Psychology Unit 2 - Cognition (Part 1)

AP Psychology Unit 2: Cognition 2.1a Perception: Influences on Perception- we perceive things not as they are, but as we are Selective Attention 2.1-1 Essential question: How does selective attention direct our perceptions?  Selective attention: focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus - our awareness is only focused on minute aspects - our five senses take in bits of info that we only consciously process very little of it, the rest is on the unconscious track  An example of selective attention: the cocktail party effect - We attend to only one voice in a sea of others as you chat with people - When someone calls your name, it is brought forth in your conscious Selective Attention and Accidents  Digital distractions make our attention shift  Our SA shifts more than we realize, the enemy of sustained focused attention Inattentional Blindness- failing to see visible objects when attention is directed elsewhere  At the level of conscious awareness, we are blind to all but a tiny sliver of visual stimuli  Researchers told viewers to watch a video of basketball places tossing a ball. Viewers were told to count how many times the ball was thrown. They were so focused on the task that they did not notice a young woman carrying an umbrella saunter across the screen. - The point of this prank: our attention is a wonderful gift, given to one thing at a time - Magicians misdirect people’s attention in most of their tricks  In other studies, people exhibited a form of inattentional blindness, called change blindness: failure to notice changes in the environment - Viewers failed to notice that, after a brief visual interruption, clothing changed color or a big coke bottle disappeared Expectations, Context, Motivation, and Emotion 2.1-2 Essential question: How do our expectations, contexts, motivation, and emotions influence our perceptions?  To see is to believe, and to believe is to see  Info processing occurs both bottom up (sensory receptors => brain’s integration) and top down (drawing from experiences and expectations when constructing perceptions)  Our perceived world is the brain’s explanation of incoming sensations Perceptual set  Through experience, we expect certain results, giving us a perceptual set: a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that affects top-down processing Can affect what we hear “stuffy nose” or “stuff he knows”? Can affect taste perceptions - Preschool students thought fries tasted better when served in a McDonald’s bag  What determines perceptual set? - Through experience we form concepts (schemas) that organize and interpret unfamiliar info - Lochness monster or tree limb?  Stereotypes can color perception - Culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, income, age, abilities, etc Context, Motivation, and Emotion  Perceptual set influences how we interpret stimuli, immediate context, and the motivation/emotion we bring to a situation, also affects interpretations Context  Lee Ross invites us to recall perceptions in different contexts: “Ever notice that when you’re driving you hate pedestrians, but when you’re walking you hate the drivers”  Hearing “eel is on the wagon”, you’d think the first word is wheel, but “eel is on the orange”, you’d think it is peel - The context creates an expectation that (top down) influences our perception of a previously heard phrase Motivation  Motives give us energy as we work toward a goal, they can bias our interpretations of stimuli - desirable objects, like a water bottle viewed by thirsty person, seem closer than they are, closeness increases desire - A hill to climb is steeper when we are carrying a backpack - A volleyball is bigger when you’re hitting it well, a tennis ball smaller when you cant swing at it Emotion  Emotions can shove our perceptions in one direction - Sad music predisposes people to perceive sad meaning in words: mourning rather than morning - When angry, people perceive neutral objects as guns - When hungry, they find larger bodies more attractive The point to remember: much of what we perceive comes not from what’s “out there”, but from what’s behind our eyes and between the ears. Our experiences, assumptions, expectations, even our contexts, motivations, and emotions, can shape our views of reality via top-down processing   2.1b Perception: Perceptual Organization and Interpretation Perceptual Organization 2.1-3 Essential question: How did the Gestalt psychologists understand perceptual organization, and how do figure-ground and grouping principles contribute to our perceptions?  How do we organize and interpret sensory input so it becomes meaningful perceptions (a rose, a familiar face)?  German psychologists notices people organize visual sensations into a gestalt: an organized whole - As we look straight ahead, we cannot separate the perceived scene into left and right fields, our conscious perception is a seamless scone, an integrated whole - In perception, the whole may exceed the sum of its parts  The Necker Cube os good to understand distinction between sensation and perception - The only visual stimuli (sensation) are the wedges (white lines) - The cube you see is perception, they are in your mind!!  