NATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS CURRICULUM SUPPORT
Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Staff Resource Pack
[ADVANCED HIGHER]
Gerard Keegan
Kilmarnock College

Acknowledgements
This document is produced by Learning and Teaching Scotland as part of the National
Qualifications support programme for Psychology. Original drawings are acknowledged
with thanks to Douglas McConnach.
First published 2003
Electronic version 2003
© Learning and Teaching Scotland 2003
This publication may be reproduced in whole or in part for educational purposes by
educational establishments in Scotland provided that no profit accrues at any stage.
TH E TH EO RY O F P E RF EC T CO M PE T I T IO N
CONTENTS
Section 1:
Section 2:
Section 3:
Guidance for tutors
1
Introduction
Statement of standards
Approaches to learning and teaching
How to use this pack
Recording student attainment
Guidance on the content and context for this unit
Guidance on learning and teaching approaches for
this unit
Guidance on approaches to assessment for this unit
1
2
4
6
7
8
Student materials
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What is cognitive psychology? Setting the scene
Outcomes 1 and 2: The concepts
Perception
Attention
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72
Student materials (continued)
Outcome 3: Issues
The use of non-human animals in research
Section 4:
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General references
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101
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SECTION 1
Introduction
This is an optional component unit of Advanced Higher Psychology. It has a
value of one credit at Advanced Higher.
Unit content
The unit has three outcomes:
1.
2.
3.
Analyse major theories in cognitive psychology.
Evaluate research evidence relating to theories in cognitive psychology.
Analyse an issue in cognitive psychology.
Content of this pack
This pack contains resources that will assist the tutor with the delivery of t his
unit. It contains material relevant to all of the outcomes.
Core skills
Details on core skills are obtainable from the Scottish Qualifications
Authority (SQA).
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Statement of standards
Outcome 1
Analyse major theories in cognitive psychology.
Performance criteria
(a) Competing theoretical explanations in cognitive psychology are
explained accurately and comprehensively.
(b) Competing theoretical explanations in cognitive psychology are
compared accurately in terms of their main features.
(c) Competing theoretical explanations in cognitive psychology are
contrasted accurately in terms of their main features.
Evidence requirements
To demonstrate satisfactory attainment of this outcome, candidates should
produce written or oral responses to cover all performance criteria. They are
required to do so for two key concepts chosen from the following: perception,
attention, memory, language and thinking.
Written/oral responses will typically be extended responses of about 1,000
words for each key concept and associated research evidence, integrating
Outcomes 1 and 2.
Outcome 2
Evaluate research evidence relating to theories in cognitive psychology.
Performance criteria
(a) Research evidence relating to theories in cognitive psychology is
described accurately.
(b) Research evidence relating to theories in cognitive psychology is
explained clearly and accurately in terms of its strength of support for
the theories.
(c) Validity of conclusions based on this research evidence is explained
clearly and accurately.
Evidence requirements
To demonstrate satisfactory attainment of this outcome, candidates should
produce written or oral responses to cover all performance criteria. They are
required to do so for research evidence in two key concepts chosen from the
following: perception, attention, memory, language and thinking.
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Written/oral responses will typically be extended responses of about 1,000
words for each key concept and associated research evidence, integrating
Outcomes 1 and 2.
Outcome 3
Analyse an issue in cognitive psychology.
Performance criteria
(a) An issue relevant to cognitive psychology is explained clearly and
accurately.
(b) Essential arguments of this issue are explained accurately and
comprehensively in a balanced way.
(c) The contribution of this issue to cognitive psychology is explained
accurately and comprehensively.
Evidence requirements
To demonstrate satisfactory attainment of this outcome, candidates should
produce written or oral responses to cover all performance criteria. They are
required to do so for one issue from the following: science in cognition,
animals in research, representations, and computer modelling in cognitive
psychology or false memory.
Written/oral responses will typically be an extended response of about 1,000
words.
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Approaches to learning and teaching
In delivering these units, it is useful if tutors achieve a balance between tutor
exposition and experiential learning. It is important to recognise that learners
acquire and process information in a number of ways to help them learn.
These include visually, aurally, in discussion or exchange with others, during
group-based problem solving activities, and during solitary reflection.
Students should be encouraged from the beginning to draw on their own
experiences, perceptions, and their previous and current learning. Personal
experience of interacting with a range of people, and in a number of different
situations is an invaluable source of knowledge and is highly relevant to
cognitive psychology. The sharing of experiences and insights will promote
general awareness that cognitive psychology assists self -understanding and an
understanding of humans in a variety of contexts.
Students should also be encouraged to gather and use information about
different people’s actions, thoughts and feelings and to consider how these
affect themselves and others. Relevant quality newspaper and/or magazine
articles and video/film productions are useful resources, which bring
cognitive psychology to life, so that it can be shared by comparatively large
groups of people at any one time. This remains appropriate even when the
material is fictional, provided it presents us with a true picture of the human
condition and is not deliberately sensationalised.
In delivering this unit, it is appropriate that a multicultural approach is taken
since the learning needs of individuals vary according to their cultural
background. Case studies, role-play and simulations should incorporate
characters and elements from different social and cultura l backgrounds
wherever possible.
Unit induction
At the beginning of the unit ‘Cognitive Psychology’, tutors should ensure that
students are clear about its nature and purpose. Induction for this unit should
last about two hours and should include an intr oduction to the content of the
unit, provide a programme of work and explain the arrangements for
assessment and reassessment. At this point students can be given the
Candidates’ Guide from the Unit Assessment Pack. This helps explain what
the unit is about and how it is assessed.
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In order to allow students to make a confident start, reference should be made
to links with previous or other current learning with which they are familiar.
It is also important to discuss and explore the nature of the course o r group
award being undertaken by the group if appropriate.
It may be necessary to include induction exercises, particularly if the group is
a new one. The type and number of exercises used will, however, depend on
the nature of the particular group, their familiarity with each other and with
the tutor involved.
Learning environment
The expertise of the tutor is invaluable in developing skills in, approaches to,
and insights about the subject of cognitive psychology. Tutors should aim to
create a relaxed and enjoyable learning environment, which is both
motivating and supportive.
In order that a people perspective is always present the following conditions
should be met:
• the provision of a learning climate in which students feel supported and
able to express their thoughts and ideas;
• a teaching style that promotes a supportive learning climate;
• learning and teaching methods which draw on students’ past and present
learning experience and which enable them to integrate new ideas and
skills during their interactions with others.
Further guidance can be found in the Psychology Subject Guide.
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How to use this pack
Purpose of the pack
This pack is designed to provide guidance and support materials to help tutors
in the delivery of the unit. The student information and activities are designed
to be used by tutors in the way that suits their preferred style of delivery and
the needs of their particular student group.
This pack has not been designed for open learning purposes. Additional
reading, exercises, assignments, etc. and answers to enclosed exercises and
worksheets will be provided and facilitated by the tutor. The student
activities in the pack will require to be followed up and brought together by
the tutor in whatever way is most appropriate.
The student activities in this pack cover the three outcomes and their
performance criteria at Advanced Higher level. The unit in the
learning/teaching situation calls for two key concepts, their features and
explanations and one issue to be covered. This Staff Resource Pack
endeavours to cover two key concepts, their features and explanations, and
one issue.
The material is presented in such a way that for each concept covered in these
support notes (perception and attention) Outcome 1 (Analyse major theories
in cognitive psychology) is discussed first. Outcome 2 (Evaluate research
evidence relating to [these 1 ] theories in cognitive psychology) is discussed
second and Outcome 3 (Analyse an issue in cognitive psychology) is dealt
with last. Section 3 will deal with the issue in relation to cognitive
psychology being the use of non-human animals in research.
This sequence of delivery is by no means compulsory and may be rearranged
at the discretion of the tutor responsible for delivering the unit.
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Using the materials
Useful learning materials in this pack include:
• Information
• Student activities or
• Interactives
All impinge on essential knowledge required for this unit. They are
particularly useful as handout material. They could also be used as the focus
of input by the tutor and to develop ideas further as part of question -andanswer sessions and group discussions.
These information sheets can be photocopied as a separate pack, should the
tutor prefer to use them either as teaching notes or as separate handout
materials. Alternatively, the materials could be assembled into smaller topic
packs.
All worksheets, assignments, exercises and group activities have been
covered on those pages that include a Student Activity or Interactive. These
general activities have been developed to include exercises for individuals,
pairs, triads and small groups to conduct. Tutors may well wish to alter the
way in which these activities are carried out according to the needs of their
particular group.
Recording student attainment
A recording proforma for tutors to complete for individual candidate
attainment is available in the Unit Assessment pack.
• Candidate’s record of progress – for individual candidates to have a record
of their attainment.
• Internal Assessment Record – to record the internal assessment results of
the whole student group.
Tutors may devise their own alternative system for recording student
attainment.
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Guidance on the content and context for this unit
By introducing students to a range of concepts and associated theories,
research evidence and issues in cognitive psychology, it is intended to
develop knowledge and understanding of cognitive psychology generally and
to emphasise the significance of this area to the whole of psychology.
A choice of two concepts and one issue is a feature of this unit. This provides
flexibility for centres to accommodate different needs and interests in
studying cognitive psychology at this level.
Fuller information on the content of this unit is provided in the course details.
Guidance on learning and teaching approaches for this unit
General proposals regarding approaches to learning and teaching are
contained in the course details. Learning and teaching approaches should be
carefully selected to support the development of knowledge and
understanding, investigation and application. The learning experience at this
level should be interesting, to encourage enthusiasm for the subject and to
stimulate and prepare candidates for independent study.
The unit should be approached using a wide range of stimulus materials and
teaching approaches. Candidates should be encouraged to draw upon their
own experiences and should have access to resources. The material should be
up-to-date and relevant to the unit, the level of study and the interests of the
candidates. The emphasis throughout should be on active learning, whether as
part of a whole class, in small groups or as individuals. The outcomes are
interconnected and should be approached as such. Especially at A dvanced
Higher it is recommended that, wherever possible, outcomes should be
covered in an integrated way. An outcome-by-outcome internal assessment
approach, which could lead to a compartmentalised view of psychology,
should be avoided.
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Guidance on approaches to assessment for this unit
The National Assessment Bank will provide assessment instruments and
guidance on implementation. This does not preclude teachers/lecturers from
devising their own assessment tasks. Evidence of attainment of the outcomes
for this unit may be provided through a variety of methods. However,
restricted-response questions are considered to be most appropriate. Where an
integrated approach is used for assessment, it will be necessary to identify in
the candidate’s response where each outcome has been met.
Where assessment evidence is gathered by means of a single assessment
towards the end of the unit, care should be taken to ensure that sufficient time
is allowed for remediation and reassessment if required. Where a candidat e
has failed to achieve one or more of the outcomes, it is only necessary to
reassess those outcomes that the candidate has failed to achieve.
Where assessments are set which allow candidates to demonstrate
performance beyond the minimum standard required , evidence gathered for
internal unit assessment might also be used for grade prediction and for
appeals for external course assessment. For details of the grade descriptions
for external assessment, please refer to the Advanced Higher Psychology
course specification.
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SECTION 2
Perception
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) ask that we consider, in relation
to the study of perception:
• perceptual processing
• theories and research of visual perception – constructivist, direct,
interactionist
• computer models of visual perception
• cultural, social and developmental aspects of perception.
By the end of this key concept you will have been introduced to the topic of
perception and should be able to understand it in terms of an information, or
mediational, process. The important area of visual perception will be
explained in terms of related theory and research. Computer models of how
psychology suggests we visually process information will be introduced,
along with discussion about cultural, social and developmental aspects of
perception.
Cognitive psychology concerns the study of our cognitive or mediational
processes, and is a discipline that emphasises an internal explanation of our
behaviour. The word ‘cognitive’ comes from the Latin word cognitio meaning
‘apprehend, understand or know’. Cognitions, then, are those internal mental
processes that involve the mind (brain processes). Cognitive processes refer
to all the ways in which we obtain, use and process information from our
world in order to operate successfully within it.
Here we will first explore cognitive psychology generally in an attempt to
understand what cognition means. Secondly, we will look at two key concepts
that enable us to gain and use knowledge of the world around us. These key
concepts are taken from the whole range of cognitive processes that include
perception, memory, attention, language and thinking. All of these human
abilities or higher-level processes are inferred and cannot be observed
directly. This unit will explore two of these different aspects of cognition as
key concepts, i.e. perception and attention.
Study of other cognitive processes, and their applications, is at the discretion
of the tutor and candidates.
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But before we look at perception, we need to know what is meant by
‘cognitive psychology’.
What is cognitive psychology?
Cognitive psychology involves the study of how we take in information
from our world, and how we actively process this information to
respond to our world.
An information processing approach
Cognitive psychologists study our higher -level cognitions of
perception: attention, language, memory and thinking (or
problem-solving). They believe the mind consists of these five
information processes, which we individually and co llectively
use to operate in, upon, and through our environment. Consequently, the
cognitive approach explains human behaviour and mental process from the
point of view of information processing. Any dysfunction in our thoughts,
feelings and behaviours are due to faulty information processing. What this
means is that we might have a problem with one or more of our five
mediational processes (identified above).
We actively process information
The cognitive approach is about how we actively process information using
our mediational processes, individually and collectively, to build up our
knowledge of the world. It asks how we make meaningful sense of stimuli in
our world, and our resulting behaviours in it.
The cognitive approach argues that we are no t passive receptors of
information, as the behaviourist approach would have us believe. Our mind
actively processes what information it receives, and using mediational
processes, changes this information into new forms. New information is
combined, compared, transformed and integrated with that which is already
present. On the basis of our information processes, we build up an
increasingly more complex picture of our world, and all the things in it,
which affects our feelings and behaviours in our environ ment.
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The fall and rise of the cognitive approach
From its earliest beginnings psychology has tried to understand the human
mind in relation to feelings and behaviours. William Wundt is remembered
for his research in 1879 into perception. Freud is r emembered for his work
(from 1901) concerning the unconscious. In Perspectives we discovered that
the behaviourist approach became popular largely because of its criticisms of
the study of such hypothetical constructs. As a consequence, the study of
what psychology originally understood itself to be – the study of the mind –
became somewhat marginalised for a good part of the twentieth century. A
series of events was, however, to occur, aided ironically by a behaviourist,
which was to see the cognitive approach overcome its difficulty of generating
scientific support for hypothetical constructs. This saw the rebirth of the
cognitive approach from about the 1970s onwards, helped in its renaissance
by developments in subjects as diverse as computer engineering and cognitive
psychotherapy.
Tolman and Honzik (1930)
Behaviourism emphasises that psychology should study actual observable
behaviour, and that we are to be understood in terms of stimulus –response
units of behaviour learned via classical and operant conditioning.
It was to be a ‘soft’ behaviourist, Edward Tolman, who challenged these
assumptions, when in 1930 he suggested that organisms do something with
learned S–R units that make them even more efficient and effective in their
environment. This was to stimulate the important cognitive idea that we are
active processors of information and not passive learners as behaviourism had
suggested.
In their famous experiment (1930) Tolman and Honzik built a maze
environment to investigate latent learning in rats.
Latent learning
Latent learning is a kind of subliminal learning, which we don’t know
we possess, and don’t use until there is some positive reinforcement,
or environmental incentive, to do so. An example of latent learning would
be where you got a lift to college from a friend every day. You may learn
at a latent level the way to get to college, but as a passenger you have no
reason to demonstrate your learning by ‘proving’ that you know this.
You don’t even think about it. However, when yo ur friend is sick and
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you have to drive yourself to college for the first time, if you follow the same
route as your friend did, then you have demonstrated latent learning.
Rats in mazes
Plan of maze
14-Unit T-Alley Maze
Fig 1
(From M H Elliott, ‘The effect of change of reward on the maze
performance of rats’. Univ. Calif. Publ. Psychol., 1928, 4, p. 20.)
In a variety of experiments with different kinds of mazes, Tolman found that,
when introduced to his maze, a rat initially sn iffed about, and explored in an
erratic fashion. If it eventually discovered food placed in a food box, when it
was later put back into the maze the rat searched for the food and did not
make as many errors, i.e. go down blind alleys, turn back on itself, etc. – as it
did when first introduced to the maze.
Cognitive maps
Tolman thought that what must have happened is that his rats had
formed a primitive cognitive map of the maze in their heads. The
cognitive map was formed as a result of their first ex ploration of the
maze. Whether they used it to their advantage, as measured by going
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more quickly and with fewer errors to the food, depended upon this earlier
exploration of the maze, and whether they had been rewarded, or otherwise,
when coming across the food box.
Purposive behaviourism
Tolman and Honzik concluded that cognitive maps allowed the rat to better
understand and react to its maze environment. The earlier behaviourists
seemed to be wrong in suggesting that organisms were passive learners.
Tolman and Honzik (1930) indicated instead that rats are active processors of
information about their world. Further, organisms such as rats process what
they learn about their world in a very sophisticated fashion in order to obtain
some mastery over it. This purposive behaviourism of non-humans, and by
behaviourist definition humans, was to stimulate developments in the
cognitive approach.
