Psychology 2320Cognition and Perception:Thinking and Seeing

Dr. Matthew TataDepartment of Psychology and NeuroscienceUniversity of Lethbridge

1. Gain insight and knowledge into the functioning of the mind.

2. Learn to think critically and creatively about perplexing questions.

3. Discover weird and interesting things about perception and cognition.

Objective

- Sensory Physiology- Hearing- Vision

- Attention- Memory

Perception

Cognition

The Plan

- Selected readings available at the bookstore

- Sensation and Perception, Coran, Porac & Ward on reserve in library

- Cognitive Psychology, Robinson-Riegler on reserve

Text

Evaluation• Mid-Term 1 15% Feb 7,8,9• Mid-Term 2 30% March 7,8,9• Final 45% April 19, 20, 21• Ideas Journal 10%• Extra credit available through Psych Subject Pool• Midterms and final are WebCT taken in

the WebCT Test Centre• Dates TBA pending confirmation from the testing

centre

Ideas Journal• Record your thoughts and questions about

perception and cognition• Keep track of your ideas - you never know

when you’re going to have a good one!

• You will be graded on how good your ideas are!

A Good Idea:

• “the size of your eye has to be just right to match the focusing power of the cornea. How does the eye know when to stop growing? Is it because the brain tells it to stop when images are clearly focused? We could test this by looking at the size of the eyeballs in children who are born with cataracts since their brains don’t get accurate visual information from their eyes”

A Bad Idea:

• “Matt was wearing a blue sweater today. I like blue. Blue is my favorite color. I wish I had a blue sweater.”

Put Ideas in a Book

Grades

Rounding will be down except when I decide otherwise!

Interaction• My Office hours: immediately after class• Your TAs are Karla Ponjavic and Matthew Bednarczyk

• Emails: matthew.tata@uleth.ca and karla.ponjavic@uleth.ca

• Karla will hold review sessions before and after exams

• Karla will also run “virtual”review sessions:– Email well-thought out, specific questions to her during the week.

On Fridays, she will go through the questions, compile answers and send them out to the entire class (anonymously of course).

Interaction

• Try to understand on your own FIRST!

Rules

• If your cell phone rings, I get to answer it.

• If you need to take a nap, take it.

If You Were in my Psych 1000 Lecture…

• There will be no Gorillas in this course…if you know what I mean.

Perception: It’s not as Easy as it Looks

Purpose of this Lecture:

•See cool illusions

•Notice (and begin thinking about) the mysteries of

perception and cognition

What is an Illusion?

•When what you perceive is not what is really out there

•Visual Illusions happen in your visual system

•Optical illusions occur when the physical stimulus itself is

distorted

What is an Illusion?

Optical Illusion Visual Illusion

Size Constancy•Big and small = near and

far !?

•System adjusts size based on perceived distance

Ponzo Illusion:

Muller - Lyer Illusion

Kaniza Triangle

Illusory Contours

•Kaniza Triangle

•Neurons in higher levels of visual pathways “build”

contours from information in lower levels

Apparent Motion

•Object disappears and reappears somewhere else

•Visual system “interpolates” motion in between

Frazer Spiral:

Frazer Spiral:

Who did you see?

The Necker Cube

Reversible Figure

Impossible Staircase

Shepard Tone

Attention and Perception

•Your perception of a rich visual environment is an illusion!

•You actually are only aware of the small part of the scene that you are

attending to

Attention and Perception

•Change Blindness: you can’t notice changes in a scene unless you

attend to the location of the change

Attention and Perception

Illusions

• Are cool.

• Highlight questions about how perception happens.

• Make you think.

Next Time:

• A bit of philosophy and a bit of biology