Chapter 12 – Perception

We take it for granted that we can recognise the things in our environment, like the words on this page or a person across the room. But how do we receive information from our senses and then recognise people and objects, to interact with the world around us? The focus of this chapter is on visual perception. The chapter covers the distinction between bottom-up and top-down perception, and theories which follow this distinction. It then considers the brain systems involved in perception, the basic perceptual processes of vision and then theories of object recognition and face processing. The chapter then discusses perception for action, which describes the processes by which perception allows us to control the movements we make to interact with our environment. The chapter then ends with a summary of perception in other domains; auditory, haptic, olfactory and gustatory perception. The chapter also considers additional topics, such as the similarities and differences between object and face recognition and considers evidence from a range of sources.

Chapter 12 – Introduction

Transcript

  • Chapter 12 – Flashcards

    Constructivist approach

    An approach that assumes that we construct our perception of the world by using our existing knowledge.

    Ventral stream

    The part of the visual system that is involved in processing object features, shape, and form

    Dorsal stream

    The part of the visual system that is most involved in visually guided action

    Negative afterimages

    The finding that if you focus on a given colour and then look at something white, you will see an afterimage of a different colour.

    Perceptual constancy

    The tendency for objects to be perceived as having standard colours, sizes and sizes, regardless of our angle of perspective, distance of lighting

    Geons

    Simple 2D or 3D forms such as rectangles, circles and cylinders, which according to recognition-by-components theory allow us to recognising objects

    Holistic processing

    Processing that involves integrating information rather than processing individual features

    Cross-age effect

    The finding that people are better at recognising faces of their own age than other ages

    Own-race bias

    Thew finding that people are better at recognising own-race than other-race faces

    Heading

    Heading describes the perception of direction of self-motion

    Steering

    This describes travelling along curved paths

    Biological motion

    The visual systems ability to perceive the movement of a human or animal

    Mirror neurons

    Neurons that respond to actions performed by oneself as well as performed by others

    Interaural time difference

    The difference in the timing of sound waves that reach each ear

    Interaural level difference

    The difference in the intensity of sound waves that reach each ear

  • Chapter 12 – Weblinks

Chapter 12 – Quiz

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