Experimental Psychology influence what he or she sees.

This viewpoint
also is known as intelligent
(Psych 106) perception because it states that higher-order
thinking plays an important role in perception. It
Module 1 also emphasizes the role of learning in
perception.
There are different views on how we perceive
the world. These views can be summarized as For example, picture yourself driving down a
bottom-up theories and top-down theories. road you have never traveled before. As you
approach a blind intersection, you see an
Bottom-up theories describe approaches octagonal red sign with white lettering. It bears
where perception starts with the stimuli whose the letters “ST_P.” An overgrown vine cuts
appearance you take in through your eye. You between the T and the P. Chances are, you will
look out onto the cityscape, and perception      construct from your sensations a perception of
happens when the light information is a stop sign. You thus will respond
transported to your brain. Therefore, they appropriately. Sensory information implies that
are data driven (i.e., stimulus-driven) the sign is a meaningless assortment of oddly
theories. spaced consonants. However, your prior
learning tells you something important—that a
 Direct Perception - the information in sign of this shape and color posted at an
our sensory receptors, including the intersection of roadways and containing these
sensory context, is all we need to perceive three letters in this sequence probably means
anything. As the environment supplies us that you should stop thinking about the odd
with all the information we need for letters. Instead, you should start slamming on
perception, this view is sometimes also the brakes. Successful constructive perception
called ecological perception. We use requires intelligence and thought in combining
texture gradients as cues for depth and sensory information with knowledge gained
distance. Those cues aid us to perceive from previous experience.
directly the relative proximity or distance of
objects and of parts of objects. In perception, we consider prior expectations.
You’ll be fast to recognize your friend from far
 Template Theories - we have stored in away on the street when you have arranged a
our minds myriad sets of templates. meeting.
Templates are highly detailed models for
patterns we potentially might recognize. We These theories then work their way down to
recognize a pattern by comparing it with our considering the sensory data, such as the
set of templates. We then choose the exact perceptual stimulus. You perceive buildings as
template that perfectly matches what we big in the background of the city scene
observe. because you know these buildings are far away
and therefore must be bigger than they appear.
Top-down theories - Not all theorists focus on From this viewpoint, expectations are
the sensory data of the perceptual stimulus. important. When people expect to see
Many theorists prefer according to which something, they may see it even if it is not
perception is driven by high-level cognitive there or is no longer there. For example,
processes, existing knowledge, and the prior suppose people expect to see a certain person
expectations that influence perception. in a certain location. They may think they see
that person, even if they are actually seeing
Constructive Approach - the perceiver builds someone else who looks only vaguely similar.
(constructs) a cognitive understanding
(perception) of a stimulus. The concepts of the Working Together
perceiver and his or her cognitive processes Top-down and bottom-up approaches have
been applied to virtually every aspect of sets.
cognition. Bottom-up and top-down approaches
usually are presented as being in opposition to Conscious attention serves three purposes in
each other. But to some extent, they deal with playing a causal role for cognition:
different aspects of the same phenomenon.
Ultimately, a complete theory of perception will  It helps in monitoring our interactions
need to encompass both bottom-up and top- with the environment. Through such
down processes. monitoring, we maintain our awareness of
how well we are adapting to the situation in
Module 2 which we find ourselves.

