Psychology Midterm Pt 1

Perception

The cognitive process of receiving, interpreting, and responding to sensory information from your environment.

Sensors

specialized cells and organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) that detect physical signals in the environment.

Transduction

The process by which sensory organs convert physical signals from the environment into electrical nerve impulses.

Bottom-up processing

Processing that is driven purely by incoming sensory data from the environment.

Top-down processing

Processing that uses existing knowledge, expectations, and context from the brain to interpret sensory data.

Unconscious interference

The brain’s automatic process of making assumptions to interpret sensory signals and fill in missing information.

gestalt principles

specific rules (such as simplicity, similarity, good continuation, and closure) that the brain uses to organize visual elements into whole patterns.

environmental regularities

characteristics of the physical environment that occur frequently and shape how our brain expects the world to look

what pathway

the visual processing route extending into the temporal lobe responsible for locating objects in space to guide physical actions.

where pathway

the visual processing route extending into the parietal lobe responsible for locating objects in space to guide physical actions.