Module 17

Module 17

Perception

Summarize Lesson 16

Class Discussion

Open Ended

Can you recall a time when your expectations have predisposed how you perceived a person or group? - perhaps at school, work, or in your community?

Perceptual Set

• a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

• Ex. Image - what do you see?

• "mind over mind"

• Ex. Lochness Monster

• Misheard music lyrics

Open Ended

Any examples of misheard lyrics or words that you have experienced?

Perceptual Set

• can also affect taste

• 6 to 1 believe French fries taste better in McDonalds packaging

• our experiences form concepts or schemas - more later on this

• eye of the beholder - without blue or pink hard to distinguish baby's gender

• ex. Mom fakes meal using happy meal box during Covid 19

Perceptual Set

• influences how we interpret stimuli

• but immediate context, motivation, and emotion also affect interpretation

• Context creates an expectation, top-down influences our perception of a previously heard phrase

• also cultural context inform our perceptions i.e. different views of people

• ex. as a pedestrian hate drivers, while driving, hate pedestrians

Perceptual Set

• Motivation also plays a factor

• energy to work towards our goal

• bias our interpretations of neural stimuli

• ex. in softball ball appears bigger when you are hitting it as a bugger target is easier to hit

Emotion

• experiments have shown that emotions can shove our perceptions in one direction or another

• ex. hearing sad music can make you perceive sad meaning in words like mourning and morning

• much of what we perceive comes not just from what's out there," but also from what's behind our eyes and between our ears.

ESP - Perception with Sensation

• perception fed by sensation, cognition, and emotion

• ESP controversy idea that perception can occur apart from sensory input

• around 50% believe that people have special abilities

• ex. Psychics

Types of ESP

• telepathy - mind to mind communication

• clairvoyance - perceiving remote events

• precognition - perceiving future events

• psychokinesis - moving items with the mind

• Parapsychology - the study of paranormal phenomena such as ESP and psychokinesis

Premonitions and Testing

• many before 9/11

• Nostradamus -16th century

• ESP has been tested

• Offers of $1 million by many groups to prove the validity of ESP or psychic power

Open Ended

Does perceptual set involve bottom-up or top-down processing? Why?