Psychology - Theories of Perception

• Constructivist theory of perception

  Suggests our cognitive processes actively construct our perception using sensory information but combining it with stored knowledge, schemas and expectations
• Top-down theory of perception

  Constructivist theory of perception
• Sensory information

  Incomplete, so our brains have to make guesses or inferences about factors like distance and motion using visual cues
• Model of reality


  What we ultimately perceive, influenced by a range of factors, different to what's really out there in the world
• Nurture approach

  Constructivist theory explains perception based on the experiences we've had with the world
• Visual illusions

  • Moll-Lyer illusion
• Direct theory of perception


  Suggests the eyes are able to detect the world accurately without the need for inferences
• Bottom-up theory

  Direct theory of perception, we passively and accurately perceive the world directly using information from our senses
• Affordances


  The directly perceivable features or uses of an object
• Motion parallax

  A monocular depth cue where objects closer to us appear to move faster than distant objects, providing information about motion and depth
• The speed of perception is better explained by Gibson's direct theory as it requires less mental processing than the constructivist theory
• While Gibson's theory of affordances explains how we automatically perceive the usefulness of objects, researchers reject this idea as many things we use in everyday life we've learned how to use through stored knowledge