Behaviourism’s mechanistic and deterministic view, that we passively learn
in response to our environment, was beginning to be questioned from within
behaviourism itself.
A conundrum solved
Tolman and Honzik had gone some way to help solve the conundrum that had
plagued cognitive research since Wundt in 1879. That is, how to investigate
and generate empirical data about hypothetical constructs; which –
remember! – don’t exist in reality, in order to come to a scientific
understanding of them. Tolman and Honzik externalised the construct of
thinking in rats and studied it indirectly by obtaining empirical data in terms
of times and errors made by the rats in the maze. Tolman and Honzik (1930)
were then able to confidently infer on the basis of this empirical evidence that
rats think in a more sophisticated fashion than earlier behaviourists had
believed. They had the essential empirical data.
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Neural networks
The human equivalent of a cognitive map of our environment is
sometimes referred to as a neural network. Saaranin (1973) got
American college students to draw maps of their campus. Students
tended to enlarge those buildings that were most important to them and
shrink the less important. They were often found to be completely
wrong when describing campus areas that were not as familiar to them.
Similarly, Briggs (1971) discovered, on asking people to judge how far
they thought one landmark was from another, that they tended to
underestimate the distance between familiar landmark objects and
overestimate the distance between unfamiliar landmarks. This research
helps to explain the phenomenon of the Irish mile !
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Interactive
Study
Tolman, E C and Honzik, C H, Introduction and removal of reward and
maze-learning in rats, University of California Publications in Psychology, 4,
257–275, 1930
Aim
To investigate latent learning in rats and the relationship betw een
reinforcement, learning and performance.
Method
Experiment. Tolman and Honzik built a complex maze environment (see page
14). They had three groups of rats that underwent seventeen trials in the maze
over seventeen days under three conditions. Group 1 rats were never fed in
the maze, and when they reached the goal of the food box, were removed.
Group 2 rats received the reinforcer of food every time they reached the food
box, while on trials 1–10, Group 3 rats got no food but received
reinforcement on trials 11–17.
Results
Group 1 rats always took around the same time to reach the food box and
made many errors. They were observed as aimless in the maze. They just
wandered around. Group 2 rats learned the intricacies of the maze quickly,
and over the seventeen days of trials made progressively fewer and fewer
errors. From day 11 Group 3 rats showed a sudden improvement in
performance time to reach the food and made as few errors as Group 2 rats by
the end of the experiment.
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Conclusion
Tolman and Honzik (1930) concluded that reinforcement from the
environment may not be as important to the learning process as was
previously thought. They believed reinforcement was more related to the
performance of a learned behaviour. Further, this expe riment helped Tolman
infer that organisms such as rats and humans do something with learned units
of behaviour to make them more efficient in their environment. Tolman
(1946) was to say his rats had formed primitive cognitive maps of the maze
environment in their heads. Whether they used this information depended
upon a successful outcome to behaving in a particular way. We learn at a
latent level that may see us behave in a particular way if there is some
incentive from our environment for us to do so.
Interactive
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1.
What do you think latent learning means? Give an example in
your answer.
2.
What was the relationship that behaviourism thought existed
between reinforcement and learning before Tolman and Honzik
(1930)?
3.
What are the three conditions of the independent variable in
Tolman and Honzik (1930)? An independent variable is the
variable the experimenter manipulates or changes in an
experiment.
4.
What evidence did the experimenters find that reinforcement is
more related to performance of a learned behaviour, rather than to
the learning of the behaviour itself?
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1956 – a very good year
It is entirely good fortune that the author’s first birthday coincided with 1956
being the landmark year for the cognitive approach! For it would not be
inappropriate to say that 1956 precipitated the growth of cognitive
psychology, as it exists today.
This is because in 1956 the world famous psycholinguist Noam Chomsky
presented his paper on the theory of language, Jean Piaget and Bärbel
Inhelder wrote about egocentrism in The Child’s Conception of Space, and
George Miller’s work on short-term memory was published. In addition,
1956 saw Bruner, Goodnow and Austin debate concept formation, or how we
develop different ways of thinking about the environment around us. 1956
was also the year of the Dartmouth Conference in the USA, which saw the
beginnings of the AI (artificial intelligence) movement energised by
innovations in computer technology.
Of importance here is that cognitive psychology gave the emer ging computer
technologies their information processing models about how cognitive
psychology believed humankind thought and problem -solved. We share a
language, in that nowadays in cognitive psychology we often come across
words and concepts from information technology such as input, output,
storage, retrieval, parallel processing, networking, schema, filters, etc. This is
one reason why the approach uses the computer analogy to help explain why
it believes we think, feel and behave the way we do. This is as an active
processor of information from our world, the outcome of which explains our
thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
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What is cognitive psychology? Interactive
1.
Noam Chomsky published a paper on the properties of language
entitled ‘Three models for the description of language’, in I.R.E.
Transactions on information theory, 1956. Find out more at
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/305_html/Understanding/
LanguageProps.html
2.
Read Miller, G A, ‘The magical number seven, plus or minus two:
Some limits on our capacity for processing information’,
Psychological Review, 63, pp. 81–97, 1956 at
http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html
For a summary see http://tip.psychology.org/miller.html
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3.
Read Piaget, J and Inhelder, B, The Child’s Conception of Space,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956
4.
Investigate concept formation by Bruner, Goodnow and Austin
(1956) at
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~billw/cs9414/notes/ml/01intro/
01intro.html
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The human mind, the cognitive approach and the computer
The cognitive approach and computer engineering
share the belief that the human mind/brain can be
likened to a computer. What a computer tries to do
is mirror how the cognitive approach suggests we as
human beings problem-solve.
The computer analogy assists the cognitive approach to explain the
relationship between our information processes and our behaviour in our
world. Models like the computer analogy are used throughout psychology to
help us understand hypothetical constructs, and nowhere is their use more
prevalent than in the study of perception, attention, memory, etc. Models put
forward by cognitive psychologists concerning our various cognitions have
greatly influenced developments in the computing industry. The more
advances that can be made in cognitive psychology the more likely it is that
the computer industry will be able to develop the ultimate in inform ation
technology – an interactive free-thinking computer that can problem-solve
without direction. What the cognitive approach finds out is therefore of
great interest to the likes of Bill Gates and Microsoft .
The computer analogy
Input
Processor
Output
S
X
R
Stimulus
Mediational
processes
Response
X = perception, attention, language, memory and thinking
In his book, How The Mind Works (1997), Steven Pinker wrote ‘the behaviour
of a computer comes from a complex interaction between the p rocessor and
input’. This is very much how the cognitive approach understands our
behaviour as human beings.
The computer analogy is a metaphor, or story, used by the cognitive approach
to understand the relationship between our thoughts, feelings, and b ehaviours
and our environment.
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Input means all the stimuli information that we encounter in our world.
Input, or environmental information, about objects, people, events, etc. comes
to us via our senses in the form of light energy, sound energy, pressure , etc.,
or what we ‘see’, ‘hear’ and ‘feel’. All this information ultimately arrives in
the brain to be interpreted, understood and acted upon. A good example of
this would be the things we see in our world.
What we ‘see’, or visually sense, is energy f rom our external environment
that first strikes each eye as light waves. This information, alien to our
internal biochemistry, is processed by special properties in our eyes into the
only type of energy our internal body can understand: electrical energy,
which ends up in the visual cortex at the back of the brain as a bundle of
electrochemical impulses, or neural signals. We unconsciously match the
degree and intensity of these neural signals to what we have stored in our
memory concerning the same, or a similar stimulus. Memory helps us
recognise and give meaning to what we are visually sensing. This helps us
think how best to respond, in terms of our behaviour or output, towards the
stimulus object.
It is our information processes of perception, attenti on, language, memory
and thinking (X) that come between the sensory information ( S) we receive
from our world and our response (R) to it. Information processes therefore
intercede or come between external stimuli or input from our world, and our
behavioural response, or output, to it. Our information processes are like the
microprocessors in a computer. Microprocessors come between input in the
form of keystrokes, etc., and computer output like printouts and images.
The computer analogy helped to confirm behaviourist Edward Tolman’s view
that we are more than just S–R units of learned behaviour. It also helps to
show that it is our mediational processes that actively do things with the
sensory information we receive, which allows us to respond to our world in
an enriched fashion.
Let us now read about two information processes, perception and attention,
aware that the cognitive approach likens our mind to a computer – the most
sophisticated evolved.
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Perception
Introduction
In psychology we try first to define the concept we are looking at.
‘Perception is...the process of assembling sensations into a usable mental
representation of the world...which...creates faces, melodies, works of art,
illusions, etc.’
Coon (1983)
‘Perception is not determined by stimulus patterns, rather it is a dynamic
searching for the best interpretation of the available data...perception
involves going beyond the immediately given evidence of the senses .’
Gregory (1966)
We should be careful however for:
‘To perceive seems effortless... to understand perception is nevertheless a
great challenge.’
Dodwell (1995)
Here is an attempt at a definition:
Perception is the active cognitive information process by which we
take in raw sensations from our environment using our sen ses, and
interpret these sensations using our past knowledge and understanding
of the world in order that the sensation, or what we are sensing,
becomes meaningful to us.
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Perceptual processing: how do we perceive?
An understanding of how we perceive has intrigued cognitive psychologists
for decades. As will be discussed later, three explanations have emerged,
each enriching our knowledge of perception.
1.
The ecological view (Gibson; Gestalt – where we perceive in terms of
‘organised wholes’): where it is said we perceive most clues from our
environment directly and without interpretation (we perceive ‘exactly’
what we see, hear, smell, touch and taste). The ecological view is
popularly known as bottom-up processing.
2.
The constructivist view (Gregory; Bruner): where it is said our
perceptual system must often make a reality indirectly out of bits of
sensory information due to the absence of other information. The
constructivist view is better known as top -down processing. It is
perception by hypothesis testing.
3.
The interactionist or symbiotic (top-down/bottom-up) view
(Neisser): this says we use the most appropriate of the above two
processes depending on the situation we find ourselves in. The two
processing models work together. When one t ype of perceptual process
(or aspect of it) is impaired, the other process (or an aspect of it) ‘fills
in’ or compensates to give us, at the end of the day, as much of an
understanding of the stimulus as possible. Interactionist processing is
best explained in the area of visual perception using Marr’s Computer
Analogy, in which he says we first adopt a bottom -up approach to
extract visual information from an image/object/event in four stages and
put it all together again in the brain in what he calls a sym bolic
representation of the stimulus. It is an explanation of visual perception
that sees our bottom-up and top-down processes working together.
Whether you advocate an ecological (direct bottom -up), constructivist
(indirect top-down) or interactionist/symbiotic explanation of perception, it is
interesting to note the influence of the nature –nurture debate to your position.
While most of the theorists above suggest an empirical basis to our
perceptions (that what we perceive or ultimately understand from what our
senses are telling us is the result of learning and experience), the influence of
Gestalt psychology in the early years of research into this topic does raise the
nativist position, that is, that our perceptual ability is innate, and needs little
if any ‘learning’ to enhance it.
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At the end of the day, we can say that perception is influenced by our innate
abilities as human beings, but also by the cognitive apparatus we are born
with as used to make meaningful sense of the myriad sensory experi ences we
encounter. What we perceive, or understand, we are sensing is also strongly
influenced by what we have learned from past experience of the same, or
similar, sensations. Perception is further influenced by social, developmental
and cultural factors including expectations and motivation.
Student Activity
1.
Define ‘perception’ in your own words.
2.
What aspects of being human processes are involved in
perception?
3.
What are the three views taken by psychologists as to how we
perceive our world?
4.
Briefly explain these three views.
5.
Which at this stage in your studies do you think best explains
perception? Give reasons for your answer.
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Processing sensory information
Sensation and perception
In our original working definition, we said that perception concerns sensing
plus our interpretation of this sensation based on meaningful past experience
of it. Central to perception must therefore be knowledge of how we receive
information from our environment in the first place. This is of course through
our senses. We use our traditional five senses, i.e. sight, hearing, touch, taste,
smell, to receive information from our external world. Psychology is also able
to tell us we have at least one other sense that is called our kinaesthetic
sense. This is a sense from within our own bodies that tells us about
movement, or the feel of our muscles or joints. Our kinaesthetic sense tells us
about balance
Our visual sense
Our sense of vision is in many respects our key sense. Vision, our visual
system and visual perception constitute the most studied information process
of all by cognitive psychologists; we look at it in more depth in a later
section entitled ‘Our visual system’. Our sense of vision comes to us via our
eyes, the structure and location of which allow us to perceive our world in
three dimensions; sense colour; sense depth, etc.
Our tactile sense
Touch is another of our five senses, allowing for our
perception of pressure, touch, temperature (principally
temperature change), pain and hair movement. We
experience touch using sensory cells called receptors that
are nerve endings in the skin. Touch receptors are either
free ending (in the dermis and around hair follicles) or
encapsulated (branched or coiled, enclosed in a capsule).
Receptors in our skin respond to a specific type of
stimulus and are not evenly distributed over the body. The
sensitivity of fingertips, for example, results fr om a large number of touch
receptors we have at this extremity.
Once a receptor is stimulated, it sends nerve impulses to the brain, which
locates and identifies the stimulus involved and assesses its significance. The
more intense the stimulus, the greater the frequency of nerve impulses.
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The skin’s sensory system is important in alerting the body to changes in its
external environment. Potentially harmful stimuli may cause pain that results
in either protective reflex actions, such as dropping a hot o bject, or storing a
memory to remind you to avoid future similar hazards. The perception of pain
is unusual as it is also strongly affected by the emotions and the
circumstances in which it is experienced.
Our auditory sense
The ear is our organ of hearing and balance. It is
composed of three parts – external, middle and
internal – the greater part of which is enclosed
within the temporal bone. The external ear is that
portion of the hearing apparatus lateral to our
eardrum, or tympanic membrane. The eardrum
comprises the auricle, or pinna (the external flap of the ear) and the external
auditory canal, which is 3 cm (1.25 in) in length.
The middle ear, on the inner side of the eardrum, houses our mechanism for
the conduction of sound waves to the interna l ear. It is a narrow passage, or
cleft, that extends vertically for about 15 mm (0.6 in) and for about the same
distance horizontally. The middle ear is in direct communication with the
back of the nose and throat by way of the eustachian tube, which allo ws for
passage of air into and out of the middle ear. Traversing, or going across, the
middle ear is a chain of three small, movable bones called the ossicles: the
malleus, or hammer handle; the incus, or anvil; and the stapes, or stirrup. The
ossicles connect the eardrum acoustically to the fluid-filled internal ear.
The internal ear, or labyrinth, is the part of the temporal bone containing the
organs of hearing and balance to which the filaments of the auditory nerve are
distributed. It is separated from the middle ear by the fenestra ovalis, or oval
window. The internal ear consists of membranous canals housed in a dense
portion of the temporal bone and is divided into the cochlea (Greek for ‘snail
shell’), the vestibule and three semicircular canals. A ll these canals
communicate with one another and are filled with a gelatinous fluid called
endolymph. The disposition and orientation of endolymph also helps us
experience our sense of balance.
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The ear and balance
The semicircular canals and the vestibule are concerned with our sense of
equilibrium, or balance. Hairs in these canals, similar to those that form the
organ of Corti (the structure responsible for converting sound signals into
nerve impulses), respond to changes in the position of the head.
The three semicircular canals extend from the vestibule approximately at
right angles to each other, providing sensory organs to record movements of
the head in each of the three planes of space: up and down, forwards and
backwards, and to the left or right. Lying over the hair cells in the vestibule
are crystals of calcium carbonate, known technically as otoliths and popularly
as ear sand. When the head is tilted, the otoliths shift, and the hairs beneath
respond to the change in pressure. The eyes and c ertain sensory cells in the
skin and internal tissues also help to maintain equilibrium, but when the
labyrinth of the ear is damaged or destroyed, disturbances of equilibrium
invariably follow. With eyes closed, a person with a disease or disturbance of
the internal ear may be unable to stand without swaying or falling 䪢
How do we hear?
Sound waves, which are actually changes in air pressure, are carried through
the external auditory canal to the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. These
vibrations are communicated by the ossicular chain in the middle ear through
the oval window to the fluid in the inner ear. The movement of the
endolymph stimulates the movement of a set of fine hair -like projections
called hair cells as the cochlea vibrates. Collectively these projections are
called the organ of Corti. The hair cells tran smit signals directly to the
auditory nerve, which carries information to the brain. The overall pattern of
response of the hair cells to vibrations of the cochlea encodes information
about sound in a way that is interpretable by the brain’s auditory centr es.
The range of hearing, like that of vision, varies from person to person. The
maximum range of human hearing includes sound frequencies from about 16
Hz to 28,000 Hz. The frequency at which we can detect sound is measured in
Hertz (Hz), or cycles per second. The least noticeable change in tone that can
be picked up by the ear varies with pitch and loudness. A change of vibration
frequency (pitch) corresponding to about 0.03% of the original frequency can
be detected by the most sensitive human ears in the range between 500 and
8,000 vibrations per second. The ear is less sensitive to frequency changes for
sounds of low frequency or low intensity.
