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Related Concept Videos

Perception01:28

Perception

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Perception is a fundamental psychological process that enables individuals to organize, interpret, and consciously experience sensory information. This process is crucial for understanding and interacting with the world around us. It includes both bottom-up and top-down processing, each playing a distinct role in how we perceive our environment.
Bottom-up processing begins at the sensory level, where receptors detect external environmental stimuli. These could include the tactile sensation of...
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Factors Affecting Perception01:25

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Perception is influenced by perceptual set, context, motivation, and emotion. Perceptual set, or perceptual expectancy, refers to the tendency to perceive things in a particular way, influenced by previous experiences and expectations. This phenomenon affects the interpretation of stimuli, creating a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that impact sensory perceptions of sound, taste, touch, and sight.
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Subliminal Perception01:15

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Subliminal perception refers to the processing of sensory information that occurs below the level of conscious awareness. Researchers study subliminal perception by presenting a stimulus, such as a word or image, very quickly, typically around 50 milliseconds. This rapid presentation is often followed by another stimulus, such as a pattern of dots or lines, which blocks further mental processing of the initial stimulus. As a result, if participants cannot identify the initial stimulus better...
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First Impression01:09

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First impressions play a crucial role in social perception, shaping how individuals assess others in professional, academic, and interpersonal contexts. Psychological research highlights the significance of cognitive biases, such as the primacy and recency effects, which influence how people interpret and recall information.The Primacy Effect and Cognitive AnchoringThe primacy effect describes the tendency for initial information to impact judgment disproportionately. When individuals encounter...
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Cause and Effect01:53

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While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?
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Gestalt Principles of Perception01:21

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Gestalt principles provide a framework for understanding how humans perceive objects as unified wholes within their context. These principles are essential in explaining the cognitive processes that make sense of complex visual stimuli by organizing them into coherent groups. One fundamental principle is proximity, which posits that objects located close to each other are perceived as a collective group. For instance, when dots are positioned near one another, the visual system interprets them...
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Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
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Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for "top-down" effects.

Chaz Firestone1, Brian J Scholl2

  • 1Department of Psychology,Yale University,New Haven,CT 06520-8205chaz.firestone@yale.edu.

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
|July 21, 2015
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Recent research suggests cognition influences vision, but this study argues current evidence is flawed. We identify common pitfalls in studies claiming cognitive penetrability of perception, offering a checklist for future research.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Philosophy of Mind

Background:

  • Traditional views posit modular perception, separate from higher cognition.
  • Emerging research suggests beliefs, desires, and emotions influence visual perception.
  • A consensus is forming that perception and cognition are deeply intertwined.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To critically evaluate the evidence for top-down cognitive influences on visual perception.
  • To identify recurring methodological pitfalls in studies claiming cognitive penetrability.
  • To propose a framework for future research to convincingly demonstrate these effects.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of hundreds of studies investigating cognitive influences on perception.
  • Empirical demonstration of how specific pitfalls can explain observed effects.
  • Identification of generalizable flaws applicable across various top-down effects.

Main Results:

  • No current study provides compelling evidence for true top-down effects on perception (cognitive penetrability).
  • Identified a small set of common pitfalls that undermine the validity of existing research.
  • Demonstrated how these pitfalls, in practice, can account for alleged top-down influences.

Conclusions:

  • The claim of widespread cognitive penetrability of perception is not yet supported by robust evidence.
  • Addressing identified methodological pitfalls is crucial for future research in this area.
  • A rigorous approach is needed to revolutionize our understanding of the perception-cognition relationship.