 It assists us in linking our past

(memories) and our present (sensations) to
I. Attention and Consciousness give us a sense of continuity of experience.
Such continuity may even serve as the
Attention is the means by which we actively basis for personal identity.
process a limited amount of information from
the enormous amount of information available  It helps us in controlling and planning for
through our senses, our stored memories, and our future actions. We can do so based on
our other cognitive processe It includes the information from monitoring and from
both conscious and unconscious the links between past memories and
processes. In many cases, conscious present sensations.
processes are relatively easy to study.
Unconscious processes are harder to study, Preconscious Processing
simply because you are not conscious of them. Some information that currently is outside our
Attention allows us to use our limited mental conscious awareness still may be available to
resources judiciously. By dimming the lights on consciousness or at least to cognitive
many stimuli from outside (sensations) and processes. For example, when you comb your
inside (thoughts and memories), we can hair while getting ready for a first date, you are
highlight the stimuli that interest us. This still able to do the combing although your mind
heightened focus increases the likelihood that in all likelihood will be completely elsewhere,
we can respond speedily and accurately to namely, on the date. The information about
interesting stimuli. how to comb your hair is available to you even
if you are not consciously combing. Information
At one time, psychologists believed that that is available for cognitive processing but
attention was the same thing as that currently lies outside conscious awareness
consciousness. Now, however, they exists at the preconscious level of awareness.
acknowledge that some active attentional Preconscious information includes stored
processing of sensory and of remembered memories that we are not using at a given time
information proceeds without our conscious but that we could summon when needed.
awareness. For example, writing your name
requires little conscious awareness. You may The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon
write it while consciously engaged in other Unfortunately, sometimes pulling preconscious
activities. In contrast, writing a name that you information into conscious awareness is not
have never encountered requires attention to easy. Most of you probably have experienced
the sequence of letters. the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, in which
you try to remember something that is stored in
Consciousness includes both the feeling of memory but that cannot readily be retrieved.
awareness and the content of awareness,
Psychologists have tried to generate
some of which may be under the focus of
experiments that measure this phenomenon
attention. Therefore, attention and
(see Hanley & Chapman, 2008, for example).
consciousness form two partially overlapping
In one classic study (Brown & McNeill, 1966), impact behaviors. There are a few different
participants were read a large number of ways that information from the unconscious
dictionary definitions. For example, they might might be brought into conscious awareness or
have been given the clue, “an instrument used studied by researchers. Here are the following
by navigators to measure the angle between a techniques:
heavenly body and a horizon.” The subjects
then were asked to identify the corresponding 1. Free Association - He asked patients
words having these meanings. This procedure to relax and say whatever came to mind
constituted a game similar to the television without any consideration of how trivial,
show Jeopardy. Some participants could not irrelevant, or embarrassing it might be. By
come up with the word but thought they knew tracing these streams of thought, Freud
it. Still, they often could identify the first letter, believed he could uncover the contents of
the number of syllables, or approximate the the unconscious mind where repressed
word’s sounds. These results indicate that desires and painful childhood memories
particular preconscious information, although existed.
not fully accessible to conscious thinking, is still
available to attentional processes 2. Dream Interpretation - While
information from the unconscious mind may
The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is sometimes appear in dreams, he believed
apparently universal. It is seen in speakers of that it was often in a disguised form.
many different languages. Bilingual people
experience more tip-of-the-tongues than 3. Continuous Flash Suppression -
monolingual speakers which may be because researchers are able to display an image
bilinguals use either one of their languages without people consciously seeing it because
less frequently than do monolinguals. they are instead distracted by another visual
display. Research has shown that people will
rate certain visual displays more negatively
Unconsciousness when they are paired with a negative or less
In Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of desirable "invisible" image (such as a picture of
personality, the unconscious mind is defined as an angry face).
a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and
memories that outside of conscious Part II. Theories and Models in Attention
awareness. When conceptualizing the
 Here are the four main functions of attention:
unconscious mind, it can be helpful to compare
the mind to an iceberg. Everything above the Signal Detection and Vigilance
water represents conscious awareness while
everything below the water represents the Signal-detection theory (SDT) is a framework
unconscious. to explain how people pick out the few
important stimuli when they are embedded in a
Within this understanding, most of the contents
wealth of irrelevant, distracting stimuli. SDT
of the unconscious are considered
often is used to measure sensitivity to a
unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings
target’s presence.
of pain, anxiety, or conflict. Freud believed that
the unconscious continues to influence
Four possible outcomes:
behavior even though people are unaware of
hits - true positives; an individual identifies the
these underlying influences.
target or signal
false alarm - false positives; individual
Freud believed that bringing the contents of the
incorrectly identifies the target or signal
unconscious into awareness was important for
misses - false negatives; the individual fails to
relieving psychological distress. More recently,
observe the presence of a target or signal
researchers have explored different techniques
correct rejections - true negatives; the
to help see how unconscious influences can
individual correctly identifies the absence of a Similarity Theory - In this view, the data are a
target or signal result of the fact that as the similarity between
target and distracter stimuli increases, so does
Vigilance refers to a person’s ability to attend the difficulty in detecting the target stimuli.
to a field of stimulation over a prolonged Thus, targets that are highly similar to
period, during which the person seeks to detect distracters are relatively hard to detect. Targets
the appearance of a particular target stimulus that are highly disparate from distracters are
of interest. When being vigilant, the individual relatively easy to detect. For example, try to
watchfully waits to detect a signal stimulus that find the black (filled) circle. The target is highly
may appear at an unknown time. similar to the distracters (black squares or
white circles). Therefore it is very difficult to
In an early study, participants watched a visual find. Furthermore, the difficulty of search tasks
display that looked like the face of a clock. A depends on the degree of disparity among the
clock hand moved in continuous steps except distracters.
that sometimes it would take a double step,
which needed to be detected by the Selective Attention - is the process of
