ch 5 part 2
Terms
undefined, object
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- how we group small parts into larger units
- perceptual organization
- an approach to psychology that is especially concerned with how we organize sensations into complete perceptions
- Gestalt psychology
- approach to perception in which our perceptions of objects are believed to be constructed simply by summing together the smaller individual sensations of features that make up the object; a belief that we could perceive complex objects by "taking inventor
- Structuralism
- rejected the idea that perceptions are simpl built up by adding together all the individual sensations; proposed that the brain creates a coherent perceptual experience that is more than the sum of the individual parts
- Gestalt psychology
- the process of determining the object from its background, used by Gestalt psychologists
- figure-ground relationship
- strategies used by the visual system to group sensory "building blocks" into complete perceptions
- perceptual grouping principles
- things that are near each other tend to be grouped together
- proximity
- brain tends to fill in gaps in order to perceive complete forms
- closure
- things that are alike in some way tend to be perceived as belonging together
- similarity
- lines and patterns tend to be perceived as continuing in space
- continuity
- stimuli are organized in the simplest way possible
- simplicity
- that actual object out in the environment (ie at some distance from us)
- distal stimulus
- the physical energies that actually reach us (eg light waves, sound waves)
- proximal stimulus
- the goal of perception is...
- to provide us with accurate information about the objects in the world
- our perception that the actual properties of objects in the environment remain CONSTANT, even when the information reaching our senses has changed
- perceptual constancy
- we perceive the actual size of an object staying constant, even when the retinal image changes; we will correctly perceive an actual object's physical size no matter how far away from us it is or what size the retinal image is
- size constancy
- we perceive the shape of an object staying constant, even when the shape of its retinal image changes
- shape constancy
- the brightness of objects in environment appears to stay constant even when there are changes in brightness levels reaching our eyes
- brightness (lightness) constancy
- the amount of light an object reflects relative to its surroundings
- relative luminance
- The position of an object in the environment will be perceived as constant even when there is motion across our retina due to our own movements
- position constancy
- information that remains constant even when an observer changes position (aka higher-order invariants)
- invariant information
- perceiving the same sized object at any distance
- size constancy
- unconscious inference
- Helmholtz knew we didn’t LITERALLY calculate these numbers, but he believed there was similar processing going on outside our conscious awareness