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The sensitivity of the ear to sound intensity (loudness) also varies with
frequency. Sensitivity to change in loudness is greatest between 1,000 and
3,000 cycles, where a change of one decibel can be detected – and becomes
less when sound-intensity levels are lowered.
The variation in the sensitivity of the ear to loud sounds causes several
important phenomena. Extremely loud tones produce in the ear entirely
different tones that are not present in the original tone. These subjective tones
are probably caused by imperfections in the natural function of the middle
ear. The harshness in tonality caused by greatly increasing sound intensities,
as when a radio volume control is adjusted to produce excessively loud
sounds, results from subjective tones produced in the ear. The loudness of a
pure tone also affects its pitch. High tones may increase as much as a whole
musical-scale note; low tones tend to become lower as sound intensity
increases. This effect is noticeable only for pure tones. Because most musical
tones are complex, hearing is usually not affected to an appreciable degree by
this phenomenon. In sound masking, the production in the ear of harmonics of
lower-pitched sounds may deafen the ear to the perception of higher -pitched
sounds. Such considerations make it necessary to raise one’s voice in order to
be heard in a noisy place.
Our gustatory sense
Taste is another of the five senses, effected by the
contact of soluble substances on our tongue
Although humans can distinguish a wide range of
flavours, the sensation of taste is actually a
response to a combination of several stimuli,
including texture, temperature and smell, as well
as taste. In isolation, the sense of taste can only
identify four basic flavours: sweet, salt, sour and bitter, with individual taste
buds particularly responsive to one of these. The 10,000 or so taste buds
found in humans are distributed unevenly over the top of the tongue, creating
patches sensitive to specific classes of chemicals which give the taste
sensations. Usually sweet and salt are at the tip of the tongue, sour at the
edges, and bitter at the base. Chemicals from food are dissolved in the
moisture of the mouth and enter the taste buds through pores in the surface of
the tongue where they come into contact with sensory cells. When a receptor
is stimulated by one of the dissolved substances, it sends nerve impulses t o
the brain. The frequency of the repetition of the impulse tells the brain how
strong a flavour is and the type of flavour is probably registered by the nerve
cells that responded.
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Our olfactory sense
Smell is the sense by which odours are perceived. The
nose, equipped with olfactory nerves, is the special
organ of smell. The olfactory nerves also account for
differing tastes of substances taken into the mouth, in
that most sensations that appear introspectively to us as
tastes are in essence really smells! Sensations of smell are difficult to
describe and classify, but noting the chemical elements of odorous substances
has made useful categorisations. Research has pointed to the existence of
seven primary odours – camphor-like, musky, floral, peppermint-like,
ethereal (dry-cleaning fluid, for example), pungent (vinegar -like) and putrid –
corresponding to the seven types of smell receptors found in the olfactory cell hairs. Olfactory research also indicates that substances with similar
odours have molecules of similar shape. Recent studies suggest that the shape
of an odour-causing chemical molecule determines the nature of the odour of
that molecule or substance. These molecules are believed to combine with
specific cells in the nose or with chemicals within those cells. This process is
the first step in a complex series that continues with the transmission of
impulses by the olfactory nerve and ends with the perception of odour by the
brain.
How do taste and smell work?
Taste and smell are a part of our sensing system much like vision and
hearing. Molecules released by substances around us stimulate special nerve
cells in the nose, mouth or throat. These special nerve cells transmit electric
impulses to special areas of the brain that recognise taste and smell. Olfactory
nerve cells are stimulated by odours around us such as flowers, baked goods,
perfumes, etc. These olfactory nerve cells are located in a tiny patch high up
in the nose. They connect by nerve pathways to areas in the brain.
Taste cells react to food and drink, mixed with saliva, and are located in the
taste buds of the mouth and throat. Many bumps on the back of the tongue
contain taste buds. These taste cells send information along nerve pathways
to the brain. Unlike other nerve cells, taste and smell cells are replaced when
they become old and damaged.
Another set of cells in the nose and mouth have non -specialised nerve
endings that are stimulated by strong and irritating sensations such as
ammonia, chilli peppers, onions, etc.
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As already stated, we can commonly identify four basic taste sensations:
sweet, sour, bitter, salt. And there is some evidence that other taste sensations
can be appreciated. But the sense of smell is necessary to identify flavours
such as chocolate; the sweetness is identified by the nerve cells of the tongue
and mouth. The combination of saliva with the chocolate releases odours and
molecules. These travel up the nasal passage from the back of the throat. The
nasal cells are stimulated and the smell and flavour of chocolate are
recognised. This is why people who complain of taste problems really often
have a smell disorder that interferes with the ability to identify the flavour of
foods.
Our internal and external senses interact with each other because we are
constantly linking together information got through differing sensory modes,
e.g. seeing, hearing, etc. This involves us in what is called cross-modal
transfer – where information gained using one mode, e.g. sight, is applied to
information from another sensory mode, e.g. hearing. Cross -modal transfer
gives rise to a richer array of sensory information upon which we base our
interpretation of our own realities (world) – but by that we often become
confused.
Characteristics of our sensory system
Our six modalities (or senses) have certain common characteristics. Before
looking at what these are, please list below both the common and scientific
name for each:
1.
Apparatus
Sense
Eye
Visual
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Each responds to a particular form of energy or external information,
e.g. light waves, sound waves, skin pressure, etc. Each has a sense
organ or ‘accessory structure’, which is the first port of call for any
incoming information on the road to processing, and full understan ding of
the perceived stimuli. Each accessory structure has sense receptors called
‘transducers’. These are specialised cells that are sensitive to particular
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kinds of energy. It is as the stimuli impinge on these transducers that the
conversion of the stimuli into electrical nerve impulses occurs. This electrical
activity is the only kind of energy that can be processed and understood by
our brains.
Each sensory modality involves a different part of the brain. We are here able
to interpret messages received from our sensory receptors, which gives us the
experience of conscious awareness of an object, a person, a word, a sound, a
taste, etc. A certain minimum stimulation of a sense receptor is needed before
we can become consciously aware of the sensory experience that is
happening. These minimum requirements are called absolute thresholds,
which are based on a value given to a stimulus when we can detect it 50% of
the time. The threshold at which we can notice a stimulus differs among and
between people, and can be affected by an individual’s physical state; time of
day; motivation; the way the stimulus is presented, etc.
This is the area of psychophysics within psychology (the interface between
the physical stimulus and our subjective experience of it ), which is of great
importance to the development of psychology as a subject in its own right
(see Wilhelm Wundt, 1879).
Student Activity
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1.
What do you understand by our visual sense; our tactile sense; our
gustatory sense; our auditory sense; and our olfactory sense?
2.
Describe and explain our kinaesthetic sense.
3.
How do we first begin to interpret information coming to us from
our environment? What is particularly interesting about this from
the point of view of psychophysics?
4.
What does cross-modal transfer mean? Why is cross-modal
transfer important?
5.
What do you understand by the term ‘absolute threshold’? Give
three examples from your reading. Cite your sources using the
Harvard Referencing System.
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Our visual system
Vision and visual perception is by far the largest area of investigation
undertaken by cognitive psychologists. A full understanding needs a little
introduction to the eye. The eye, according to Ornstein (1975) is ‘ the most
important avenue of personal consciousness ’. We receive around 80% of our
information about our world via our visual system.
Our visual sense
As already noted, sight or our sense of vision is probably the most studied of
all our senses thanks to the vast amount of work which has been done in the
area of visual perception.
A basic understanding of the structure and function of the eye is therefore of
relevance – if only to give us a clue as to how and why we receive 2 -D type
photographic images on our retinas but interpret these two dimensional
images in three dimensions. A knowledge of our visual system is also
important to our understanding of how and why it is we can perceive colour
and depth in our world – and why it is we can see in the dark, but not as well
as cats and other nocturnal animals!
Structure and function of the human eye
The pupil is the wee black circle at the
centre of each of our eyes. The pupil
controls the amount of light taken in by
the eye. In dark conditions our pupil
dilates to its maximum size in order to
maximise the amount of light entering
the eye and thus our ability to see (not
too well) in the dark. In light conditions
the pupil constricts, or ‘shrinks’, in
response to the intensity of light we experience. Pupil size is controlled by
our autonomic nervous system (ANS) which controls organs and glands. The
ANS is linked to our central nervous system (CNS), our brain and spine.
Interestingly the ANS has two branches:
• the parasympathetic branch, which in this instance changes pupil size in
response to illumination, and,
• the sympathetic branch which in this instance dilates the pupil under
conditions of strong emotional arousal.
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The two branches of the ANS are self-regulating rather than under our
conscious control. Regulatory control of the ANS is directed by the
hypothalamus, found in the brain. Both branches of the ANS are what
psychologists call antagonistic to one another. As one branch moves us to
action in one direction, the other counters this.
Vitreous humour is the clear, jelly-like substance that fills the middle of the
eye. Dilation of the pupil is controlled by the ciliary muscles found in the
iris. The lens of the eye is held in place by suspensory ligaments. Much like
a camera, the lens focuses light on the retina as an inverted or upside -down
image. Ciliary muscles control the shape the lens forms as it focuses light
energy on the retina.
The lens thickens and increases in curvature when focusing on nearby objects
and becomes flatter when we are focusing on objects far away. Muscles
around the eye adjust the shape of the lens to focus on an object either nearby
or far away. The lens gets thicker when focusing for near objects, and thinner
for distant objects. The size of the image reflected on the retina also changes.
The retina, which is found at the back of the eye, is where images we see are
thrown. The macula, which is a small area found on the retina, has three
layers of specialised light-sensitive cells. Each of the layers helps explain
certain human visual abilities, and consequently per ception.
The three layers of the retina
The first layer of the retina contains what are called rods and cones.
Rods and cones are photosensitive transducer cells that convert
light energy into electrical nerve impulses. Our 120M rods help
us see in ever decreasing light.
Our 7M cones allow us to experience chromatic vision
(colour). Different cone types respond to the three primary
colours of red, green and blue. This is because each of these
colours has different wavelengths. Mixtures of red, gree n and
blue allow us to experience all the colours found in the colour
spectrum. A deficiency in one or more of these cone types is the reason for
colour blindness.
Bipolar cells, a second layer in the retina, are connected to our rods and
cones and help relay information to ganglion cells found at the third layer of
the retina.
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Finally, in the retina we find a third layer called ganglion cells. Ganglion cell
fibres (axons) help form the beginnings of the optic nerve.
Three types of ganglion cell ‘fire’ in response to the contours and movement
of objects in our visual array or field of vision – simple cells have been found
to respond to simple features of a stimulus, i.e. straight lines, edges, slits,
etc., when found in a particular orientation, or way -up, in our visual field.
Complex cells, which are direction sensitive, have been found to respond to
lines of particular orientation wherever found in our visual field, and
hypercomplex cells deal with the length of visual stimuli, or where a
stimulus begins and ends.
The visual pathway
The visual pathway from each eye to the visual cortex in our brain is called
the optic nerve. Each optic nerve converges and crosses over at the optic
chiasm or chiasma, thus information from our right eye goes to the lef t visual
cortex and information from our left eye goes to the right visual cortex.
Let’s take a journey along the visual pathway. Light rays from sources either
artificial or natural are reflected off distant objects in our surroundings.
These light rays first enter into the eye by passing through a clear tissue
called the cornea. From the cornea, light then passes through a clear fluid
termed the aqueous humour and then through the pupil opening of the iris in
order to reach the crystalline lens.
Using its two muscle bands in bright situations, the iris constricts to
protect the retina from too much damaging light, while during dim light
situations, the iris dilates to let in as much light as possible. The pupil,
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which appears as a black dot in the middle of the coloured iris, is actually not
a structure but an aperture, a controlled opening or hole! Through the pupil,
light reaches the crystalline lens. The lens – in conjunction with the cornea –
acts to bend or ‘refract’ the light in order to focus the rays on to the retina.
From its name you might believe the crystalline lens does most of the
refracting of the eye but this is not the case. It is the cornea that is the
primary refractive surface of the eye. Eighty -five percent of the job of
bending light is performed by the cornea, while the remaining fifteen percent
is done by the lens. The crystalline lens does have one advantage over the
cornea. The power of the cornea to bend light is fixed, whereas the
crystalline lens can flex to provide more power in order to see near objects.
The lens is held in place behind the pupil by hundreds of fibrils termed
zonules. When we focus on near objects, these fibres relax allowing the lens
to curve outward, thus increasing its power to refract light. When looking at
distant objects, the zonules pull tight and the lens flattens. The process of
lens flexure in order to see near objects is termed accommodation (which
should not to be confused with Jean Piaget’s notion of accommodati on of
schema). From the crystalline lens, light rays travel through another clear
medium termed the vitreous humour until it reaches the retina.
When light enters through this whole optical system, it is actually inverted by
the process. An image in the outside world is actually upside-down and
backwards when reaching the retina. It is the brain that later processes the
image the correct way. The retina is the central mechanism for collecting
light rays and converting light energy into electrical impuls es that the brain
can ultimately understand. The retina contains millions of nerve cells with
photoreceptors attached to each one. There are two major photoreceptors
located in the retina. Rods are long, slender receptors that occupy the
peripheral retina. Rods are responsible for detection of movements, detection
of shapes and night-time vision. Our fine detail and colour vision is provided
by the cone receptors. These cone-shaped cells occupy only a small portion
of the retina and are found huddled together in what is called the macula.
The portion of vision responsible for the most detail actually takes up the
least amount of room on the retina. Cones are divided into three subtypes –
red, blue and green.
When light hits these red, green and blue photoreceptors, a light-activated
chemical reaction occurs within the cells converting a photon of light
into an electro-chemical impulse. Visible light is a spectrum like that
of a rainbow. Each colour of the rainbow has a particular frequency in
that spectrum. The complex process of colour vision occurs when
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light of a particular frequency stimulates either the red, blue or green cone
that is most sensitive to that given frequency. The quantity of
photoreceptors, as well as the type of receptor s stimulated, is later interpreted
by the brain as a stimulus intensity and colour. From stimulation, light
energy is transformed into an electric current for the body. This current then
flows along each individual nerve until it reaches the optic nerve of the eye.
The optic nerve is termed a nerve but it is actually a collection of about a
million nerves rolled into one.
We have two optic nerves: one for each eye. The optic nerve extends from
the back of each eye. They then enter into the skull thro ugh a small opening
in the back of the bony orbit that protects the eye. From here the optic nerves
travel a short distance before they meet up with each other at a structure
known as the optic chiasma/chiasm. At the optic chiasma, some of the nerve
fibres from the right optic nerve cross over to the left side and vice versa.
This crossing of optic nerve fibres causes everything we see off to the right in
each eye to be processed by the left brain and everything off to the left in our
surroundings to be processed by the right brain. After parts of each optic
nerve cross at the chiasma, they continue on into what is called the optic
tract. This is where the optic nerves travel around the brainstem, one nerve
to the right hemisphere and the other to the left hemisphere of the brain.
From here everything mentioned occurs on both the right and left sides of the
brain. The optic tract carries impulses to another processing area in the brain
called the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). This structure is like a switching
station. Before the impulses even reach the LGN, a small amount of fibres
from the optic tract split off to other areas of the brain that control dilation
and constriction of the pupils. After the LGN, each nerve ‘fans’ out into
what is called the optic radiations. Some of the nerve travels over the parietal
lobe of the brain while others travel the low road over the temporal lobe. The
nerves continue on until they reach the back portion of the brain called the
occipital lobe. At the occipital lobes all the impulses from the right and left
eyes are processed into what we perceive as our visual reality. The
information between the two eyes is also compared to create our three dimensional world.
Discussion point
What do you understand by the term ‘sensation’? How does a sensation differ
from a perception, properly known as a percept?
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Where all sensory information ends up to be processed and understood
This is of course in our brain, the organ concerned with consciousness.
Consciousness is our awareness (plus perception; attention; language;
thinking and memory) and the overall control of the body. The human brain is
a relatively small structure, weighing about 1.4 kg (3.1 lb) and making up
about 2% of total body weight. It is contained w ithin the skull, which acts as
a protective casing. Although the brain is only a small proportion of overall
body weight, information received about the outside world and from the rest
of the body converges at the brain to be processed. Sensations arrive h ere and
are processed. We first begin to perceive what a particular sensation is (and
therefore what it is we are experiencing) on the basis of how good, bad or
indifferent our various senses are individually and collectively. How we reach
individual understanding of what particular sensations mean for us is further
based on some innate abilities, plus any previous experiences we have had in
connection with them.
