building a bigger picture or idea (no knowledge or experience)
What are perceptual constancies?
We know there are constancies in the environment even though there is different visual information – just a matter of where we or it is standing (e.g. opening a door). This helps build experience of objects in the environment
What are perceptual illusions?
The brain makes sense of images using past experiences. These may lead to a false perception of the visual image. It is fooled by perceptual constancies (e.g. tiles A and B are same colour but experience tells us B is lighter than A as we have experience in visualising shadows – a perceptual constancy)
What are the doors of perception and who came up with the theory?
The brain and nervous system protects us from being overwhelmed and confused by a mass of knowledge by shutting out most of what we should percieve at any given moment, leaving us only a small and special selection of information that is likely to be useful.
We only sense what is useful
We are constantly updating our internal model – the sense we have made of the world from past perception. When new information is received and percieved, the thalamus compares this to the internal model and updates it.
What is the relationship between perception and attention?
Selective attention – screening information
• selective listening, inattentional blindness
• effects of sensory loss (e.g. in the elderly)
• over attention can lead to mistakes-listening too much and become less aware of things going on
Who came up with the context of madness and what is about?
Rosenhan put sane people in a psychiatric hospital to prove that it takes time to realize the sane from the insane when they’re in the same environment. The study concluded “it is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals”.
