jimtrue.com : school : PSY1012 : Chapter Six: Perception

Posted by Jim True on February 20, 2006 5:30 PM. Last Updated October 22, 2006 9:23 PM

Disclaimer for all material noted here is at the bottom of this web page.

Chapter Six: Perception

Perceptual Organization

• Visual Capture - Tendency for vision to dominate the other senses
• Gestalt - an organized whole, tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes
• Grouping - the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups
• Grouping Principles
• proximity - group nearby figures together
• similarity - group figures that are similar
• continuity - perceive continuous patterns
• closure - fill in gaps
• connectedness - spots, lines, and areas are seen as unit when connected
• Figure and Ground - organization of the visual fields into objects (figure) that stand out from their surroundings (ground); example: the vase in white and face silhouettes in black.
• Change Blindness - focusing on something else, you don't notice something changing with the thing you're not focused on
• Depth Perception
• ability to see objects in three dimensions
• allows us to judge distance
• Example: develop ability to perceive depth at an early age (visual cliff experiment, piece of glass over a drop-off and baby will not crawl across the glass. Your ability to perceive things changes with your experience in the environment. Once the baby climbed across the glass they would do it without fear.
• Binocular cues (depth perception cues that require two eyeballs)
• retinal disparity - images from the two eyes differ; closer the object, the larger the disparity
• convergence - neuromuscular cue; two eyes move inward for objects nearer to the eye
• Monocular cues (depth perception cues that require one eyeball)
• relative size - smaller image is more distant
• interposition - closer objects blocks distant object
• relative clarity - hazy object seen as more distant
• texture - coarse objects appear close; finer objects appear distant
• relative height - higher objects seen as more distant
• relative motion - closer objects seem to move faster
• linear perspective - parallel lines converge with distance
• relative brightness - closer objects appear brighter
• Perceptual Constancy - perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal image change - color, shape and size; example: we perceive the flat rectangular object as a door, even though we may only see a portion of it; the sheet of paper is still perceived as white, regardless of what lighting conditions we see it under.

Perceptual Interpretation

• Perceptual Organization - Using distance cues, to make an object that is the same size as something in the 'perceived' foreground to appear larger.
• Perceptual Adaptation - vision ability to adjust to an aritficially displaced visual field (prism glasses)
• Perceptual Set - a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

Optical Illusion Website http://www.grand-illusions.com/opticalillusions/

Disclaimer: These are MY notes taken from classroom lectures while I'm in the classroom. While I'm perfectly happy to share my notes with my classmates and I know I take very good notes, you should still make every effort to attend the class and TAKE YOUR OWN NOTES. I will not transcribe everything the instructor says in the classroom, and I will NEVER post pre-exam reviews. My notes will not replace the value of actually attending class and taking your own class notes.I also cannot attest to their accuracy, other than they are what was provided in the lecture; you should not reference my notes as "expert opionion" by any means, and if you notice an error or omission, please do me the favor of e-mailing me with the correction and I will re-post my notes. End of Disclaimer.