Processing sensory information
Cortical area
Function
Prefrontal Cortex
Motor Association Cortex
Problem-solving, emotion, complex
thought
Co-ordination of complex movement
Primary Motor Cortex
Initiation of voluntary movement
Primary Somatosensory Cortex
Receives tactile information from the body
Sensory Association Area
Processing of multisensory information
Visual Association Area
Complex processing of visual information
Visual Cortex
Detection of simple visual stimuli
Wernicke’s Area
Language comprehension
Auditory Association Area
Auditory Cortex
Complex processing of auditory
information
Detection of sound quality (loudness, tone)
Speech Centre (Broca’s Area)
Speech production and articulation
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Conclusion: sensation and perception
What we see is more than just light focusing on the retina of the eye. Vision
is an enormously complex process. That which is seen must be captured by
the optical system, transmitted and processed by the retina, and then passed
along to the brain for even more detailed processing. Areas of the brain must
extract and interpret the essence of all that we see. It must recognise colour,
contour, shape, texture, movement and perspective, then compare all this
information to our ‘internal database’ (or meaningful similar or same
previous experiences). A tiny, two-dimensional image hitting the retina must
be transformed into a three-dimensional world all – pardon the expression –
in the blink of an eye!
Vision is defined by two components: sensation and perception. The
concepts of sensation and perception are difficult to separate but sensation is
the detection and encoding of visual stimuli, whereas perception is the
higher-level cognitive process that processes, organises and interpretes this
visual sensation.
Perception should thus be seen as an active cognitive process influenced by
our internal and external world. These aspects of perception will now be
addressed.
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Student Activity Interactive
First experiment
Steadily fixate on the black light bulb for thirty
seconds or more. Try not to avert your gaze. Then
immediately turn your gaze to the white region on the
right next to the bulb (or a blank white sheet of paper).
You should see a glowing light bulb!
So what’s going on?
The glowing white light bulb you see on the white background after
staring at the black light bulb figure is c alled an after-image. When
you focus on the black light bulb, light sensitive photoreceptors (whose
job is to convert light into electrical activity) in your retina respond to
the incoming light. Other neurons that receive input from these
photoreceptors respond as well. As you continue to stare at the black
light bulb your photoreceptors become desensitised (or fatigued).
Your photo pigment is ‘bleached’ by this constant stimulation. The
desensitisation is strongest for cells viewing the brightest part o f the
figure, but weaker for cells viewing the darkest part of the figure. Then,
when the screen becomes white, the least depleted cells respond more
strongly than their neighbours, producing the brightest part of the after image: the glowing light bulb. This is a negative after-image, in which
bright areas of the figure turn dark and vice versa. Positive after -images
also exist. Most after-images last only a few seconds to a minute
because, in the absence of strong stimulation, most nerve cells quickly
readjust. Desensitisation of the retina can be important for survival. A
constant stimulus is usually ignored by the brain in favour of a
changing one, because a changing stimulus is usually more important.
But desensitisation also leads to after-images.
After-images are constantly with us. When we view a bright flash of
light, briefly look at the sun, or are blinded by the headlights of an
approaching car at night, we see both positive and negative after images.
To prevent permanent damage to your eyes, never look at any
bright light source, in particular the sun. The British psychologist
Kenneth Craik burned a tiny hole in his right retina and
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permanently scarred his eye at that spot, when he stared directly into
the sun for two minutes. Don’t try this at home! For the first few days
following his experiment – in which he wanted to find out whether such
a lesion in the eye is visible – he saw a dim orange disk with closed
eyes (positive after-image) and a black after-image with open eyes.
Fortunately, after a year or so, Craik’s vision at that location in his eye
appeared to return to normal. His brain cleverly filled in information at
this damaged piece of his retina.
Second experiment
Notice that if the after-image is viewed on the screen or on a nearby
sheet of white paper, it appears relatively small. If it is viewed on a
distant wall, however, it appears much larger, even though the size and
shape of the retinal image remains the same. The perceived size of the
after-image varies directly with the distance of the surface on which it
is viewed. This relation is an instance of a more general perceptual
relation known as Emmert’s law: The perceived size of a particular
visual angle is directly proportional to its perceived distance .
The illusion of after-images appearing to vary in size despite a constant
retinal image is precisely what one would predict if perceived size is
governed not only by visual angle but also by distance. The two
seemingly different facts, that images of the same si ze lead to
perceptions of different size (Emmert’s law), and that images of
different size lead to perceptions of the same size (size constancy),
actually illustrate the same principle: distance is taken into account in
computing the size of a perceived object from the size of the image
falling on to the retina, which is another example illustrating that we
don’t just see what our eye tells us.
Third experiment
When you close your left eye and adapt to the figure with your right
eye, only your right eye will see an after-image when looking at a white
region. The after-image does not transfer between eyes. This helps
scientists determine where in the visual system this effect arises. This
type of after-effect is caused by cells in the retina fatiguing, rath er than
by cells in the visual cortex, where information from the two eyes is
combined.
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The active nature of perception
Factors that further explain perception and our perceptual world are embodied
in what are called ‘The principles of perceptual or ganisation’ which include:
• Gestalten; figure and ground
• perceptual constancies; for example, depth perception
Gestalt psychology and Gestalten
One way of looking at perception is from the point of view of Gestalt
psychology (Kohler, Koffka and Wertheimer); see p. 24. It is easily
understood. Gestalt psychology, which was in vogue in Germany in the early
part of the twentieth century, postulates that we have an innate disposition to
perceive objects using our inbuilt principles of grouping, or Gestalten. What
Gestalten means is our innate ability to construct our world in terms of
organised ‘wholes’. It is as if we have a natural ability to ‘tidy up’ stimuli as
we sense them. Their Laws of Pragnänz capture the principles behind our
Gestalten, which are our innate way of perceiving things in terms of
symmetry, uniformity and stability. Individual Gestalten are:
Proximity
Objects that are close together are perceived by us as a ‘whole’, e.g.
a)
b)
.
.
.
.
.......................
.
.
How do you perceive a) and b) above?
Similarity
Similar objects are normally perceived by us as belonging to the same group.
Above, what similar sets of objects do you perceive as a group and what other
one do you see – or think you see – which does not exist in reality? Storm the
reality studios!
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Continuity
Sensations appearing to create a continuous form are perceived by us as
belonging together, e.g. a fence with slats missing is still perceived as a
fence. We organise sensations appearing together to form a continuous whole,
e.g.
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Do you perceive the above as a square shape made up of Xs, or ten separate
and individual Xs?
Closure
Where, at an unconscious level, we fill in contours/gaps in stimul i to form a
complete whole in order to make perceptual sense of it, we need to bear in
mind the importance of past experience and perception. This is illustrated
below. What do you make of these stimuli? Your tutor should explain the
significance of this simple demonstration.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
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Texture
Texture is another principle of Gestalten where objects of the same texture
are perceived as belonging to the same group, e.g. grains of sand and pebbles
at the seaside form for us a ‘beach’.
You are unlikely to perceive the scene above as made up of individual grains
of sand.
Simplicity
We have a tendency to group together stimulus features in a way that
provides the simplest interpretation of the world (e.g. houses as opposed to
their make-up – windows, doors, roofs, walls, ceilings, etc.). The notion of
simplicity does have a link with the social psychological phenomenon of
stereotyping and attribution theory.
Common fate
This strange term describes the principle where individual objects moving
together at the same rate are perceived by us as a group. We group, by
common fate, flocks of seagulls and swarms of wasps. We do not perceive
each individual in the flock or swarm. We innately organise the stimuli int o a
‘whole’ in order to perceive and understand it.
Innate principles behind Gestalten and Gestalt psychology, which are
biological in origin, go some way to explain perception. Perception is
therefore more than mere ‘seeing’. We often find in psychology that such
innate abilities have survival value for us.
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Student Activity
Figure and ground
What do you make of the visual stimuli below?
This stimulus is known in psychology as Rubin’s vase and is often used
to demonstrate illusions. Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin made the
vase/profile illusion famous in 1915. As you might be able to ‘see’ from
Rubin’s vase, our visual perceptual process puts some aspect of the 2 -D
stimuli to the ‘front’ or foreground (figure) and another aspect to the
meaningless background (ground). Some part of the image always
stands out as ‘figure’ and some other part ‘ground’. With Rubin’s vase
the principle is reversible. What is meant here is that you will either
perceive a vase to the front or two faces squaring up to ea ch other!
Often what we perceive (as above either a vase or faces) is related to
our:
•
•
•
•
•
expectations
culture
experience of the stimuli
motivation
social world.
All of these influences on perception are collectively called our
‘perceptual set’.
The work of the Dutch artist M C Escher is famous for its ability to
trick the eye.
Please answer the questions that follow.
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Perceptual set?
Keep
off the the
grass
E
A
D
13
A
16
15
14
B
12
The cat sat on the map and licked its whiskers
1.
Look at three stimuli above. Explain each from the point of view
of perceptual set.
2.
Below are what might appear as blobs when you first look at
them. Your impression of the blobs provides an example of
awareness at a sensory level. If you continue to look at the blobs,
four words will emerge. You needn’t try to organise the blobs.
The organisation process will occur without any overt striving on
your part. These blobs have been created to slow the perceptual
process so that you can experience what typically occurs speedil y
in subjective time. After you have perceived what they are, use
the explanatory thumbnail to help you explain what you have just
done.
Your first and seemingly
immediate awareness, which
more or less corresponds to
the energy stimulation
patterns, is referred to as
‘sensation’. ‘Perception’ can
be distinguished from
sensation in that it refers to a
process that requires more
organisation than sensation,
is more heavily dependent on
learning than sensation, and
requires more time for
completion than sensation.
Explain the difference
between a sensation and a
percept.
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3.
Below is the famous illusion in psychology attributed to Boring.
From the point of view of your perception, what do you first
perceive? Can you perceive anything else? Explain this illusion in
the light of factors that influence perception.
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Development and perception
Do we have innate, or inborn, perceptual abilities, and as a result can we
discover whose is the more correct viewpoint as regards our perceptions: the
direct/ecological viewpoint or the indirect/constructivist viewpoint?
Bower (1966) is, amongst other things, famous for his peek -a-boo experiment
into our perception of size constancy, otherwise known as relative size. He
set out to discover if size constancy in babies was a consequence of
experience or was innate. He conditioned young babies (neonates) of two
months to turn their heads on the presentation of a 30 -centimetre cube at a
distance of 1 metre away from them. They were then presented with three
further conditions of the independent variable:
• a 30-centimetre cube at 3 metres
• a 90-centimetre cube at 1 metre and
• a 90-centimetre cube at 3 metres (which produces the same size of retinal
image as the 30-centimetre cube at 1 metre).
He recorded the number of times each stimulus produced the conditioned
response (head turning) and his results showed:
•
•
•
•
Condition
Condition
Condition
Condition
1
2
3
4
(30
(30
(90
(90
cms
cms
cms
cms




1
3
1
3
metre):
metres):
metre):
metres):
98
58
54
22
head
head
head
head
turns
turns
turns
turns
The finding that most head turns occurred in response to the first stimulus
showed that the babies were responding to the actual size of the cube
irrespective of distance. This supports the ecological and Gestalt position of
size constancy being innate. Further research by Slater (1989) supports
Bower’s findings, and suggests that size constancy (our ability to perceive the
true size of an object) is actively and provably present in babies as young as
eighteen weeks.
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A further study by Bower investigated the innate Gestalt principle of closure.
He conditioned neonates to respond to triangle number 1 and then presented
them with 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Number 1
Number 2
Number 4
Number 5
Number 3
Bower found that the conditioned response was generalised more by the
babies to the complete triangle (number 2). It is suggested that with number 1
the young babies initially perceived an unbroken triangle to lie behind the
black bar and that this indicates that the Gestalt principle of closure is innate
in all of us. These innate Gestalt principles are the basis for further and more
complex perceptual organisation.
R L Gregory is a cognitive psychologist who takes a constructivist approach
to perception. He says that we often (have to) go beyond the evidence of
sensory information alone to understand and behave appropriately in our
world. He believes experience in our environment has a part to play here. He
used visual illusions in an attempt to prove his point. Visual illusions see us
interpreting them as more than just sensory input alone. This was
demonstrated earlier. With the old woman/young woman illusion did you
first/always see a young or an old woman? Which is the more correct
interpretation of the stimuli? We often use knowledge of visual illusions to
our advantage. DIY programmes are about altering perceptions to make
rooms more appealing. If you have a small bathroom or kitchen and want to
create an illusion of size, DIY programme presenters often use the MullerLyer illusion and paint horizontal lines on alternate rows of tiles giving
an impression of depth, or use vertical lines to create height – where none
in reality exists. By using the natural contours of the room, like corners,
they work on our environmental experiences of cues to depth, i.e. two
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railway lines that appear to converge into the distance are used as an external
clue to depth in our world. This is illustrated at (b) below.
(a)
(b)
On the other hand there are psychologists such as Gibson and Walk (1960)
who believe more in an ecological or bottom-up approach in their
understanding of our perceptual processes – at least as far as depth perception
is concerned. As can be seen on page 51, in their famous visual cliff
experiment, they discovered in their work with kittens and neonates that
depth perception is probably innate in humans as it is in kittens. This
suggests that the application of our innate perceptual abilities are important
from the point of view of personal survival. They have come about as a result
of evolution. It would appear in the application of perception that we benefit
from both theoretical positions. Some abilities that influence perception
appear innate – but experience of our environment and what we learn in it is
important as well.
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Perception study
Source:
Gibson, E J and Walk, R D, ‘The visual cliff’, Scientific American, 202, pp.
64–71, 1960
Aim:
To discover if depth perception is innate or learnt.
Participants/subjects:
Children aged 6–14 months
Animals aged 24 hours
Method:
Laboratory experiment
Independent variable: age of participants
Dependent variable: whether baby crawled to deep side of visual cliff.
Procedure:
Visual cliff constructed of glass over a box with black and white squares
positioned to show depth at one end.
Infants were placed in the middle and encouraged to move towards their
mothers who waited at the opposite end.
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Animals, e.g. rats, chickens, turtles and lambs were also tested by placing
them in the middle and observing to which end they went.
The reason why Gibson and Walk used both animals and humans in their
study is that babies could not take part until they can crawl (around 6 months)
by which time the learning of depth perception may have occurred. Non human animals were used at an earlier age (as young as one day) where it was
fairly certain no learning of depth perception could have occurred.
Conclusion:
Gibson and Walk (1960) suggest non-human animals are born with innate
ability to perceive depth and that babies as young as 6 months could perceive
depth, though there is no indication if this is innate or learned. Neither the
direct ecological view nor the indirect constructivist view is entirely
supported.
Perceptual constancy
So far we have established that perception depends upon bodily structures
and processes; our innate principles of Gestalten, and us imposing 3 dimensional meaning on 2-dimensional visual experience on the basis of
expectations, culture, experience, motivation and our social world –
sometimes wrongly! Perception is actively influenced by all these factors
working individually and together. Where this all ultimately happens is
within the human brain, centring on the hypothalamus in particular.
We also have a perceptual ability, collectively called perceptual constancies,
which helps us to perceive our world. Where our perceptual constancies of
size, shape, brightness and depth come from is not fully understood.
Cognitive psychologists disagree as to whether they come about as a
consequence of our biology and genetic inheritance (nature) or as the result
of learning and experience (nurture). It should be said, however, that as far as
depth constancy is concerned, there is good psychological evidence to
suggest that depth perception is innate.
Perceptual constancy is our ability to perceive sameness of visual stimuli
even when the sensory evidence is to the contrary. We have a perceptual
constancy in the four areas below that also help us make sense of our
perceptual world.
• size
• shape
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• brightness
• depth
Perceptual constancies occur when our brains correct or modify our rapidly
changing sensory inputs to give us a more constant perception of the world.
For example, size constancy ensures that as we watch a friend walk off into
the distance, although the image of the person projected on to our retina is
rapidly decreasing in size, we do not perceive that our friend is actually
shrinking! The knowledge that as the proximal stimulus (the internal sensory
image) changes, the distal stimulus (the external object being perceived) does
not, allows us to correct our sensations and maintain constant perceptions.
Cognitive psychology has over the years offered three theories about
perception. It is in the area of perceptual constanc ies that much supporting
evidence to which theory is the more correct has emerged.
These theories are summarised as follows.
Three theories of perception: direct, constructivist, and interactionist
1.
Bottom-up (ecological view): (Gibson; Gestalt – ‘organised wholes’)
where it is said we perceive most clues from our environment directly
and without interpretation (we perceive ‘exactly’ what we
see/hear/smell/touch and taste). The ecological or direct view explains
perception as being ‘bottom-up’ – our world impinges on our senses
which process the information to the brain where it is directly
interpreted, understood and acted upon. Bottom-up theory cannot
explain illusions.
Discussion point
Why do you think the bottom-up theory of perception cannot explain
illusions? Why can’t bottom-up theory be dismissed altogether? Give
reasons for your deliberations.
2.
Top-down (constructivist view): (Gregory; Bruner) who say our
perceptual system must often make a reality indirectly out of bits of
sensory information due to the absence of other information. They are
top-down in their explanation of perception. Higher -level cognitive
functions play a part. We often perceive things in the absence of bits of
sensory information by hypothesis testing or ‘best gues sing’ on the
basis of our previous (in)experience of what it is we sense.
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Discussion point
What is the key to a top-down theory of perception? What other
influences would operate on a top-down perceptual understanding of
our world?
3.
