Ch.1

• The Perceptual Process consists of seven steps, plus "knowledge" inside the person's brain, and occurs between the time a person looks at the stimulus in the environment, perceives the stimulus, recognizes it, and takes action toward it.
• Distal Stimulus: Environmental stimuli are all objects in the environment are available to the observer, and the observer selectively attends to objects.
• Proximal Stimulus: the representation of the distal stimulus on the receptors, and the stimulus is "in proximity" to the receptors.
• Step 1: Information about the tree (the distal stimulus) is carried by light.
• Step 2: The light is transformed when it is reflected from the tree, when it travels through the atmosphere, and when it is focused on by the eye’s optical system, resulting in the proximal stimulus, the image of the tree on the retina, which is a representation of the tree.
• Principle of stimulation: When the stimuli and responses created by stimuli are transformed, or changed, between the environmental stimuli and perception.
• Sensory receptors are cells specialized to respond to environmental energy

  • visual pigment is what reacts to light.
• Transduction occurs, which changes environmental energy to nerve impulses, and the end result is an electrical representation of the tree.
• Neural processing changes that occur as signals are transmitted through the maze of neurons.
• Primary receiving area: occipital lobe, parietal lobe, and parietal lobe.
• Electrical signals are transformed into conscious experience, and the person perceives the object (e.g., a tree), recognizes it as a tree (places it in a category), and takes action toward it.
• Knowledge is any information the perceiver brings to a situation, and bottom-up processing is based on incoming stimuli from the environment, also called data-based processing.
• Top-Down Processing is processing based on the perceiver’s previous knowledge (cognitive factors), also called knowledge-based processing.
• Observing perceptual processes at different stages in the system includes the stimulus perception relationship, the stimulus physiology relationship, and the physiology perception relationship.
• Absolute Threshold: the smallest amount of energy needed to detect a stimulus.
• Method of Limits: Stimuli of different intensities are presented in ascending and descending order, and the observer responds to whether she perceived the stimulus.
• Adjust the volume until you can just barely hear the sound.
• Action potentials are transmitted from receptors through cells, then reach the retinal ganglion cells which forms optic nerve & send messages to the brain
• Transduction: changing of the information to action potentials for the brain to understand and process the information
• Oblique Effect: we are better at perceiving horizontal & vertical lines than oblique lines

  • less visual acuity with oblique lines