The underlying truth of Gestalt psychologists’ principles: our brain does more than register info about the world, we filter incoming information and construct perceptions Form Perception  Figure-ground: the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground)  This is the first perceptual task in our eye-brain system - As you read, words are the figure and the white is the ground - This perception applies to our hearing too; as you hear voices at a party, the one you attend to is the figure, the other are the ground  Sometimes the same stimulus triggers more than one perception - In this picture the figure-ground relationship reverses continually - Is it a vase or two faces? - We will always organize stimulus into a figure seen against a ground Grouping  We organize figures into meaningful forms  Our mind brings order and form to other stimuli by following rules for grouping: the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups, identified by Gestalt psychologists  These rules illustrate how perceived wholes differ from sum of its parts - Like in this photo, we don’t see 6 separate lines, we see 3 sets of 2 Depth Perception 2.1-4 Essential question: How do we use binocular and monocular cues to see in three dimensions, and how do we perceive motion?  Our eye-brain systems perform many remarkable feats, some include depth perception: the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance - For example, estimating the distance of an oncoming car  Psychologist Eleanor Gison want to know if toddlers can perceive drop-offs as dangerous - To answer such question, she deigned a model of a cliff covered by sturdy glass; the result? Most infants refused to crawl over, indicating they could perceive depth - Karen Adolph showed that crawling, no matter when it begins, seems to increase wariness of heights, they likely evolved because learning to avoid cliffs helped them to survive Depth cues in our brain receive info from one or both eyes, enabling it to convert two-dimensional images into single, three dimensional perception Binocular Cues  People with 2 eyes perceive depth partly bc of binocular cues: a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes - We use binocular cues to judge distance of nearby objects - One cue is convergence: a cue to nearby objects’ distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images  Retinal disparity is a binocular cue for perceiving depth, by comparing retinal images from two eyes, the brain computes distance (the greater the disparity between two images, the close the object) - Because there is space between the eyes, each retina receives slightly different images of the world, the greater the difference between two retinal images, the closer the object Monocular Cues  How do we judge whether a person is 10-100 meters away? Retinal disparity wont do that, because there isn’t a difference between left and right retinas  Monocular cues- a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone Motion Perception  If you could not perceive motion, you could not bike, drive, write, eat, or walk  The brain computes motion based on assumptions that shrinking objects are retreating and enlarging objects are approaching - In young children, this ability is not fully developed - Adolescent and adult brains can also be tricked, large objects appear to move slower  Our brain perceives a rapid series of slightly varying still images as continuous movement in a phenomenon called stroboscopic movement - Superfast slide shows of 24 still images will create illusions of movement - We perceive two adjacent stationary lights blinking as one single light jumping back and forth (phi phenomenon) - When we stare at a stationary light in a dark room, natural eye movements make the light seem it move in a phenomenon called the autokinetic effect Perceptual Constancy 2.1-5 Essential question: How do perceptual constancies help us construct meaningful perceptions?  Perceptual constancy: perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent color, brightness, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change - Regardless of angle, distance, and illumination, we can identify people and things Color and Brightness Constancies  If you were to experience the color of a tomato through a paper tube throughout the day, its color would change with the lights (the tomatoes reflected wavelengths) - But if you discarded the paper tube and viewed the tomato in a salad bowl, its perceived color would be constant, a consistent perception we call color constancy: perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object  We see color thanks to our brain’s computations of light reflect by an object relative to the objects surrounding it  Brightness constancy similarly depends on context - Perception of brightness depends on relative luminance  The principle that we perceive objects not in isolation but in their environmental context is important for designers The take-home lesson: Context governs our perceptions Shape and Size Constancies  Shape constancy: we perceive forms of familiar objects as constant, even if our retinas receive changing images, like this door Visual cortex neurons rapidly learn to associate diff views of object We assume a bus is large enough to carry people, even if it is small from a distance - This also illustrates connections between perceived distance and size: perceiving