Top-down/bottom-up (interactionist/symbiotic view): (Neisser; Marr)
who say we use both top-down and bottom-up information processes in
the perception of our reality. Nature and nurture both play a part. Both
enhance perception individually and collectively. When one pe rceptual
process, or aspect of it, is impaired, the other process, or an aspect of it,
‘fills in’ or compensates to give us at the end of the day as good an
individual understanding of the image/object/event as possible.
Symbiotic processing is best explained in the area of visual perception
using Marr’s computer analogy where he says we extract visual
information from an image/object/event in four stages and put all this
together again in the brain in what he calls a symbolic representation of
the stimulus. Marr’s computational model as an explanation of visual
perception is illuminating in that it helps emphasise the role of both
bottom-up and top-down processing independently, collectively and
integratively.
For an overview of Marr’s computer analogy s ee overleaf.
Interactive
Read Theories of Visual Perception: Problems and Perspectives at
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/alan.johnston/Theories.html and Two
Visual Systems and Two Theories of Perception: An Attempt to
Reconcile the Constructivist and Ecological Approaches by Joel
Norman of the University of Haifa, Israel at
http://psy.haifa.ac.il/~maga/tvs&ttp.pdf
For next day read Chapter 2 of Cognitive Psychology by Richard Gross
and Rob McIlveen (Hodder & Stoughton). Summarise each of the three
theories/approaches to our understanding of perception. In your
opinion, which appears the most correct? Give reasons for your
answers.
It is to be hoped that good students will refer to psychological and
everyday examples in their deliberations.
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An interactionist view
David Marr (1945–80) was a British psychologist who made important
contributions to the study of visual processing. In doing so, he integrated
results from psychology, AI, and neurophysiology. His classic book, Vision:
A computational investigation into the human representation and processing
of visual information, is considered one of the most important works in
cognitive science. In addition to his work on vision, Marr developed a general
account of information-processing systems in terms of three levels of
analysis: (1) the level of computational theory of the system, (2) the level of
algorithm and representation, which are used to make computations, and (3)
the level of implementation: the underlying hardware or ‘machinery’ on
which the computations are carried out.
Algorithm
An algorithm is a mechanical and completely reliable procedure or set of
instructions for completing an operation in a finite number of steps. For
example, ‘To unlock a door with an unfamiliar set of keys, try each one until
one of them does unlock the door’. Another example, from logic, is truth tables, which determine whether a formula is a tautology. In mathematical
contexts, an algorithm is a mechanical procedure for computing a result or
outcome. Use of an algorithm always provides a solution to a problem, unlike
a heuristic.
In an attempt to understand the complex make -up of our visual perception
David Marr – in ‘Marr, D (1980), Visual information processing: the
structure and creation of visual representation s. Phil.Trans.R.Soc.Lond.B,
290, 199–218’ – argues that neural activity transforms sensory (essentially
visual) stimulation into our experience of reality. This is done gradually, by
our extracting and deconstructing specific information from the object we
‘see’, in four stages and then putting all this information together again in our
attempt to recognise and understand what is we are (visually) perceiving.
Marr calls this a symbolic representation.
Representation
‘Representation’ can refer to a symbol or thing, which represents
(‘refers to’, ‘stands for’) something else, or it can refer to the relation
between a representation (in the sense just described) and what it
represents. In either case, there are many kinds of representation. For
instance, there are linguistic forms of representation (as exemplified
by the words in this sentence) and non-linguistic forms of representation
(as exemplified by maps and models). General questions about
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representation focus on the nature of the relation between a representation
and what it represents, features which distinguish representations from other,
non-representational items and features which distinguish different kinds of
representation. Questions about representations, which arise in connection
with mental states and cognition, involve the representational nature of
imagery (is it more picture-like or language-like?), the creative use of
representational systems, and the relationship between language and thought.
These questions are of particular concern for computational models of mind,
which require that mental representation be in a form suitable for
computation.
Marr’s (1982) 4 module computational theory of vision
1.
The image or grey-level description
Represented by the intensity of light at eac h point in the retinal image,
this allows us to discover the boundaries of and regions in the image.
Marr suggests our ability to identify boundaries and regions on this
basis is the beginning of visual perception.
2.
Primal sketch
Here Marr says we go on to identify surface markings, object
boundaries and markings using the Gestalt principles of grouping.
3.
2½-D sketch
A third stage where in the deconstruction of an image we give it depth
and orientation. It is not yet 3-D. Object recognition needs the input
matched against memory so that non-visible points are accounted for
(perceptual constancy).
4.
3-D model representation
Where the nature and construction of the object is at this final stage
confirmed/denied using higher level top -down processing functions and
abilities. This gives rise to a symbolic representation of our visual
reality and is for Marr true object recognition.
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Our three theories of perception and their explanations of constancies
Size constancy
As previously explained, size constancy refers to the fact that, although
retinal images of objects get smaller as the object recedes into the distance,
we perceive that the object does not change in size. Taking size constancy
into account, the constructivist view of perception maint ains that size
constancy develops because we learn through experience that objects do not
actually shrink as they move away from us. Some cross -cultural evidence is
consistent with this view, in that sometimes people from the dense jungle or
heavily wooded regions, who are not accustomed to viewing objects at a
distance, mistakenly perceive distant objects as being very small. Ecological
direct-perception theory on the other hand maintains that size constancy
occurs as a direct result of the information taken in by our senses and that
failure to conserve size results only when the situation does not provide us
with enough direct sensory information.
Shape constancy
Shape constancy is our ability, innate or learned, to perceive the shape of an
object as being constant even though our retinal image of the object is
changing. An example of this would be the chalkboard at the front of your
class. Regardless of where we are sitting, we all perceive the chalkboard as a
rectangular shape despite the fact that we all have different retinal images of
it depending upon where we are sitting. Constructivists, or top -down
theorists, see shape constancy coming about as a product of learning in our
environment whereas bottom-up theorists see shape constancy as being
somehow innate and part of the experience of sensation.
Brightness constancy
Lightness, or brightness constancy, refers to our perceptual ability to adapt to
the situation where the illumination (brightness) of an object changes, but we
continue to perceive its brightness and colour as the same or constant. A
white sheet of paper first perceived in bright sunlight will still appear white
and of approximately the same shade when later perceived by us under the
shade of a tree. Constructivists (top-down theory) explain brightness
constancy in our learnt knowledge that objects do not change their
‘brightness’ as lighting conditions change. Ecological theory takes a bottom up explanation of brightness constancy. They say that enough information is
present in the sensory experience itself to allow us to maintain a constant
(lightness) perception of the object.
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Which is the more correct is very difficult to ascertain. Because babies cannot
communicate very well when first born, we have little way of knowing if
these constancies are present from birth, or learnt (however quickly), as the
result of experience. We may find a more accurate explanation to the origins
of perceptual constancies in an examination of depth perception.
Student Activity
Depth perception
An awareness of depth perception will help us understand why it is we
visually sense the world in two dimensions (like a photograph) but
perceive what we see in three dimensions!
This is demonstrated below:
Above (left) is a Swedish stamp based on the original diagram on the
right by the British physicist Roger Penrose (1954) called an Impossible
Triangle. They are each obviously two-dimensional. Are you currently
experiencing both in three dimensions? Shut one eye. Do you still
experience both in 3D? If you are this definitely contradicts direct
perception bottom-up theory as an explanation of perception.
Now the hard bit: why is this the case?
Without depth perception we would find walking, reaching, driving and
playing games (among other things) difficult. We see depth in our visual
world because of
• monocular depth cues, and
• binocular depth cues.
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Monocular depth cues
Monocular depth cues come about from seeing the world with one eye; or our
two individual eyes singularly...think about it!! Monocular depth cues, or
cues to depth, come to us from our external world. Put simply, what things
are and where things are in our external world gives us cues or clues to depth.
Even if we visually experience our world with one eye, and the image which
is striking our retina is definitely two -dimensional, where things are in our
visual field allows us understand or perceive our world in three dimensions.
Monocular depth cues include, inter alia, interposition, linear perspective and
relative size.
Interposition/superposition
One monocular depth cue we call interposition or overlapping. Interposition
is the monocular cue we use to perceive depth when we see a scene in which
one object is partially obscuring another. The object we can fully see we
perceive as nearer than the partially obscured object – which we perceive as
behind. If your tutor sits down behind their desk we can adjudge that the desk
is nearer you than they are: you can fully see the desk and only the top half of
their body. The interposition of the desk and the tutor is here a monocular
depth cue.
A
B
C
Interactive
Explain interposition, with reference to the above three figures.
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Shades and shadows
When we know the location of a light source and see objects casting shadows
on other objects, we learn that the object shadowing the other is closer to the
light source. As most illumination comes downward, we tend to resolve
ambiguities using this information. Shadows in 2 -D images are used by the
advertising industry and sign writers to attract our attention to the ‘fact’ that
the words seem to stand out from their background, giving the impression
that the background is farther away from the letters. Why? We notice it more!
GK
Another monocular depth cue is:
Linear perspective
Linear perspective is another monocular depth cue. If we see two parallel
lines converge into one another in the distance, this tells us about depth. It is
easily demonstrated in a railway station. When it is safe (!) look down at the
railway lines. They are parallel to one another. Now look up the track and
you will see the rails converge (come in on one another). This is linear
perspective. If we see this happening, it is a monocular cue to depth or
distance. Linear perspective can even work in two dimensions, i.e.
Which of the two horizontal lines above is longer, the one at the top, or the
one at the bottom? Measure them. What do you find? From the point of view
of perceptual theory why did you perceive what you di d?
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Relative size
Relative size is another monocular depth cue. Relative size occurs when we
see two objects, like two houses, against their backgrounds in our visual
field. We see in two dimensions that one house is smaller than the other.
Indeed the 2-D visual information we receive about the smaller of the two
houses would appear to suggest it is the size of a match -box! This is not the
case. We perceive on the basis of relative size that the visually smaller house
is farther away from us. The larger of the two we perceive as nearer.
The human visual system interprets depth in sensed images using both
physiological and psychological cues. Some physiological cues require both
eyes to be open (binocular); others are available also when looking at image s
with only one open eye (monocular). All psychological cues are monocular.
In the real world the human visual system automatically uses all available
depth cues to determine distances between objects.
Binocular depth cues
Binocular physiological depth cues are easy to understand. They come about
because we have two eyes. Binocular cues to depth in our visual field result
because of the fact that each of our eyes receives a slightly different picture
of the same scene; our noses see to that.
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The dual and overlapping picture we get as a result is called stereopsis.
Stereopsis gives us binocular cues to depth because most of us enjoy
binocular (two-eye) vision. We can lose the ability for binocular depth cues
to our visual world due to a blow to the head (that gives us double vision) or
damage to the eye due to strabismus (squints), etc. Sports people generally
have excellent binocular vision. You will find that professional sports people
whose game involves a ball of some description are usually excellent at other
ball sports they play as a ‘hobby’. Stephen Hendry, the world -famous snooker
player, is an excellent golfer. The goalkeeper Andy Goram has Scottish caps
for both football and cricket. Ian Botham played both professional cricket and
professional football – though not at the same time of year.
If we have two eyes, when objects get closer to us, each eye turns inwards.
As objects, or percepts, move farther away, each eye turns outwards. The
brain interprets this as a binocular cue to how near or ho w far the percept
(image/object) is from us. This inward and outward movement of our eyes in
response to how near or how far a percept is from us is called binocular
convergence.
Because each eye has a slightly different view of the same visual world, thi s
similar, but different information is also used to help us judge depth. The
closer each retinal image (or picture) is to the other, the nearer our brain
interprets an object being to us. This is called binocular disparity.
We therefore achieve depth perception due to monocular and binocular depth
cues. Monocular depth cues come from our visual environment. Binocular
depth cues arise because we have two eyes. The biology of the human body
gives rise to binocular depth cues. Our external environment gives us
monocular depth cues.
Student Activity
Describe and explain how we perceive depth in our world.
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Motivation
In psychology, motivation concerns what prompts us to action or to behave in
a particular way. Motivation can affect our perception of o bjects, events,
people stimuli, etc. Motivation in psychology is a study all in itself.
Cognitive psychology understands that our motivation to react, act and
behave in a particular way is affected by two things. These are our
• internal biology; and
• external environment.
Sometimes our internal biology and external environment come together to
make us think, feel and behave in a particular way. The interaction of our
biology and our environment as they motivate us to be more perceptually
aware produces interesting – and expensive – results.
When our body needs fuel, i.e. food, it tells us so when we experience hunger
pangs. This is our body’s internal signal or cue to us to eat. Our biology
affects our perception in that when we are hungry and experi ence hunger
pangs, we perceive food much more vividly. It is fatal to go food shopping in
a modern supermarket if you are hungry. The fruit appears more appealing,
the home baking more delicious, the meat and fish more tasty looking! We
perceive the colour of food more intensely. We are more aware of the smell
of food. Perception of food is heightened by internal bodily factors. External
factors like the clever use of lighting to illuminate fruit colouring more, and
the bakery in the supermarket constantly baking bread and cakes, also
influence and motivate us to perceive food more intensely when hungry. The
internal and external factors of motivation strongly influence our perception
of food and in this situation we may end up buying and spending much more
than we needed! Supermarkets of course are aware of this. A knowledge of
cognitive psychology can affect your waistline, wallet and purse.
Cultural variations on perception
In 1966 Mundy-Castle investigated the interpretation Ghanaian children
of between 5 and 10 put on their line drawings. They were presented with
a series of drawings each of which used only a limited number of depth
cues. These were height in plane, interposition and relative size. Each
picture showed a man and a deer at the front and an elephant at the
back in different combinations, i.e. Mundy-Castle discovered that the
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children’s interpretations were significantly different from those made by a
similar sample of European children. The Ghanaian children were unable to
use such depth cues as the road to interpret the picture. Their culture did not
give them experiences of roads (and deer – they called these goats or similar)
and thus influenced their perception. Similar findings into (faulty) depth
perception have been found when people are transposed out of their own
environment into an alien one.
Social and emotional influences on perception
Culture is bound up in our social world which itself provides the
circumstances within which we feel and express emotions. When New Lab our
came to power in the late 1990s, Lord Irvine became the Lord Chancellor and
speaker of the House of Lords, head of the English legal system and a
member of the Cabinet. He set about refurbishing his official residence at
taxpayers’ expense and could not understand the public reaction to his
spending tens of thousands of pounds on wallpaper, chairs and curtains.
Because of the affluent and privileged social world he lived in, his perception
of what was spent on what was entirely different from that of th e vast
majority of the population.
Allport (1955) reports on a study concerning the influence of our social world
regarding prejudice and perception. Prejudices arise from the social world we
find ourselves in. Prejudice is thus learnt – formally and informally.
Prejudice influences perception. Using a stereoscope (a device for presenting
a separate picture to each eye simultaneously), the experimenters showed
participants mixed-race pairs of individuals; one member of each pair shown
to each eye. Generally people were better and more definite when picking out
and categorising members of their own race. They were more unsure and
cagey when categorising people of other ethnic groups. Afrikaaners, long
noted for their prejudice against black people, different iated far more quickly
and definitively between the different ethnic peoples presented via the
stereoscope. They had a very definite perception and raised emotional
awareness regarding differing racial groupings. Allport interpreted this as
showing that the strongly racist views held by Afrikaaners had influenced
their perception.
In 1948 Postman, Bruner and McGinnies discovered using a tachiscope
that sexual and other taboo words had a higher recognition level than
ordinary language. Participants took longer to process these types of
words than neutral ones. Postman et al suggest that this longer
processing time is a type of perceptual defence – to defend us from the
unacceptable. However, Bitterman and Kniffin (1953) found that the
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time difference disappeared if participants were allowed to write down these
taboo words. They said that Postman’s earlier work suffered from a
methodological response bias. Participants were simply less willing to say
swear words aloud than neutral words. So who is the mor e correct?
Worthington (1969) subliminally presented participants with taboo words –
so subliminally that participants were completely unaware of their
presentation. They were cleverly embedded at the centre of a dot of light
projected on to a screen. Dots were presented in pairs and the participants had
to say which dot was brighter, dimmer or were they both the same? Dots with
taboo words embedded on them were consistently rated as being dimmer than
those with neutral words. The perceptual defence argume nt therefore has
some merit.
Carpenter, Weiner and Carpenter (1956) engaged participants in the
completion of sensitive topics such as personal inadequacy, sex, hostility, etc.
They categorised participants as either ‘sensitive’ or ‘repressed’ as a result .
Sensitive participants perceived taboo or disturbing words more easily;
repressed participants perceived such words less readily and quickly.
Personal differences in values and attitudes can thus greatly influence
perception. These we get from our social world.
Solley and Haigh (1958) reported on a study to show the influence emotion
has on perception. Children were asked to draw pictures of Santa Claus in
December and January. Representations were larger and included more
presents in the month of December in comparison to January. In January the
drawings shrank and the presents got fewer! Solley and Haigh (1958) imply
that emotions such as excitement and anticipation can influence perception.
In 1951 Lazarus and McCleary conducted an experiment that had them give
mild electric shocks to participants when presented with a nonsense syllable.
