Unit 2 All Together + General Ques

Attention

Actively focusing on particular information while simultaneously ignoring other information

What are the two types of information sources we can pay attention to?

Internal Stimuli & External Stimuli

Internal Stimuli

Information or sensation that originate from within the body

External Stimuli

Information of sensations that originate from outside the body

What are the three different types of attention?

Sustained, Divided, Selective

Sustained Attention

Focusing on one stimulus or task across a prolonged, continuous period of time

Divided Attention

Splitting attention across two or more stimuli at one time

Selective Attention

Exclusively focusing attention on a specific stimulus or task while ignoring all other stimulus or tasks

What are the two types of selective attention?

Predictive Principle & Uncertainty Principle

Predictive Principle

Where we focus on stimuli that are personally meaningful and important to us amongst other less meaningful stimuli

Uncertainty Principle

Where our attention is captured the most by unpredictable or unfamiliar stimuli. This is due to the stimuli’s potential to provide useful information or news about pleasant or dangerous consequences

Sensation

The process of receiving and detecting raw sensory information via sensory organs and sending the information to your brain

What are our sensory organs?

Tongue, Eye, Skin, Ears, Nose

Perception

The process of organising, and interpreting sensory information resulting in conscious awareness of our world

What are the three stages of perception?

Selection, Organisation & Interpretation

Selection

Attending to certain stimuli whilst excluding others

Organisation

Regrouping stimuli for them to be cohesively arranged

Interpretation

Understanding and assigning meaning to the information

Visual Perception

Becoming consciously aware of visual stimuli as a result of interactions between the visual system and the environment

Gustatory Perception

Becoming consciously aware of flavour

What are the basic flavours?

Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, & umami

Schemas

Organized frameworks that help individuals categorize and interpret information based on prior knowledge and experiences.

Biological Factors in Perception

Are internal genetic and/or physiologically based factors

What are the two photoreceptors located in the retina?

Rods and Cones

Rods

Are photoreceptors that allow someone to see in low levels of light

Cones

Are photoreceptors that allow someone to see colour and fine details in well-lit conditions

Refractory Errors

Defects in the eye causing it not to bend light as it is supposed to, resulting in reduced visual activity

Myopia

Short-sightedness due to the focal point of one or both eyes being located in front of, instead of on, the retina

Depth Cues

Visual clues that allow someone to perceive the world in three dimensions and judge the distance and position of objects in their environment

Monocular Depth Cues

Rely on visual information perceived by just one eye

Binocular Depth Cues

Rely on visual information from both eyes

Accomodation

The bulging and flattening of the lens depending on how far away an object is

Motion Parallax

Use the perception of movement to determine how far away things are

Pictorial Depth Cues

Aspects of paintings of drawings that can be manipulated by artists to depict depth

What are the pictorial depth cues?

Relative size, height in visual field, linear perspective, interposition, texture gradient

Relative Size

Objects that are relatively larger compared to others are perceived as closer

Height in visual field

The closer objects are to the horizon line the further they appear

Linear Perspective

Parallel lines appear to gradually converge in the distance indicating depth

Interposition

When objects overlap with one another, we perceive the object that is covered being further away

Texture Gradient

The greater the detail of an object the closer it appears

Retinal Disparity

The slight difference between different images received from either eye

Convergence

The physical turning in of our eyes to look at things up close. The strain on our eye muscles signals to the brain that the object is close

Psychological Factors

Are internal factors pertaining to an individual’s mental processes, including cognition, affect, thoughts, beliefs and attitudes

What are the guiding rules that apply to incoming visual information & determine how they are organised and interpreted?

Gestalt Principles & Visual Constancies

Gestalt Principles

The guiding rules of perception that allows us to organise and group seperate visual stimuli into a meaningful whole

What are the gestalt principles

Similarity, proximity, closure & figure ground principle

Proximity Principle

Our brain’s tendency to group items based on their physical closeness

Similarity Principle

The brain’s tendency to group parts of an image that are similar

Figure-ground principle

The tendency for some figures to be seen in front of an image

Closure Principle

Our brain’s ability to mentally complete images

Perceptual Set

A predisposition to perceive certain features of sensory stimuli and ignore other features that are deemed irrelevant

Social Factors

External factors relating to an individual’s interactions with others and their external environment, including their relationships and community involvement

Culture Norms

Standards, values, or rules that outline an appropriate behaviour or experience within a culture

What are the biological Factors of gustatory perception?