an object’s distance give us cues about size Perceptual illusions show that perception is not a projection of the world on our brains, rather it is how our brain reassembles bits of information into its own functional model of the external world. Our brain constructs our perceptions  Perception organization applies to other senses too - When listening to unfamiliar music, we have trouble hearing when one word stops - “THEDOGATEMEAT” we would assume it says “the dog ate meat” because its more logical o This process involves organization and interpretation (discerning meaning in what we perceive)   Experience and Visual Perception 2.1-6 Essential question: What does research on restored vision, sensory restriction, and perceptual adaptation reveal about the effects of experience one perception?  People born with cataracts- clouded lenses that allowed them to see only diffused light - After surgery, patients could distinguish figure from ground, colors, and faces, but they could not visually recognize objects that were familiar by touch  Baby monkeys born with goggles on, when their vision was restored, could distinguish color and brightness, but not a circle from a square - Lacking early stimulation, the brain’s cortical cells has not developed normal connections  The younger you are, the more you can benefit from removal of cataracts, there is a critical period when exposure to stimuli or experiences are required Perceptual adaptation  When you get new contacts, you may feel slightly disoriented, but it gets better after a day or two  Perceptual adaptation (the ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field) to changed visual input makes the world seem normal again Humans can adapt to distorting lenses quickly We learn to perceive the world - Early nurture sculpts what nature provides, nurture continues to do so throughout our lives - Radiologists outperform novices in detecting unfamiliar visual info - Experiences guides, sustains, and maintains the brain pathways that enable perception 2.2a Thinking, Problem Solving, Judgements, and Decision Making: Concepts and Creativity  Our ability to think creatively and consider different options and produce novel ideas is a special trait of humans Concepts 2.2-1 Essential question: What are cognition and metacognition, and what are the functions of concepts?  Psychologists study cognition (all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating) - Of cognition, there is metacognition: thinking about our thinking, planning and assessing our understanding and performance - Using metacognition will allow your performance to be better!  At a basic level, we form concepts (mental groupings of similar objects, events ideas or people) - The concept chair includes dentist chairs, baby’s chair, car seat, etc - Concepts simplify our thinking  We form our concepts by developing a prototype (a mental image or best example of a category) - For most of us, cardinals more closely resemble a bird prototype than penguins - When we categorize people, we mentally shift them towards category prototypes o When viewing a face 70% white, our memory may shift toward the white prototype and remember an 80% white face - Category boundaries may blur: whales are mammals, but they don’t’ seem like it o When symptoms don’t fit one of our disease prototypes, we are slow to perceive an illness o When behaviors don’t fit our discrimination prototype, we fail to notice prejudice (people more likely detect female discrimination than male, male sexual harassment than female)  Our intellectual progression reflects an unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences, the maturing brain builds schemas- concepts or mental molds into which we pour our experiences  To explain how we use and adjust schemas, Piaget proposed two concepts: - Assimilation: interpreting them according to our current schemas EX: simple schemas for dog = all 4-legged animals are dogs - As we interact with the world, we accommodate (adjust) our schemas to incorporate info provided by new experiences EX: the child learns to have different 4-legged categories   Thinking Creatively 2.2-2 Essential question: What is creativity, and what fosters it?  Creativity is the ability to produce novel ideas  Creative writers and physicists, like Andrew Wiles’ creative revelation one day of Fermat’s last theorem) experience many significant ideas during mind wandering  Creativity is supported by a level of aptitude (ability to learn), yet there is more to creativity than what our intelligence tests reveal - Aptitude tests require convergent thinking (providing a single correct answer) - Creativity tests require divergent thinking (considering different options and to thinking novel ways) - Functional fixedness occurs when prior experiences inhibit our ability to find creative solutions EX: bricklayers may only see bricks as building blocks Robert Sternberg believe creativity has 5 components: 1. Expertise: well-developed ideas, furnishes ideas, images, and phrases; the more blocks you have, the more chances to combine them in novel ways 2. Imaginative thinking skills: provides ability to see things in novel ways; recognizing patterns and making connections 3. A venturesome personality: seeks new experiences, tolerates risk, perseverance 4. Intrinsic motivation: driven by interest, satisfaction, and challenge rather than external pressures (deadlines, impression, money) 5. A creative environment: sparks support, refines creative ideas, creativity fostering environments build communication and innovation (and minimize anxiety) To boost creative process:  Develop expertise: ask what you care about most, follow your passion, become an expert at something  Allow time for incubation: think hard on a problem, then set it aside to come back, allows for automatic processing to form associations  Set aside time for mind to roam freely: creativity springs from “defused attention”, serenity seeds spontaneity  Experience other cultures and ways of thinking: viewing life from a different perspective boosts creativity, embracing intercultural friendships fosters flexible thinking 2.2b Thinking, Problem Solving, Judgements, and Decision Making: Solving Problems and Making Decisions  In some ways, we are not very wise  We allow day’s local weather to color our judgements of climate change, we are overconfident in judgements and cling to discredited beliefs We need to improve our executive functions: cognitive skills that work together allowing us to generate, organize, plan, solve problems, and make decisions Problem Solving: Strategies and Obstacles 2.2-3 Essential question: Which cognitive strategies assist our problem solving, and which obstacles hinder it?  Some problems we solve through trial and error - We use algorithms (step by step procedures that guarantee a solution) to solve some problems o But algorithms are laborious and exasperating, to find a word in SPLOYOGHYG, we may try every letter in each of 10 positions (907,200 permutations) - But, nature resorts to heuristics (simpler thinking strategies) o You might reduce the number of options in SPLOYOCHYG by grouping letter that belong w each other (CH and GY) and excluding rare combos (YY)  Sometimes no problem-solving strategy works, and we arrive at a solution through insight (a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions) - Brain scans show that before the Aha moment, people’s frontal lobes (focusing attention) were active - At the instant of discovery, activity is in the right temporal lobe - Humans are not the only creatures to display insight, chimpanzees and birds all change their methods of attaining foods and water based on their situation - Insight strikes suddenly, the joy of a joke lies in our sudden comprehension of an unexpected punchline “You don’t need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.”  Insightful as we are, cognitive tendencies may lead us astray - We seek news that informs and affirms us - Confirmation bias: leads us to seek evidence for our ideas more than we hunt for evidence against them Study: Peter Wason gave students a set of three numbers: 2-4-6. The task was to guess the rule. Students generate their own 3 number sets and Wason told them whether their sets conformed to his rule. The students guessed it was counting by twos, but it was just any ascending numbers. - They only searched for confirming evidence, showing confirmation bias  Once we get hung up on an incorrect view of a problem, it’s hard to approach it from a different angle - Fixation: an inability to come to a fresh perspective, an obstacle to problem solving - A prime example of fixation is mental set: our tendency to approach a problem with the mindset of what worked for us before EX: Given the sequence O-T-T-F… what comes after? (then, ask yourself if it is in numerical order) - Just as a perceptual set predisposes what we perceive, a mental set predisposes what we think  Forming Good (and Bad) Decisions and Judgements 2.2-4 Essential question: What is intuition, and how can the representativeness and availability heuristics influence our decisions and judgments?  When making each day’s decisions, we seldom take time and effort to reason systematically  Instead, we follow our intuition: our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts Two Quick but Risky Shortcuts  Heuristics allow us to make quick thinking  Intuitive mental shortcuts (representativeness and availability heuristics) can make dumb decisions The Representativeness Heuristic  Judging the likelihood of something by intuitively comparing it to particular prototypes EX: someone who is short, slim, and a poetry enjoyer is more likely to be an Ivy League university professor than a truck driver - We judge this even if the population of truck drivers exceed Ivy League English professors  Some prototypes have social/economic consequences - Stereotypes: prototypes of members of certain racial groups, may cause someone to use representativeness heuristic when judging individuals The Availability Heuristic  When we evaluate the commonality of an event based on its mental availability  Anything that makes info pop into the mind, can make it seem commonplace - Photos of a horrific image changes thinking - Availability heuristics distorts our judgement of risks: one story about vaccines causing mental disabilities causes more fear than any scientific research - “Global warming isn’t real because it was cold today! Also great news: world hunger is over because I just ate.” -Stephen Colbert - Red Cross donations to Syrian refugees were greater when seeing a child dead on Syrian beach