This provoked an avoidance response to them in the future! Interestingly they
also found an avoidance response when participants came across the nonsense
words subliminally. This implies that the perceptual system works at both a
conscious and an unconscious level and that consciously and unconsciously
our perception of our world can be influenced by previous experiences.
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Perception and advertising
Advertising makes its money by attracting our attention to products their
clients want us to buy. Very often there is in reality very little to differentiate
between similar products. One need only consider soap powder to appreciate
this point. So what makes us choose between one brand and another? Whether
we notice it in the first place is the first step in the process. Getting our
attention and then changing our perception is what advertising is all about.
You cannot perceive something without attending to it. You cannot attend to
something without perceiving it.
Please read the two extracts from the BBC website and answer the questions
that follow.
Monday 29 March 1999 published at 12:42 GMT
Ads make French Connection
Fashion retailer French Connection has announ ced a 27% jump in
profits on the back of its controversial ‘FCUK’ advertising campaign.
The company, which owns the Nicole Farhi brand, said pre -tax profits
for the year to January rose to £10.4m ($16.3m) from £8.2m a year ago,
well up on market expectations. Sales grew 25.2% to £117.3m, assisted
by the opening of 10 new stores. Like -for-like sales, excluding the
effects of the new store space, were 11% higher. The company said its
decision two years ago to abbreviate its full name, French Connection
UK; to FCUK has had an impact on customers. Its recent Christmas
advertising campaign, FCUK Christmas – Take Me Away, further
‘created attention and provoked discussion’, the company said.
‘Great optimism’
Chief executive Stephen Marks, said: ‘At the core of our recent
success have been the advertising campaigns for both French
Connection and Nicole Farhi. Overall we enter the new year with
great optimism.’ He added that sponsorship of boxer Lennox Lewis
in his recent world heavyweight bout with Evander Ho lyfield, which
saw Lewis wear the FCUK logo on his shorts, had seen its sales of
similarly branded T-shirts soar. In Britain the company says its
businesses are ‘performing well in what continues to be very
difficult market conditions’, Mr Marks said, whi le the US retail
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business ‘is well ahead of last year at this stage’. The group has 88
stores in the UK and US and aims to have 109 open by January next
year. New shops have been opened in London, across the UK and in
Washington. Four outlets are set to open in New York.
September 1999
Warning to advertisers over ‘f-word’
The Advertising Standards Authority is urging magazines and poster
companies not to run advertisements for a clothing firm, French
Connection, which make a play on the ‘f-word’. The ASA has upheld 26
complaints about the campaign, which uses the slogan ‘f.c.u.k.
advertising’. The authority says it has brought advertising into
disrepute. The company says it has registered ‘fcuk’ as the trademark of
French Connection UK and claims that means it must be acceptable. It
told the authority that it had responded to previous complaints about its
posters by putting dots between the initials and separating the words
‘fcuk’ and ‘advertising’ with a picture. But in its magazine
advertisement, which appeared in style titles such as Vogue, Marie
Claire and FHM, no alterations were made. The company said it saw no
need because these magazines often contained strong language in their
editorial features.
The ASA said without the use of dots, most rea ders would mistake the
advertisers’ initials for the f-word – and it considered the campaign
brought advertising into disrepute. It has now urged media companies
not to accept the advertisements in future. ASA spokesman Chris Reed
said: ‘It’s very unusual for us to take this action on the grounds of taste
and decency. Our research shows 77% of the public do not believe the
f-word should be used on advertising. We are sending out a message to
advertisers to be careful.’ Lilli Anderson, French Connection
spokeswoman, criticised the ruling as ‘undemocratic’ and said she
thought it would have little impact on their ability to run their next
adverts, which were already being placed in magazines for the spring.
‘We’ve sold 85,000 T-shirts with “fcuk fashion” on them. If that many
people want to wear it across their T -shirts, to uphold a complaint by 26
people is not very democratic,’ she said.
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Student Activity
1.
What material success did French Connection UK have as a result
of their name change?
2.
What did the company put this success down to?
3.
What criticisms did the Advertising Standards Authority make of
the company name change?
4.
Despite these criticisms, psychologically what must have
happened from the perspective of the potential consumer?
5.
When confronted for the first, second or even third time with the
stimuli, what cognitively happened for the unaware consumer?
6.
What happened to their buying behaviour?
7.
Using your knowledge of perception explain the success of this
campaign.
Discussion point
Think about something you looked forward to for a long time.
What mental representations did you have in anticipation of it? What
emotions did you feel? Was the event as brilliant as you first perceived
it to be?
Student Activity
Describe and explain cultural, social and developmental influences on
perception.
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Student Activity: Interactive
What is this picture? As you search for meaning in it, your brain
strives to make sense of the seemingly meaningless spots. If, after a
while, you still see no meaning in the picture read the answer below.
Once you ‘see’ the solution, it will never again be meaningless to you.
So what’s going on?
This experiment shows that past experience can affect your perception
of such properties as form or depth. Consider what happens when you
view this illustration. At first most people cannot tell what it depicts,
but with continued inspection or a hint, the fragments suddenly are
perceptually reorganised and recognised, in this case, as a Dalmatian
dog. A recognisable image emerges that had no perceptual reality
before. Hence, there is some sort of perceptual change among the
neurons in your brain. This also leads to a change in the way in which
you perceive the shape and depth of the scene. Perhaps mos t
importantly, the figure now looks like the object it was supposed to
represent – it now has the shape and depth relations of a Dalmatian dog.
Sometimes being told that a Dalmatian hides in this scene can provide
the visual system with enough of a hint t o recognise the dog. This is a
case in which a high-level brain area underlying language
comprehension tells a lower-level area, in this case the cortical areas
dedicated to visual scene analysis, what might be going on. This is
another example of why the study of cognitive psychology should be
seen holistically.
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If this dog were animated, it would be immediately apparent. Common
motion of a group of otherwise unrecognisable blobs is a very powerful
cue for our visual system. It enables our visual system to realise that
it’s dealing with a single object. This effect is termed grouping. It is
important that an animal can do this well, otherwise it might not easily
spot a predator, prey or other food. Animals must be able to separate
the figure from the ground. What we call camouflage is an attempt to
deceive these processes. A stalking cat moves cautiously and freezes
from time to time to avoid giving motion clues to its prey. It has even
been suggested that our good colour vision evolved to enable our
primate ancestors to spot coloured fruit against a confusing background
of green leaves. What gives us so much visual pleasure may originate as
a device to spot our food and to break camouflage.
In most illustrations, we tend to perceive a figure that stands out from
the background. In printed material, the figure is usually darker than its
background. Figures also tend to be smaller and more regular than
backgrounds. Sometimes these principles do not hold, and we have
difficulty distinguishing figures from their backgrounds. However, this
difficulty disappears when our brain somehow organises these difficult
visual images into a meaningful and recognisable pattern. When this is
done, only the figure and background can be seen, and whatever was
seen before is gone forever! Once you understand what is being
presented, your perception changes, and you will be fixed on the
‘correct’ interpretation forever.
Since these types of figure/ground figures do not lead to immediate
identification, the mental recognition of the ‘correct’ figure must be
perceptual in character. After all, the image does not change on your
retina. Thus we can assume that some mental process that precedes or
accompanies the moment of recognition entails a perceptual
reorganisation.
Second experiment
Now that you have recognised the Dalmatian dog, try perceiving
the image in its original meaningless way. You will find it almost
impossible to do. The picture becomes permanently meaningful.
This is in contrast to an ambiguous figure that ha s two equally
likely interpretations. The ambiguous figure will ‘flip’ between
two states, because your brain cannot decide which one is more
meaningfully biased than the other one. In the case of the
Dalmatian dog, however, once your brain perceives t he ‘correct’
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image and ascribes meaning to the picture, your brain will not be able
to perceive a meaningless image again, because the meaningless
interpretation is no longer equally biased with that of your past
experience with Dalmatian dogs. During al l the time you were staring at
the picture, the image on your retina did not change. Rather, your brain
worked to construct a correct interpretation of the image, trying out
different interpretations, until your brain ‘recognised’ something. This
emphasises that perception is an active process of constructing a scene
description.
Student activity
Conduct an experiment using the Dalmatian dog stimuli to test the
hypothesis H1: ‘That previous past experience influences perception.’
Revise how to write up a psychological research investigation and visit
http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/apa4b.htm
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Attention
In consideration of the key concept of attention, the Scottish Qualifications
Authority say that for Psychology at Advanced Higher level we cons ider:
• an information processing approach to the study of attention
• models of focused and divided attention
• theories and research regarding focused auditory and visual attention –
visual search, schemas
• performance deficits in everyday attention.
By the end of this key concept you should be aware that attention is an
important information process, closely related to perception. Our natural state
of attention is divided attention. This is where we are able to attend to, and
deal with, lots of information in our world at one and the same time. On the
other hand, we also have an ability to focus on, or selectively attend to,
particular stimuli, while ignoring all others – at least at a conscious level.
This implies that sometimes even that to which we do not attend directly can
still be attended to indirectly. What we attend to, and what we do not attend
to, is influenced a great deal by just how meaningful a particular stimulus is
for us. Attention is also affected by our motivation, expectations, emo tion
and culture. The close relationship between perception and attention will be
explored in the context of active information processing. Different theories
and models of visual and auditory attention will be looked at to give us a
greater understanding of our various states of attention, which we use
interchangeably on an everyday basis.
What is attention?
Our definition of attention is perhaps entirely appropriate. Attention is
‘… the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one o f
what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.
Focalisation, (and the) concentration of consciousness are of its essence.
It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with
others.’
William James (1890)
A study of the information process of attention first involves us in
considering four areas: selected or focused attention; divided attention;
and (as a consequence) the objective and subjective factors associated
with why we attend to some stimuli to the exclusion of others. It must
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be emphasised that attention is closely related to perception in the family of
cognitive processes in that
‘The topics of perception and attention merge into each other since both
are concerned with the question of what we become aware of in our
environment. We can only perceive things we are attending to and attend
to things we perceive.’
Greene and Hick (1984)
As hopefully you are aware by now, cognitive psychology is dominated by
what is called an ‘information-processing paradigm’. We study information
processes like perception, attention, language, memory and thinking from the
point of view of the information processes involved, in terms of models of
what we think is involved.
The study of attention therefore sees psychologists looking at two main areas:
• focused or selective attention, where attention is seen in terms of the
mechanisms by which certain information is registered by us, while other
information is disregarded (and whether or not it enters our
consciousness);
• divided or capacity attention, where the study of attention concentrates
on the upper limit to the amount of processing that we can perform on
incoming stimuli at any one time.
How do we study attention?
Cognitive psychology almost exclusively adopts the experimental method as
its prime research methodology. In their laboratory research into attention,
cognitive psychologists utilise a number of interesting strategies:
• shadowing: where in the study of attention participants are presented with
a message into one ear, and almost immediately repeat it back;
• dichotic listening tasks: where a message is simultaneously presented to
the left ear, and a different message to the right. Participants are asked, for
example, to attend to and repeat back one message only;
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• the dual-tasking technique: used to study divided attention where
subjects are presented with a variety of incoming stimuli and are asked to
respond to one, some or all of them. Task performance is fou nd here to be
affected by task, similarity, task practice and task difficulty. A deficit in
our performance, sometimes called a performance deficit, may be evident
as a result.
Theories of focused or selective attention
Attention, like all our cognitive processes, is a hypothetical construct. This is
the name given to things we study in psychology that don’t actually exist in a
physical, or real, form. Thus in order to study the hypothetical construct of
attention we use models of what we think is happening when we attend to
stimuli.
Theories on focused attention (how we seem to attend to some stimuli to the
exclusion of others) have traditionally argued in their models that somewhere
along the attention information-processing pipeline there is a ‘bottle neck’,
where we have to filter out unwanted messages (or deal with them to only a
limited degree), in order to allow the passing through of more important
messages to our higher-level processing system. Indeed, the absence of this
probably innate neurological ability would make life impossible. We would
be bombarded with stimuli and unable to work out what ones need dealing
with first in order for us to operate successfully in our world.
The aptly named single-channel theories of attention put forward by the
likes of Broadbent, Deutsch and Deutsch, Treisman and Norman primarily
differ over where this filter is, and how much and what it is we process of any
non-attended stimuli.
Focused auditory attention
Broadbent’s filter model (1958)
The study of attention began in earnest for cognitive psychology in 1958 with
the publication of Broadbent’s paper ‘Perception and Communication’. Felt
by many to be a cornerstone theory in cognitive psychology, Broadbent
attempted to answer in part Cherry’s earlier 1953 c ocktail-party phenomenon,
with a theory about how he thought we could focus our attention on one
conversation, whilst ignoring other conversations going on around us at the
same time. The conversation we have attended to may be taking place on the
other side of the room! Broadbent (1958) suggests that we focus on, or
selectively attend to, stimuli on the basis of their physical properties.
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Interactive
Starting off at http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~barons/cocktail.html write a
report on Cherry (1953) under the following headings: name, date, title
of original research, method/procedure, results and conclusions.
Broadbent said our world has too many stimuli in it for us to handle at any
one time. To deal with this, we utilise a filter mechanism to process s ome –
and block out other – incoming information. As a consequence, a bottle neck
of data (attracted to us in the first place on the basis of their physical
properties) occurs early on. What this means is that Broadbent believes we
first attend to objects, etc. on the basis of certain objective physical
properties that they have. Essentially these physical characteristics ‘grab’ our
attention and help us notice one stimulus more than another. Physical
characteristics important to focused or selective attent ion include such things
as volume, brightness, intensity and novelty. These factors are well used in
the world of advertising and marketing. In order to perceive a stimulus – in
this case a product – our attention to it must somehow first be triggered.
Using a split-span procedure of
focused auditory attention, Broadbent
postulated that each ear acts as a
separate channel of communication
and deals with incoming aural stimuli
singularly and selectively. Later
work suggested his filter model was
too simplistic. Indeed, there is some
evidence to suggest that he did not
satisfactorily account for the fact that
some aspects of the unattended-to
message during his split-span
procedures could be recalled by participants later. This is related to one of the
major subjective reasons for us paying particular attention to some things,
e.g. how much a certain stimulus means to us.
The split-span procedure
Using headphones, this is where
Broadbent would present three
numbers 7, 1, 3 to one ear, at the rate
of one number per second. At the
same time, the other ear receives
another three numbers 6, 2, 4. The
participants listen to both sets of
numbers, and then write down as
many as they can recall.
Interactive
Using the same initial source as the previous Interactive, summarise
Broadbent’s (1958) research conclusions into auditory attention.
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Treisman’s attenuator model (1964)
This holds with much of Broadbent’s initial single channel model of attention
but sees the bottle neck as being much more flexible. Treisman’s theory
agrees that initial screening of a stimulus occurs on th e basis of its physical
characteristics, but instead of ‘irrelevant’ messages being disregarded, the
perceptual filter or attenuator turns down their volume, so to speak. They are
still available for higher-level processing.
‘The channel filter attenuates irrelevant messages rather than blocks them
completely.’
Treisman (1964)
What is particularly interesting is that Treisman’s attenuator model also
brings to our (individual) attention that further analysis is based upon
individual words, grammatical structure and word meaning. It aptly deals
with an explanation for the cocktail-party phenomenon in that we can hear
something without attending to it and do ‘attend’ to it when it ‘means’
something to us. We seem to be able to pay attention (consciously an d
unconsciously) more on the basis of personal meaning than the physical
characteristics of the message itself.
Treisman (1964), ‘Verbal cues, language and meaning in selective
attention’, American Journal of Psychology, 77: pp. 206–19
British psychologist Anne Treisman, now Professor
of Cognitive Psychology at Princeton University,
revolutionised cognitive psychology with her doctoral
attenuator model of attention in the 1960s – which
she has revised, refined and progressed ever since.
Attenuator theory says we can attend to particular
stimuli even although we are not aware of them. It
built on Cherry’s ‘cocktail-party’ phenomenon,
influenced by criticisms of Broadbent’s earlier theory
that we consciously attend to stimuli solely on the
basis of physical properties and that we can only attend to stimuli one at a
time.
Aim:
To investigate our ability to selectively attend to a stimulus when it depends
solely on the identification of verbal or linguistic features of the message.
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Participants:
Undergraduates and research students at Oxford University.
Method:
Laboratory experiment.
Independent variable: content: type and direction of messages to each ear
(the message to be attended to was sometimes switched ear -to-ear).
The content of the message, to be selectively attended to, was a 150-word
passage of prose taken from the novel Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. The
contents (differing verbal characteristics) of the irrelevant messages were:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
Prose from the same book in a man’s voice
Prose from the same book in a woman’s voice
Prose with an insertion of Latin in a woman’s voice
Prose on a technical discussion on biochemistry in a woman’s voice
French prose from a novel in the same voice as IV
German prose from a novel in the same voice as IV
Italian prose from a novel in the same voice as IV
‘Pigeon’ Czech in an English accent in the same voice as IV
Backwards English in the same voice as IV
French translation of the Lord Jim shadowed message in the same voice
as IV.
Procedure:
Participants were engaged in a dichotic listening task that involves asking
participants to listen to different information in each ear.
