AP Psych - 16. Perception

Selective Attention

what we are continuously focusing on

Cocktail Party Effect

attending to one auditory message while filtering others out

Selective Inattention

consciously or unconsciously ignoring stimuli

Change Blindness

failing to notice obvious changes in the environment when there is a break in your field of vision

Perception

how our brain, interprets, makes sense of & organizes sensory info

Bottom-Up Processing 

• sensation first, then perception 

• parts 🡪 whole 

• focus on raw sensory info, then form perception 

• common with new/unfamiliar stimuli

Top-Down Processing 

• perception first, then sensation

• whole 🡪 parts 

• based on our experiences, expectations, culture, norms  

• schema, perceptual/mental set 

Schema

mental category that helps us organize the world

Assimilation

placing info into an existing schema (top-down)

Perceptual Set 

• aka mental set

• mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

• experiences, expectations, motivations, emotions, culture

• lenses that shape our perception

 Muller-Lyer Illusion

an example of context & expectation impacting perception 

Perceptual Constancies 

perceive objects as unchanging even as changes occur in our field of vision (size, shape, color)