AP Psych Unit 2

AP Psychology

Perception is influenced by external sensory information, also known as what?

Bottom-up processing

Internal prior expectations

are also known as top-down processing.

What two internal factors filter perception of the world?

Schemas and Perceptual Sets

External factors that influence perception of the world?

Contexts, Experiences, and Cultural Experiences

What are Gestalt Principles?

Explains how we organize our world (closure, figure and ground, proximity, similarity).

______________ is an interaction of sensation and perception

Attention

Examples of attention perceptions and sensations

Selective attention and Inattentional Blindness

Binocular depth cues of _____________ and _________________ utilizes images from each eye

retinal disparity, convergence

Monocular Depth Cues:

Relative clarity, relative size, texture gradient, linear perspective, and interposition. (give the illusion of depth)

_______________ maintain perception of an object even when the image changes

Perceptual constancies

_______________________ can be perceived when objects are not moving

Apparent movement

What is Sensation?

The experience of sensory stimulation

Bottom-up Process

an approach to perception that begins with raw sensory information that gets sent up to the brain for higher-level analysis.

What is Perception?

• The process of creating meaningful patterns with raw sensory information

• Strikes retina, uses pattern recognition

Top Down Process

• Using sensory experience basics comes with an expectation/ previous background knowledge.

• Forms foundation of consciousness

• We interpret sensory information using our schemas and past experiences to construct deeper meaning.

What is subliminal sensation and perception?

The notion that we may respond to stimuli that are below our levels of sensory OR perceptual awareness.

What is subliminal stimulus?

Falls below our threshold for conscious detection HOWEVER the unconscious activation of certain associations may alter perception, memory, or response.

Priming

• Can be a subliminal sensation or perception

• Individuals react positively or negatively depending on what image was flashed before their eyes.

How does priming affect perception?

Activates associations

Individual and Cultural Differences in Perception?

• Motivation

• Values

• Expectations

• Cognitive Style

• Experience and Culture

• Personality

• Synesthesia

Perceptual Adaptation:

How perception will change when you get used to the distortion of it. Ex: drunk goggles

Perceptual Set

• Influenced by motivation, schemas, emotions, and experiences

• Mental predisposition to perceive one thing over another and ignore others

• Ex: is dolphin a fish? Is a stool a chair?

Schemas

• Changing schemas —> accommodation (not accurate or complete)

• Schemas mental representations of ideas or categories that help us organize, process, and store new information

• Networks of interrelated concepts

• Schemas can include more cognitive information (feelings, assumptions) —> many automatic and culturally based

• Stereotypes are often included in schemas, especially with little information and/or experience

Selective Attention

Focusing on conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

(Cannot multitask)

Our sense bombarded with stimuli, focus on a small number of stimuli.

Occipital lobes ________ sent via optic nerve

makes sense of information

Perception is?

Detecting patterns (Gestalt Principles —> Perceptual organization)

Figure- Ground

Perceiving a foreground object (figure) against a background (ground)

Grouping

Proximity, group things together

• Similarity —> Things that look alike

• Continuity —> Tend to perceive smooth and continuous patterns over separate pieces

• Connectedness —> We group things together, connected as one unit

• Closure —> Filling gaps to complete an image

• Context effects —> Things around us affect how we see things

Perceptual Constancy

Mind takes in environment change and still holds perceptual context. Ex: same sweater lights on or off.

Types of perceptual constancies

• Size constancy

• Shape Constancy

• Brightness/Light Constancy

• Color Constancy

Monocular cues

those that require only one eye

• Relative clarity —> Objects far away fuzzy, images closer (clearer)

• Superposition/Interposition —> Whats blocking what. Things are closer, block things closer gives you a sense of depth.

Texture Gradient

Ex: Size of sand up close versus far away

Linear perspective

lines come together at horizon

Binocular Eyes

Requires both eyes

• Convergence

• Retinal Disparity

Convergence

The closer you get, the more cross-eyed you get.

Retinal Disparity

• the closer an object is, the more two retinas see differently.