Using a technique called shadowing, the Lord Jim message was presented, as
were the ten irrelevant messages listed above with the participant being told
to attend to Lord Jim only and repeat it out loud.
Dependent variable: Interference on ability to recall Lord Jim message/recall
of attenuated messages.
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Conclusion:
That when we are in a state of focused attention we selectively attend to
stimuli using what is called a filter. This filter does not work entirely on the
taxi rank principle as previously thought. Treisman’s attenuator model (1964)
suggests that early selection/attention is based on physical properties of the
stimulus such as pitch, loudness, etc; that attention is directed toward
information that reaches a threshold of recognition; but most crucially of all
that during selective attention several inputs can be processed at the same
time. We pay attention to unattended-to messages on the basis of thresholds
we set for attending to stimuli. Important stimuli have a low threshold while
less important stimuli have a high threshold.
The inputs we can still attend to at the weak (attenuated) level are those that
are most meaningful to us, i.e. our name and gossip about ourselves!!
Treisman’s work then and since has demonstrated that unattended -to
messages are more thoroughly processed than previously thought.
She found that unknown foreign languages produced less interference on
selective recall than known foreign languages, that we do seem to identify
what we are attending to, and that during the attentional process we discard
irrelevant stimuli more quickly than more meaningful information, which is
then processed/not processed at a deeper, focused level depending on the task
on hand.
Personal meaning is once again emphasised in the study of our information
processes.
From Treisman (1960)
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Deutsch and Deutsch (1963); Norman (1969, 1976). Late selection filter
theory
Later single-channel theories of why we attend to certain things in particular
emphasise this is done on the basis of what is deemed pertinent to the
individual. This simply means that we attend to and percei ve stimuli on the
basis of what is subjectively valid (meaning something), or important, to
ourselves. Put another way, attention/perception is influenced by selfishness!
Pertinence model theorists put the bottle neck in our ‘single channel’ of
attention much nearer the response end of the auditory processing system.
They say, rejecting Broadbent, that we fully analyse all signals and pass them
on to the attenuator, which passes on the signal to be further processed but in
a more toned-down form. We attend to certain things more than others
because something about them is more relevant for us. The pertinence model
suggestion that we analyse everything has been criticised by Solso and
Professor Michael Eysenck as too rigid and inflexible. In general terms,
criticisms of the Pertinence Model are worries about a single all -purpose,
limited capacity, central processor. Single -channel theory seems too allinclusive a theory to account for the complexities involved in the unique
human experience of attention.
Interactive
Read Chapter 5 of Cognitive Psychology by Richard Gross and Rob
McIlveen (Hodder & Stoughton).
Discuss and evaluate single-channel theory in the light of focused
auditory attention.
Focused visual attention
Investigation into focused visual attention has looked primarily at three main
areas:
• unilateral neglect
• extinction; and
• Balint’s syndrome.
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Unilateral neglect
Unilateral neglect (UN) occurs as a result of brain damage to the right
parietal lobe. It manifests itself where victims, for example when copying a
drawing, leave out everything on its left-hand side. They cannot account for
stimuli in their left visual field. Unilateral neglect patients show a similar
behaviour when asked to perform tasks involving visual imagery (Bis iach and
Luzzatti, 1978). Lately it has been discovered that some processing of
neglected stimuli does actually occur. Marshall and Halligan (1988) presented
a UN patient with a drawing of two identical houses side by side. The only
difference was that the one on the left-hand side had flames coming out of the
windows. The patient could not report any difference between the two
drawings, but did say that she would prefer to live in the house on the right hand side!
Why this phenomenon occurs is still a bit of a mystery. Parkin (1996) reports,
‘… the idea that a single theory of neglect will emerge is highly unlikely
because of the diversity of defects being discovered.’
Interactive
Read a review of Unilateral Neglect: Clinical and Experimental Stud ies,
edited by Robertson and Marshall at
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v1/psyche-1-08-walker.html
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Extinction
Extinction is a symptom found in some unilateral neglect patients. These
patients can attend to stimuli when presented normally to either their left or
right visual field. But when the two stimuli are presented side by side, the
one nearer the side of the visual field that is neglected goes undetected.
Balint’s syndrome
Balint’s syndrome comes about due to damage in both cerebral hemispheres
involving the posterior parietal lobe or parietal -occipital junction. Balint’s
syndrome patients exhibit a variety of attentional difficulties including fixed
gazing, over-extending for objects and simultagnosia. Simultagnosia is when
only one object at a time can be seen (Humphreys and Riddoch, 1993). In
this research, when Balint’s syndrome participants were shown a number of
red and green circles, they were generally unable to see both coloured circles
simultaneously. They could, however, identify them w hen they became one
‘whole’ object joined together by lines.
Simultagnosia
Red
Green
Red
Green
Humphreys and Riddoch (1993)
While there is no one agreed theory as to the cause of simultagnosia, Driver
(1998) suggests that the main problem for Balint’s patients is their inability
to disengage covert attention from an object. Covert attention is when our
attention moves without the eyes, often as a precursor to a saccade, which can
be either endogenously or exogenously controlled. Some expl anations:
Endogenous (controlled) attention – this is usually a movement of
covert attention that isn’t elicited by something in the environment (such
as a sudden flash) but by the individual who knows where they need to
look next. For example, when reading we know that we have to move
our eyes along a line of text from left to right. Because we have
knowledge about a predictable environment, our attention can be
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directed to the right of fixation (up to fourteen letters) to help guide our
reading.
Exogenous (automatic) attention – an abrupt onset (e.g. a flash of light in
peripheral vision can capture covert attention. This usually results in a
saccade to the flash area to have a look what is there).
Saccade – a movement of the eye. When the eye mo ves, no information is
taken in until it lands and a new fixation is started.
Source: http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/dec/c8cllc/l13 16glossary.doc
Elements to visual attention
In an attempt to discover the components of visual attention, P osner and
Pederson (1990) reviewed findings from such attentional disordered patients.
They argue that our ability to visually attend involves three separate
processes.
• we have an ability to disengage our attention from one stimulus to another.
This component of visual attention is called disengagement;
• we also use shifting, which is our ability to move our attention from one
stimulus to another;
• we use the process of engaging, or ‘locking’ on to new visual stimuli.
A ‘spotlight’ model of visual attention
The spotlight model of visual attention is considered by the likes of Driver
(1996) and LaBerge (1983). It is a model that holds that we adopt a broader
attentional beam, depending on the visual task; that when we visually attend
to stimuli, our visual attention can be likened to an internal mental spotlight
that mostly concentrates on the centre of whatever it is we are visually
attending to. We visually attend less to what might be going on at the
periphery of our visual scene. When we have to process this peripheral visual
information, we have to shift the spotlight. The idea that no processing occurs
beyond the periphery of the spotlight has been confirmed by, amongst others,
Johnston and Dark (1986).
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The ‘zoom-lens’ model of visual attention
The ‘spotlight’ model precipitated the development of the zoom -lens model
of visual attention. Erikson (1990) accepts the existence of the idea of an
internal mental spotlight, but believes its ‘beam’ can be adjusted like the
zoom-lens of a camera depending upon the width of the visual stimulus to be
considered. The zoom-lens model cannot account for the earlier results of
Neisser and Becklen (1975), and latterly Juola et al (1991), where both
studies suggest that, contrary to zoom-lens theory, some stimuli within our
visual environment can be attended to and others ignored. This is probably
because zoom-lens theory gives the impression of visual attention
concentrating in upon a given area of visual space, rather than stimuli within
a given area. Neisser and Becklen (1975), in superimposing two visual scenes
on top of each other, found participants could easily attend to one scene while
ignoring the other. Contrary to zoom-lens theory, this suggests that objects
within a visual environment can be the main focus of our attention.
Visual search
Visual search is the way we use focused visual attention in our everyday
lives. It is our searching out of a target stimulus in a busy visual
environment, such as looking for a friend in a crowd, or finding a parti cular
topic in a book, etc. Visual search has been investigated by way of visual
search tasks. This is where a participant is shown a visual display, and has
to decide, as quickly as possible, if the target is within the display. In 50% of
randomly presented trials, it will not be. What influences the speed and
accuracy of such a visual search is considered in feature integration theory.
A
C
S
G
L
M
W
J
O
P
S
Z
H
6
C
Q
P
D
F
N
W
P
K
Y
B
A visual search task. Please locate the number 6 within th e above visual
array.
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Feature integration theory
Feature integration theory is attributed to Treisman and Gelade (1980), and
Treisman (1988). The crux of the theory is that visually our attention must be
focused on an object or stimulus before its features can be synthesised into a
pattern that allows us ultimately to make some sense of it. Treisman and
Gelade (1980) asked participants to try to detect the letter T in among Is and
Ys. They predicted that because a T has a distinguishing feature, the
horizontal bar at the top, and Is and Ys do not, participants would detect the
target stimulus easily. This they found to be the case. Participants took on
average 800 milliseconds to detect a T within their arrays. They also
discovered that detection was not influenced by the size of the stimulus array.
In another experiment, Treisman and Gelade embedded the T in an array of Is
and Zs. This is a bit more difficult for us to detect as Z also has a horizontal
bar at its top.
Because of this similarity, participants had to search for more complex
features of T, which is where its vertical and horizontal bars conjoin with
each other at the top. Here, participants took 1,200 milliseconds to detect Ts.
In this more complex attentional task, Treisman and Gelade fou nd that the
size of the stimulus array did influence processing time.
Treisman concludes that within the more complex visual arrays (e.g. Ts
within Is and Zs), we first need to apply focused attention to begin to detect
targets. A second stage of processing then occurs, where we search for the
target based upon its features. In simpler visual tasks (T in among Is and Ys)
we do not use focused attention, and as a result the size of the array does not
have an adverse affect on detection time – as it does in the more complex
visual search task.
Interactive
Read pp. 62–4 of Cognitive Psychology by Richard Gross and Rob
McIlveen (Hodder & Stoughton), and pp. 126 –8 of Principles of
Cognitive Psychology (2nd ed) by Michael Eysenck (Psychology Press).
Discuss and evaluate Treisman’s feature-integration model of visual
attention.
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Divided attention
Divided attention is our ability to attend to lots of things at one and the same
time. Inherent in divided attention is the previously introduced concept of
focused attention. Focused attention is our sometimes super -ordinate ability
to concentrate on one task. However, focused and divided attention have
more in common with each other than one might initially think, as
‘….anything which minimises interference between processes, or keeps
them further apart, will allow them to be dealt with more readily either
selectively or together.’
Hampson (1969)
Shaffer (1975) well illustrates the effect interference has on a dual-process
task. He got a skilled audio-typist and, using headphones, presented her with
information into one ear, which she had to type. The two concurrent
independent variables were:
• a shadowing task where a shadow message was sent to her other ear; and
• a reading-aloud task of visually presented material.
In both conditions of the independent variable, a performance deficit was
evident compared with when she performed the interfering tasks separately
from the audio-typing task. Shaffer’s experiment neatly captures what divided
attention is really all about. Quite simply we are at our best performing a
variety of tasks that are both different and well known to us. Task similarity,
task practice and task difficulty all have a part to play in our ability to
maintain vigilance/attention to more than one thing at a time. Performance affecting variables such as task similarity, task practice and task difficulty
come into their own in the consideration of what is called automaticity.
Automatic processing or (automaticity) ability
This is easily demonstrated when we think about driving a car. Initially
we exercise focused attention on the mastering of all the individual ‘S -R’
units of driving. The task difficulty here is immense, especially when you
have to put all the learning units together in a fl uid action and pay
attention to everything that is happening around you (including the
disapproving driving instructor beside you). Stress is thus a factor in
the effort involved in focused attention. Confidence follows with task
practice, culminating in the rather gallus automatic processing ability of
being able to drive while simultaneously exercising divided attention by
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having a conversation with someone on your mobile, changing tapes, lighting
a cigarette and using your mirror to put on your make -up. We must be able to
go through a series of ‘states of attention’ depending upon changing
situational variables such as task similarity, task practice and task difficulty.
Interactive
Go to http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Stroop/ and read Stroop (1935)
‘Interference in serial verbal reactions’, Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 18, pp. 643–61.
Write a report on this under the following headings: Name, Date, Title,
Aim, Method/Procedure, Results and Conclusions.
Action slips and schemas
When we are in a state of divided attention, an action slip is the performance
of something by us that we did not intend to do (Reason, 1979, 1992). Reason
asked thirty-five participants to keep a diary of their action slips over a two week period. A total of 433 action slips were recorded. He then put 94% of
them into five categories – giving us some clues about the basis of action
slips.
• Storage failures (40%): forgotten or incorrectly recalled actions, such as
trying to lock one’s door twice.
• Test failures (20%): exchanged actions, such as getting changed for bed
instead of for the intended party!
• Sub-routine failures (18%): re-orderings, insertions or omissions of parts
of actions, such as having forgotten to pour water into the teapot before
serving.
• Discrimination failures (11%): attentional failures such as mistaking
yoghurt for milk.
• Programme assembly failures (5%): such as erasing the wrong letter
from a wrongly spelled word.
Strangely, action slips occur more frequently in the area of actions that
are highly practised and over-learned. At first, when we have to learn
how to behave in a particular way towards a particular stimulus, we are
in a state of focused attention. Here, when we first learn to perform
something, our central processor or attentional system is subject to
closed-loop control. This type of control is slow and involves effort, but
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is less prone to error. Once we become skilled at the desired behaviour, and
now being in a state of divided attention, the attentional system uses openloop control to guide our actions. This is much faster and effortless, but more
prone to error. Open-loop attentional control also allows us to deal with lots
of things at one and the same time.
In the study of divided attention, and thus open -loop control, it is suggested
that we utilise schemas, a schema meaning here an ‘organised plan’ or mental
representation of everything we understand about a stimulus, based on our
previous experience of it. Sellen and Norman (1992) believe schemas
determine our attentional performance. Their theory distinguishes between
two types of schema. Parent schemas are the highest -level schemas and
equate with an overall behavioural intention, like going to college for a
lecture. Child schemas are lower-order schemas which address the behaviours
involved in reaching the desired intended behaviour, like getting up, getting
dressed, having breakfast, leaving the house, etc. Each schema has a
particular activation level, and the behaviour is forthcoming once that
activation level is reached. Sellen and Norman argue that errors can be made
in a number of ways. One might be where an error has been made in the
formation of an intention and consequently an incorrect schema is activated.
As a result, activation of the correct intended schema is lost. Another is
where faulty triggering of an action schema happens, probably influenced by
past experience of a particular context or situation.
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Interactive
Discuss with reference to Reason the concept of action slips, and
evaluate them with reference to Sellen and Norman.
Usef ul ref erences
Reason, J T, ‘Actions Not as Planned: The Price of Automatisation’, in
G Underwood and R Stevens (eds), Aspects of Consciousness.
Volume 1, Psychological Issues, London: Academic Press, 1979
Reason, J T, ‘Cognitive Underspecification: Its Variety and
Consequences’, in B J Baars (ed.), Experimental Slips and Human
Error: Exploring the Architecture of Volition, New York: Plenum
Press, 1992
Reason, J T and Mycielska, K, Absentmindedness: The Psychology of
Mental Lapses and Everyday Errors, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1982
Sellen, A J and Norman, D A, ‘The psychology of slips’, in B J Baars
(ed.), Experimental Slips and Human Error: Exploring the
Architecture of Volition, New York: Plenum Press, 1992
Sustained attention, vigilance and performance decrement
This must have relevance to those working in tedious jobs where
inattentiveness could lead to health and safety problems.
In Johnnie Walker’s distillery in Kilmarnock, whisky is bo ttled on an
assembly line. It comes in one end in huge vats and goes out the other,
bottled, labelled and boxed to be sent all over the world. Each individual
bottle undergoes microscopic scrutiny for flaws. Each worker on the line
spends a maximum of twenty minutes, at any one time, concentrating on
looking through a large eyepiece at each bottle as it passes along the line to
be boxed. Millions of gallons of whisky are bottled in Kilmarnock every year.
Johnnie Walker’s have no doubt found out to their cos t the price of sustained
attention, vigilance and performance deficit in their workers. Put simply, if
not addressed, it affects profits!
Mackworth (1950) researched sustained attention, vigilance and
performance deficit by getting subjects to concentra te on very boring
tasks. He wanted to investigate how long someone could sustain a boring
task and still keep alert. He set up a number of signal -detection tasks
where subjects had to press a key on hearing/seeing a particular
auditory/visual signal. Every now and again, a tone would sound, or a
signal appear, that was louder or larger than the rest. Participants had to
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press the key on detection of this. Mackworth compared the signals given
with the number reported and the errors made (this is anoth er indication of
externalising a cognitive process). As a result, Mackworth put forward a
number of factors which influence vigilance, which he calls performance
decrement. At a general level, the longer the task the greater the performance
decrement.
We can sustain concentration longer and reduce performance decrement by
looking at the factors that influence our ability to attend to stimuli. These
factors depend upon
• the task itself
• the person
• the situation.