participants. Participants’ performance began directing our awareness to relevant stimuli
to deteriorate substantially after just half an while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in the
hour of observation. To relate these findings to environment.
SDT, over time it appears that participants
become less willing to risk reporting false Broadbent’s Model - According to one of the
alarms. They err instead by failing to report the earliest theories of attention, we filter
presence of the signal stimulus when they are information right after we notice it at the
not sure they detect it, showing higher rates of sensory level. Multiple channels of sensory
misses. Training can help to increase vigilance, input reach an attentional filter. Those channels
but to counteract fatigue, nothing but taking a can be distinguished by their characteristics
break really helps much. like loudness, pitch, or accent. The filter
permits only one channel of sensory
information to proceed and reach the
Search refers to a scan of the environment for processes of perception. We thereby assign
particular features—actively looking for meaning to our sensations. Other stimuli will be
something when you are not sure where it will filtered out at the sensory level and may never
appear. As with vigilance, when we are reach the level of perception. But information
searching for something, we may respond by requiring higher perceptual processes is not
making false alarms. The police actively search noticed if not attended to (e.g., you would likely
an area where a crime like a bank robbery has not notice that the language in your unattended
occurred, trying to find the robbers before they ear switches from English to German).
can escape. Search is made more difficult
by distracters, nontarget stimuli that divert our Selective Filter Model - Not long after
attention away from the target stimulus. In the Broadbent’s theory, evidence began to suggest
case of search, false alarms usually arise when that Broadbent’s model must be wrong. Moray
we encounter such distracters while searching found that even when participants ignore most
for the target stimulus. For instance, consider other high-level (e.g., semantic) aspects of an
searching for a product in the grocery store. unattended message, they frequently still
We often see several distracting items that look recognize their names in an unattended ear.
something like the item we hope to find. He suggested that the reason for this effect is
Package designers take advantage of the that messages that are of high importance to a
effectiveness of distracters when creating person may break through the filter of selective
packaging for products. For example, if a attention. But other messages may not. To
container looks like a box of Pepero, you may modify Broadbent’s metaphor, one could say
pick it up without realizing that it’s really Pocky. that, according to Moray, the selective filter
blocks out most information at the sensory
level. But some personally important messages and pitch. You may listen for the voice of the
are so powerful that they burst through the person you are talking to in a noisy bar, for
filtering mechanism. example. If the stimuli possess those target
properties, we pass the signal on to the next
Late-Filter Model - Deutsch and Deutsch stage; if they do not possess those target
developed a model in which the location of the properties, we pass on a weakened version of
filter is even later. They suggested that stimuli the stimulus. In a next step, we perceptually
are filtered out only after they have been analyze the meaning of the stimuli and their
analyzed for both their physical properties and relevance to us, so that even a message from
their meaning. This later filtering would allow the unattended ear that is supposedly
people to recognize information entering the irrelevant can come into consciousness and
unattended ear. For example, they might influence our subsequent actions if it has some
recognize the sound of their own names or a meaning for us.
translation of attended input (for bilinguals).
Note that proponents of both the early and the Divided Attention - Individual is engaged in
late-filtering mechanisms propose that there is more than one task at a time. Divided attention
an attentional bottleneck through which only a plays an important role in our lives. Consider
single source of information can pass. The two driving a car, for example. You need to be
models differ only in terms of where they constantly aware of threats to your safety.
hypothesize the bottleneck to be positioned. Suppose you fail to select one such threat,
such as a car that runs a red light and is
Attenuation Model To explore why some headed directly toward you as you enter an
unattended messages pass through the filter, intersection. The result is that you may become
Anne Treisman conducted some experiments. an innocent victim of a horrible car accident.
She had participants shadowing coherent Moreover, if you are unsuccessful in dividing
messages, and at some point switched the your attention, you may cause an accident.
remainder of the coherent message from the Most automobile accidents are caused by
attended to the unattended ear. Participants failures in divided attention.
picked up the first few words of the message
they had been shadowing in the unattended Factors that Influence our Ability to Pay
ear, so they must have been somehow Attention:
processing the content of the unattended
message. Moreover, if the unattended 1. Anxiety - Being anxious, either by
message was identical to the attended one, all nature (trait-based anxiety) or by situation
participants noticed it. They noticed even if one (state-based anxiety), places constraints on
of the messages was slightly out of temporal attention.
synchronization with the other. Treisman also
2. Arousal - Your overall state of arousal
observed that some fluently bilingual
affects attention as well. You may be tired,
participants noticed the identity of messages if
drowsy, or drugged, which may limit
the unattended message was a translated
attention. Being excited sometimes
version of the attended one. Moray’s
enhances attention.
modification of Broadbent’s filtering mechanism
was clearly not sufficient to explain Treisman’s 3. Task Difficulty - If you are working on a
findings. Her findings suggested that at least task that is very difficult or novel for you,
some information about unattended signals is you’ll need more attentional resources than
being analyzed. Treisman proposed a theory of when you work on an easy or highly familiar
selective attention that involves a later filtering task. Task difficulty particularly influences
mechanism. Instead of blocking stimuli out, the performance during divided attention.
filter merely weakens (attenuates) the strength
of stimuli other than the target stimulus. So
when the stimuli reach us, we analyze them at
a low level for target properties like loudness
4. Skills - The more practiced and skilled distinguish these between explicit memory and
you are in performing a task, the more your implicit memory.
attention is enhanced.
 Explicit memory in which participants
engage in conscious recollection. Making
Module 3 an effort to recall a memory.
Example: Recalling an answer during an
exam or a quiz, thinking about your
password on your new account on
Part I. Measuring Memory: Recall vs
Facebook or the grocery items your mom
Recognition; Implicit vs Explicit
asked you to buy.
Memories can be accessed in three ways:
Implicit memory in which we use information
1. Recall - you produce a fact, a word, or from memory but are not consciously aware
other item from memory. Fill-in-the-blank that we are doing so. Every day you engage in
and most essay tests require that you recall many tasks that involve your unconscious
items from memory. recollection of information.
Example: _____ is the father of Example: Tying your shoes, traveling to school
Psychology. or home, brushing your teeth, singing a song,
playing a guitar.
 serial recall - you recall items in the
exact order in which they were presented. Part II. Working Memory

