Sensation and Perception Part 2

Sensation and Perception Part 2

The mantis shrimp

There is ONE other animal that has better vision than the butterfly, the mantis shrimp. It lives in warm, shallow water, and typically grows to be between 6-12 inches in length.

Mantis Shrimp

The mantis shrimp has sixteen color-receptive cones.

Multiple Choice

Our eyes have millions of light-sensitive cells called...?

• Rods and Cones

• Cones and Pupils

• Pupils and Cells

• Cells and Rods

Color-Blindness

There are cones in the retina of the eye that respond to a specific range of light wavelengths. When some or all of a person's cones do not function properly, he/she is said to be color-bind or color-deficient. This is hereditary and affects 7% of males and .4% of females.

Color-Blindness

What do you see in these circles? If you are color blind you will not be able to see what is in the circles.

Multiple Select

What do you see in the three circles?

• 2

• 15

• 42

• 40

• 16

Imperfect Senses

• Context Clues: Our brains use context to determine meaning. This means that we compare what we see (or hear, smell, etc.) to the surrounding environment and our past experiences.

• How can this lead us to misinterpretation?

• Our brains compare objects in the environment to determine size. (as in the picture)

Multiple Choice

Are the orange circles in the picture...

• different sizes

• same size

Top-Down Processing

Top-down processing suggests that we form perceptions starting with a larger object, concept, or idea before working our way toward more detailed information. In other words, top-down processing happens when we work from the general to the specific.

Top-Down Processing Example

Instead of processing each letter of a word, you read the word as a whole. Your brain looks for familiar patterns and uses context and prior knowledge to understand the overall meaning.

The young-old-woman illusion

This is an example of what we perceive is what we know. If we have no prior knowledge of certain things we can overlook important details in a pattern because we have no strong association with something meaningful.

Bottom-Up Processing

• Bottom-up processing is the opposite: it suggests that we form our perceptions starting with individual details or components before working our way to an understanding of the whole.

• Bottom-up processing does not use context or prior knowledge to form understanding, but it uses a direct stimulus: an individual image, smell, taste, or sound directly helps your brain create understandings.

Bottom-Up Processing example

The first time you touched fire, a signal was sent from the environment to your brain, and you pulled your hand away, this is bottom-up processing.

Example:

The next time you saw fire, you perceived it as hot before feeling the heat: this is top-down processing.

Multiple Choice

Suppose you receive an important letter but a few drops of water have smeared part of the text. A few letters in different words are now just smudges. Yet, you're still able to read the letter. This is an example of what?

• Bottom up Processing

• Top down Processing

Pre-attentive Process

refers to the body's processing of sensory information (ambient temperature, light levels, etc.) that occurs before the conscious mind starts to pay attention to any specific objects in its vicinity.

Attentive Processing

The accumulation of information by actively and consciously considering only part of a stimulus at a time. Attentive thinking is slower because the brain must consider one piece of information at a time.

Stroop Effect

• is our tendency to experience difficulty naming a physical color when it is used to spell the name of a different color.

Stroop Effect

There is information that we process about the things we see without even being aware of that process. So when John Ridley Stroop asked people to read words on a sheet of paper in 1929, he knew that their automatic processing would come into play, and could offer a breakthrough insight into brain function.

Multiple Choice

What Gestalt Law is this?

• Closure

• Proximity

• Similarity

• Continuity

• Simplicity

Multiple Choice

What Gestalt Law is this?

• Closure

• Proximity

• Similarity

• Continuity

• Simplicity

Multiple Choice

What Gestalt Law is this?

• Closure

• Proximity

• Similarity

• Continuity

• Foregroud/Background

Multiple Choice

What Gestalt Law is this?

• Closure

• Proximity

• Similarity

• Continuity

• Foregroud/Background