Ch. 3: Perception (Part 1)
Questions:
1. What is perception? What are the basic characteristics of perception? (pp. 60-61)
-​ Perception is the experiences that result from the activation of our 5 human senses
-​ There are 3 basic characteristics of perception:
-​ 1. Perception changes based on added information from the environment
-​ Ex: hearing a sound
-​ 2. Perception is a process
-​ Figuring out what it is
-​ 3. Perception occurs with action
2. What is bottom-up processing? What is top-down processing? (p. 67)
-​ Bottom-up processing is the processing of taking in individual sensory information to
understand the larger picture
-​ Top-down processing is knowing from prior experience, knowledge, and expectation
3. How are bottom-up and top-down processing involved when hearing words in a sentence?
What is speech segmentation? (pp. 68-69)
-​ They both have an influence on how we perceive language
-​ Nonative speakers need to hear the words of a foreign language slowly and separately
while native speakers already have the knowledge of the language
-​ Speech segmentation is the ability to tell when one word ends and where another begins
4. What is Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious inference? What is the likelihood principle?
(pp.70-71)
-​ Helmholtz's theory of unconscious interference states that sometimes we perceive the
world based on unconscious assumptions we make of the environment
-​ The likelihood principle is when we perceive the world in a way that is most likely based
on our past experiences
5. What is Gestalt psychology? What are the principles of perceptual organization? What is
pragnanz? Refer to Figure 3.19, p. 73, for an example of pragnanz. (pp. 71-73)
-​ Gestalt psychology is the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
-​ Pragnanz is when we view things in the simplest form
-​ Ex: Olympic symbol
-​ The principles of perceptual organization is how the mind groups patterns
6. What are regularities of the environment? What are physical regularities? What are semantic
regularities? Terms to know: oblique effect, scene schema. (pp. 74-76)
-​ Regularities in the environment refer to how we perceive information based on
characteristics of the environment that occur frequently
-​ Physical realities are when we detect the environment based on physical processes
-​ Ex: the oblique effect
-​ Semanticc regularities: when we detetc the enrivorment based on meaning of the scene
-​ Ex: scene schema: having an idea of what a classroom looks like without being in
one