The working-memory model is probably the

 free recall - in which you recall items in
most widely used and accepted model today.
any order you choose
Psychologists who use it view short-term and
 cued recall - you are first shown items long-term memory from a different perspective.
in pairs, but during recall you are cued with The key feature of the alternative view is the
only one member of each pair and are role of working memory.
asked to recall each mate.
Working memory holds only the most recently
activated, or conscious, portion of long-term
2. Recognition - you select or otherwise
memory, and it moves these activated
identify an item as being one that you have
elements into and out of brief, temporary
been exposed to previously. Multiple-choice
memory storage.
and true-false tests involve some degree of
Example: Who is not a psychologist:
Alan Baddeley has suggested an integrative
a. Sigmund Freud
model of memory. Baddeley originally
b. Wilhelm Wundt
suggested that working memory comprises five
c. Ivan Pavlov
elements: the visuospatial sketchpad, the
d. Albert Einstein
phonological loop, the central executive,
3. Relearning - which is the number of subsidiary “slave systems,” and the episodic
trials it takes to learn once again items that buffer.
were learned in the past. Relearning has
1. Visuospatial sketchpad - briefly holds
also been referred to as savings and can be
some visual images.
observed in adults, children, and animals.
2. Phonological loop - briefly holds inner
Example: Studying for an exam. speech for verbal comprehension and for
acoustic rehearsal. We use the
Implicit vs Explicit Memory Tasks phonological loop for a number of everyday
When we do everyday tasks memory theorists tasks, including sounding out new and
 difficult words and solving word problems. meaningful arrangements. Once images,
There are two critical components of this sounds, and other information are stored,
loop: they are still available for reformatting and
reintegration in novel ways, as new
 phonological storage - holds information demands and new information become
in memory. available.

 subvocal rehearsal - used to put the

information into memory in the first place.

3. Central executive - coordinates

attentional activities and governs
responses. The central executive is critical
to working memory because it is the gating
mechanism that decides what information
to process further and how to process this
information. It decides what resources to
allocate to memory and related tasks, and
how to allocate them. It is also involved in
higher-order reasoning and comprehension
and is central to human intelligence.

4. Episodic buffer - a limited-capacity

system that is capable of binding
information from the visuospatial sketchpad
and the phonological loop as well as from
long-term memory into a unitary episodic
representation. This component integrates
information from different parts of working
memory—that is, visual-spatial and
phonological—so that they make sense to
us. This incorporation allows us to solve
problems and re-evaluate previous
experiences with more recent knowledge.

We can conceptualize the differing

emphases with contrasting metaphors. For
example, we can compare the three-store
view to a warehouse in which information is
passively stored. The sensory store serves
as the loading dock. The short-term store
comprises the area surrounding the loading
dock. Here, information is stored
temporarily until it is moved to or from the
correct location in the warehouse (long-
term store).

A metaphor for the working-memory model

might be a multimedia production house. It
continuously generates and manipulates
images and sounds. It also coordinates the
integration of sights and sounds into