Mackworth found that in the light of the task itself the brighter and longer a
signal the greater the performance decrement. As regards the person, he
discovered feedback on performance; moderate stimulants and the personality
of the person could aid sustained attention while in the situation o ccasional
interruptions and irritants like phones ringing in the background and bosses
lurking nearby saw an increased ability to concentrate on the task in hand – a
task we might have performed a million times before.
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SECTION 3
Issue: the use of non-human animals in research
Please read the following:
Richard Gross; Rob McIlveen; Hugh Coolican; Alan Clamp and Julia Russell,
Psychology: A New Introduction (2nd ed), Hodder & Stoughton, Chapter 63,
pp. 773–85.
Julia Russell and Craig Roberts, Angles on Psychological Research, Nelson
Thornes, Chapter 13, pp. 212–43.
Two major concerns are raised by the use of animals in psychological
research. They are:
• ethical questions relating to the pain or suffering which may be inflicted
on laboratory animals;
• ecological validity. There is a wide-ranging debate about what animal
studies can, in theory, reveal about human behaviour. The early
behaviourists believed that the basic principles of learning operated in the
same way in many species. Behaviourist ‘laws’ of learning could be
demonstrated just as well in rats as in man. This belief is no longer
accepted and generalisations from animal to human behaviour have come
to be regarded with some suspicion.
Ethics and non-human animal research in psychology
Jones, Gross and McIlveen (1999) presciently introduce the topic of ethical
considerations and psychological research by stating:
‘Just as Orne (1962) regards the psychological experiment as a social
situation, so every psychological investigation is an ethical situation.’
To this end, the British Psychological Society (BPS) lays down codes of
conduct to which members in their research of human and non -human
participants should adhere. In the UK, this would see practitioners using,
among other points of reference:
• The Code of Conduct for Psychologists (BPS, 1983)
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• The Ethical Principles for Conducting Research with Human Participants
(BPS, 1990, 1993) – see below – and
• The Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research (BPS and Committee
of the Experimental Psychological Society, 1985)
Conducting research with human participants
Based on the British Psychological Society (BPS) Ethical Guidelines
and Code of Conduct 1985.
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1.
General considerations: especially as much developmental
psychology investigates children and young people, always ensure
that the research you do is done from the standpoint of the
participants taking part. Research should never be offensive to
anyone. This means that you should do nothing which threatens a
person’s health, well-being or dignity. You should also be aware
that we live in a multi-cultural country of diverse ethnic
communities. Research should be considered from a socially
inclusive, non-sexist, anti-racist and non-ageist perspective.
2.
Consent: wherever possible, consent should always be got from
participants.
3.
Deception: deception is not allowed if participants would be
unlikely to co-operate in its absence. If in doubt, the researcher
should seek advice from a tutor, etc.
4.
Debriefing: any research should provide participants with an
opportunity to discuss the outcomes of it. This is called
debriefing, and allows discussion of the specific purpose of the
research; interpretation of the participants’ particular performance
scores, answers, etc., and gives them an opportunity to ask
questions.
5.
Withdrawal from the investigation: all participants should give
their permission to take part in your research. They should also be
allowed to withdraw at any time if they so wish.
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6.
Confidentiality: unless subject to Scots law and UK statute, e.g.
the Data Protection Act, confidentiality between participant and
researcher should be observed at all times. If in doubt, seek
advice from your tutor, etc.
7.
Protection of participants: all participants in a piece of research
should be protected from any physical or mental harm.
8.
Observational research: any observation should observe the
privacy and psychological well-being of those studied. If consent
to be observed is not possible, observations sho uld only occur
where it would be normal that those observed would/could be seen
by others. If in doubt, consult your tutor.
9.
Giving psychological advice: sometimes during research, the
researcher will be asked for their advice concerning a
psychological matter which is of concern to a participant. The
golden rule is not to give advice if not qualified to do so. If in any
doubt you should seek advice from your tutor.
10.
Colleagues: all of us who study psychology share the above set of
ethical principles. It is our duty to encourage others who do
psychological research to observe these ethical guidelines at all
times.
Look up: BPS Code of Conduct
http://www.bps.org.uk/about/rules5.cfm
and
http://www.bps/org.uk.charter/codofcon.htm
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Why use animals in psychological research?
In summary, animals are used in psychological research because of:
• the ‘behavioural continuity’ between animals and humans
• their simpler biological form
• fewer emotive implications of non-human research, hence enhancing
objective academic debate
• their ability to give clearer cause–effect relationships.
Cross-comparative species–species research has its origins in Darwin’s
Origin of Species (1859) research in that the study of simpler life forms from
our evolutionary history gives us a greater insight into why we think, feel and
behave as we do.
In 1992 Brehm wrote:
‘In our necessary concern with treating subjects well and protecting them
from any harmful effects, we must not overlook the other side of the ethica l
issue: the ethical imperative to gain more understanding of important
areas of human behaviour. Intimate relationships can be a source of the
grandest, most glorious pleasure we human beings experience; they can
also be a source of terrible suffering and appalling destructiveness. It is, I
believe, an inherently ethical response to try to learn how the joy might be
increased and the misery reduced.’
What she means is that ethical and practical considerations are related, in that
while psychologists have a duty to protect the welfare of individual
participants (and implicitly non-human participants), there remains the
overriding duty to do socially relevant research: this is the stuff of
psychology.
Put more bluntly, animal research allows for experimen tation into aspects
of thinking, feeling and behaving that would be ethically difficult, if not
impossible, to conduct on human beings. These ethically sensitive areas
include severe sensory deprivation (Reisen, 1947; Blakemore and Cooper,
1970); complete social isolation (Harlow and Zimmerman, 1959); extreme
stress (Brady, 1958; Seligman, 1974); surgical procedures (Olds and
Milner, 1954). In a clinical sense, such procedures and investigations
with animals also allow for greater control of variables in such
experimentation, e.g. the Skinner Box, whose environment is
completely under the control of the experimenter. Further, the use of
non-human animals in research allows the claim of evolutionary
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continuity to be made. What this implies is that dif ferences between humans
and non-humans are quantitative rather than qualitative. We share the same
basic evolutionary adaptations. Mammals such as rats, cats, dogs, monkeys,
apes and humans have all developed similar brain structure. It is size, number
of neurons and the interconnections between these nerve cells that make the
inherent differences. It is said that ‘at the level of its basic units, evolution
has been highly conservative’, and as a result parallels can be made via
experimentation with non-human animals concerning cognitive, conative and
affective behaviours (Green, 1994).
From a practical point of view – i.e. size, manipulation, shorter life-span,
shorter gestation period, etc. – the use of animals in a laboratory experiment
is more easily managed than the use of humans. Study of animals also gives
rise to the generation of hypotheses and later testing of humans. Examples of
this from within developmental psychology would include Bowlby’s theory of
attachment (see later), which was greatly i nfluenced by the earlier work of
the ethologist Lorenz into imprinting.
From a scientific point of view, due to easier manipulations, animal
experimentation gives rise to data about cause –effect relationships between
variables, as opposed to correlations between co-variants when using humans.
The obvious example here, however distasteful from an animal perspective,
would be the study of variables influencing cancers. With humans we can
only make correlations between smoking and lung cancer. With animals,
smoking can be induced (the independent variable) and cancer observed and
measured (the dependent variable). Finally Coolican (1994) affirms that
species–species comparisons across the phylogenic (evolutionary) scale can
indicate what we as humans have lost or gained in our evolutionary history
when compared to animals, i.e. the discovery of a redundant structure in the
human nervous system, when found active in animals today may suggest its
previous purpose and function for human beings.
Why use animals at all?
The rationale behind animal experimentation is twofold:
• the pursuit of scientific knowledge; and
• the advancement of science.
As a result of animal research in medicine, we have made inroads into
cause, diagnosis, prognosis and treatments in the form of vaccines for
infectious diseases, the development of antibacterial and antibiotic
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drugs, heart surgery, organ transplants, kidney failure, diabetes, malignant
hypertension, gastric ulcers, etc. The price is any distress and suffering
caused to any animal used in experimentation. Codes of practice ensure that
such distress and suffering are minimised as far as possible. The decision to
use, or not to use, animals is taken using a cost –benefit analysis of animal
pain, distress and suffering as measured against the developments of new
scientific knowledge to alleviate human misery and suffering.
The medical and scientific justification of animal experimentation is strong in
that ‘Gray (1991) argues that not only is it not wrong to give preference to
the interests of one’s own species, one has a duty to do so’ (Shackleton Jones; Gross and McIlveen, 1999). This speciesism is countered by
opponents who say that medical advances have been delayed due to
misleading results from animal experimentation , and that in the early stages
of such investigation little in the way of scientific advancement for human
beings is forthcoming because scientific understanding of the issue is still
developing. It can be many years before any cost –benefit can be seen,
tempered by the cost to the animal in terms of pain and suffering, as against
the scientific and medical benefit achieved for humans as a result.
Whether or not to use animals in experimentation can be decided upon using
the Bateson (1986, 1992) Decision Cube. The three dimensions upon which
the researcher’s decision is made are:
• the quality of research
• the certainty of benefit
• the degree of animal suffering.
Bateson believes that his third dimension should only be pursued if the
quality of research and medical benefit is deemed high. Experimentation on
animals should not be undertaken for its own sake. Consider the following.
Jose Delgado (1969) used observation in a laboratory setting to investigate
localisation of physical and motor functions in the brain – using
electrical stimulation of the brains of monkey. He wanted to know
what particular parts of the brain were responsible for particular
physical and motor behaviours. Stimulation of some brain points he
found produced normal co-ordinated walking, walking in circles or
running. Simulation of other areas produced yawning, falling asleep,
loss of appetite, etc. In the most spectacular example, a 5 -second
stimulation of a brain area elicited a sequence of behaviour which lasted
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10–14 seconds: the monkey stopped whatever it was doing, changed its facial
expressions, turned its head to the right, stood up on two feet, circled to the
right, walked on two feet to a pole in the centre of the room, climbed up the
pole and came down, growled, threatened, and sometimes attacked another
monkey, then approached the group in a friendly manner and resumed its
normal behaviour.
This stimulation was repeated 20,000 times and the monkey was observed
going through exactly the same sequence of behaviou r every time.
This suggests that the cause of particular observable behaviours is mere
electrical activity in particular parts of the brain. What is true for animal
brains such as those of monkeys may also be true for human brains. It is, of
course, unethical to experiment on human brains without some legitimate
medical purpose. Why then, one might ask, is it not also unethical to do
these experiments with laboratory animals?
Another example of research using animals in an experiment in biological
psychology is Olds and Milner (1954). They wanted to discover the brain’s
pleasure centre. They attached an electrode to a rat’s hypothalamus which it
could self-stimulate. One area in particular when stimulated would see the rat
forgo water and food in favour of constant self-stimulation often up to 100
times a minute and 190 times an hour. By placing the electrode in another
part of the hypothalamus, they also discovered a pain centre. The rat never
went near the control mechanism to self-stimulate the electrode again!
Ethical issues involved here are serious and complex. Some experimenters
suggest that if they did no experiments that caused suffering to animals, then
there would be very little progress in any field related to biology, medicine or
psychology – and in the long run the resultant human suffering might be
greater than the animal suffering caused by any experiment now.
The ethics of experimentation raises a classic question – does the end justify
the means? There is no single, all-purpose answer to such questions. The
answer must depend on how good one expects the end to be, how bad one
expects the means to be, and how sure one is that this means will lead to that
end. Sometimes the end justifies the means, and sometimes it does not.
Sometimes experiments produce significant knowledge at a modest price in
animal suffering, and sometimes the result is not worth the investment.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to predict how valuable the results of an
experiment will be.
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Look up:
Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986
and go to
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/animact/aspag5.htm
http://www.frame-uk.demon.co.uk/legislat.htm
Teaching sign language to a chimpanzee
Aim:
The aim of this Gardner and Gardner study (1969) was to investigate if a
young chimpanzee could be taught to communicate with humans using
Ameslan, which is American whole-body sign language. Earlier attempts by
Hayes and Hayes (1951) to teach the chimpanzee Vicky to talk had failed.
Hayes and Hayes discovered this was because c himpanzees cannot vocalise as
humans can. Vocalisation is our ability to talk by forming sounds to make
words and phrases, and is biological in origin. Gardner and Gardner had,
using natural observation earlier, discovered that chimpanzees communicate
by gesture. They felt that this was a good basis upon which to teach a chim panzee to communicate by signing.
Method:
A longitudinal case study, which is still running today.
Subject:
Washoe, a female chimpanzee brought into captivity at around 11 months o ld.
Procedure:
Researchers spent all their time with Washoe and communicated with her, and
each other, using Ameslan. Ameslan uses particular gestures to represent
objects, events, people, etc. in our world. To get Washoe to use Ameslan they
initially held her hands and fingers to make the shape of the word or phrase
required. To encourage this, they used behavioural learning techniques based
on classical and operant conditioning. Washoe came to associate particular
things with the particular gestures she made. If she got the sign correct, she
was rewarded by being tickled. Social learning theory was also applied, in
that Washoe observed, imitated, and modelled her signing and language
behaviours on the humans around her.
Results:
Detailed records of Washoe’s signing behaviours were kept on a daily
basis for the first two months of the project. This stopped because her
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signing became just too rapid. Thereafter observation checklists, filled in by
three researchers at the same time, were kept to record new signs. A new sign
was recorded as being acquired when Washoe used it for fifteen consecutive
days without being prompted.
By 20 months she was forming her own two -word sentences. By age 4 she
was able to sign 132 different words that included nouns, pronouns,
adjectives and verbs. To confirm Washoe’s ability, Gardner and Gardner used
a double-blind technique. Pictures were shown to Washoe who had to respond
by making the appropriate sign. Two independent observers, only one of
whom could see the picture Washoe was shown, and the other who could only
see the sign that Washoe made, confirmed that Washoe got the ‘picture -sign’
right in 72% of occasions.
Conclusion:
Gardner and Gardner concluded that Washoe was an active information
processor of language. She had developed an exceptional ability to use (sign)
language to communicate her needs, wishes and intentions. In comparison
with a human, who acquires around 4,000+ words by age 4, Washoe’s ability
was not too impressive. In comparison with other chimpanzees, however,
Washoe was a superstar!
Washoe went on to become the matriarch of five signing chimpanzees at the
Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute of the University of Central
Washington.
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Interactive
Research other investigations of language acquisition in animals by
reporting the aim, method/procedure, results and conclusions of the
following studies:
Kellogg and Kellogg (1933) and Gua the chimpanzee
Hayes and Hayes (1950) and Vicky the chimpanzee
Patterson (1978) and Koko the gorilla.
Useful starting points:
http://www.psypress.co.uk/harley/pdf/P052 -053.pdf
http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/twyford/73/gua.html
http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/rhpeters/psychology101/pres
entations/rhp-language.ppt
http://www.koko.org/
http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/actes/_actes24.html
In around 1,000 words, analyse the use of non -human animals in
research in cognitive psychology.
• First you must tell the reader what it is you intend to do and how you
are going to tackle it.
• Then discuss in a non-emotive way the issue, why it developed and
its relative importance to cognitive psychology.
• Identify and give arguments for the ‘issue’ with relevant
theorists/research.
• Identify and give arguments against the ‘issue’ with relevant
theorists/research.
• Identify giving arguments relevant ‘solutions’ to the
difficulties/problems posed by the issue.
• Identify and give example(s) from at least one appropriate concept of
the issue.
• Identify and give relevant research indicating the importance of the
issue in relation to the appropriate concept(s).
• Finally, consider relevant conclusions related to the importance of
the issue for cognitive psychology.
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G E N ER AL R EF E R EN CE S
SECTION 4
References
Allport, D A, ‘Attention and performance’, in G C laxton (ed.), Cognitive
Psychology: New Directions, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980
Allport, D A, ‘Visual attention’, in M Posner (ed.), Foundation in Cognitive
Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989
Allport, D A, ‘Attention and control. Have we been asking the wrong
questions? A critical review of twenty-five years’, in D E Meyer and S M
Kornblum (eds), Attention and Performance (Volume 14), London: MIT
Press, 1989
Allport, D A; Antonis, B and Reynolds, P, ‘On the division of attention: A
disproof of the single channel hypothesis’, Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 24, 225–35, 1972
Attneave, F, ‘Some informational aspects of visual perception’, Psychology
Review, 61:183–93, 1954
Atwell, M, ‘The evolution of text: the interrelationship of reading and writing
in the composing process’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the
National Council of Teachers of English, Boston, MA, 1981
Baron, R A, Psychology: The Essential Science, London: Allyn & Bacon,
1989
Berry, J W; Poortinga, Y H; Segall, M H and Dasen, P R, Cross-cultural
psychology: Research and Applications, New York: Cambridge University
Press
Blakemore, C, The Mind Machine, London: BBC Publications, 1988
Blakemore, C and Cooper, G F, ‘Development of the brain depends on the
visual environment’, Nature, 228, 477–8, 1970
Broadbent, D E, ‘The role of auditory localization in attention and memory
span’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47, 191–6, 1954
Broadbent, D E, Perception and communication, Oxford: Pergamon Press,
1958
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