Age & Genetics

Supertaster

A person with a heightened sensitivity to taste, typically due to genetic variation affecting taste buds, leading to stronger experiences of flavours

Mediumtaster

A person with a moderate sensitivity to taste, falling between supertasters and non-tasters in their sensory perception

Nontaster

A person with low sensitivity to taste, characterized by fewer taste buds and a diminished ability to perceive flavors compared to mediumtasters and supertasters.

What can effect gustatory perception?

Perceptual set, appearance & packaging

Psychological Factors of Gustatory Perception

The appearance of our food can contribute to our expectations of its taste and perception of its flavour

Colour effect on gustatory perception

If a food’s colour does not match our expectations, we may taste something wrong with it, even if this is not the case

Shape effect on gustatory perception

The shape of our food or drink, or the vessel it is in or on, may also influence our gustatory perception

Food Packaging effect on gustatory perception

As well as the colour of food packaging, other visual information on food packaging, such as brand names, brand logos, and images can all influence the way we perceive the flavour of food

Culture effect on gustatory perception

What foods we have grown up with influence what we decide tastes good or ‘normal’

Fallibility

The quality of being prone to error or experiencing difficulties in judgement

Perceptual Distortion

An error in the judgement or interpretation of sensory stimuli

The Blind Spot

The fallibility of visual perception and the presence of perceptual distortions does not mean something is wrong, but rather demonstrates that normally functioning brains are susceptible to error

Where is the blind spot located?

Behind Retina

Visual Illusion

The perception of a visual stimulus that conflicts with how it is in physical reality

Muller-Lyer Illusion

The illusion relies on the influence of the accompanying arrowheads of each line, specifically whether the line is contained within inverted arrowheads or regular arrowheads

Ames Room Illusion

This illusion occurs when a person views two people in a special Ames Room through a peephole using only one eye

Agnosia

A disorder involving the loss or impairment of the ability to recognise familiar stimuli through the use of one or more senses, despite the senses functioning normally otherwise

Miraculin

Is a glycoprotein that alters taste perception, making sour foods taste sweet when consumed.

Synaesthesia

A perceptual phenomenon characterised by the experience of unusual perceptions in one sensory system after another sensory system has been activated

Spatial Neglect

An inability to perceive, report, or orient sensory information located within one side of space

The room is trapezoid shaped but is perceived as rectangular

Which of the following is the best description of the Ames Room?

Social Cognition

How we perceive, think about and use information to understand and make judgements about ourselves and others in different social situations

Person Perception

The mental processes we use to understand and form impressions of other people

What are the ways you can form impressions of others?

Directly & Indirectly

Attribution

Is the process by which we explain the cause of our own or another person’s behaviour

Internal Attribution

Is an explanation of behaviour due to the characteristics of the person involved

External Attribution

Is an explanation of behaviour due to the factors associated with the situation the person is in

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the influence of personal factors and underestimate the impact of situational factors on other people’s behaviour

Attitudes

An evaluation a person makes about an object, person, group, event or issue.

1st stage of cognitive process

Observation of an outward act of behaviour

2nd stage of cognitive process

Conscious determination or acknowledge of the behaviour

3rd stage of cognitive process

Attribute causes to this observed behaviour

An evaluation of something

I don’t like pineapple on pizza (attitude)

Settled and stable

This is something that has been constant since childhood (attitude)

Learnt through experience

I have tried it on pizza, it’s not terrible but I will always prefer to pull it off (attitude)

Tri-component model of attitudes (ABC MODEL)

A model which illustrates the relationship between the affective, behavioural and cognitive components of attitudes

Affective (TRI COMPONENT MODEL)

Our emotions and intuitive feelings about something

Behavioural (TRI COMPONENT MODEL)

Our outward and observable about something

Cognitive (TRI COMPONENT MODEL)

Our thoughts and beliefs towards something

Cognitive Dissonance

The psychological tension that occurs when our thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviour do not align

Cognitive Bias

The unconscious, systematic tendencies to interpret information in a way that is neither rational nor based on objective reality

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to search for and accept information that supports our prior beliefs or behaviours and ignore contradictory information

Actor-Observer Bias

The tendency to attribute our own actions to external factors and situational causes while attributing other people’s actions to internal factors

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to attribute positive success to our internal character and actions and attribute our failures to external factors or situational causes

False-Consensus Bias

The tendency to overestimate the degree to which other people share the same ideas and attitudes as we do

Halo Effect

The tendency for the impression we form about one quality of a person to influence our overall beliefs about the person in other respects