PSYC213_Textbook_Ch3.pdf - PSYC213 u2013 Textbook Notes...

PSYC213 – Textbook Notes – Chapter 3: Perception
I. Perception and Awareness
a. Weiskrantz suggests that we may be able to perceive visual objects even when we have no conscious
experience of them.
b. James: People are not aware of all the things in their environment
c. Encoding: The process of transforming information into one or more forms of representation.
d. There is evidence that if highly skilled performers do try to pay attention to what they are doing
their performance declines.
e. Wickens: Encoding is not only unconscious but also very fast.
f. Subliminal Perception
i. Subliminal perception: Also known as unconscious perception, subliminal perception occurs
when an observer is unaware of perceiving a stimulus, yet the stimulus can still have an impact
on his or her behaviour
ii. Semantics – study of meaning
g. Backward masking
i. Backward masking: Presenting a stimulus, called the target, to the participant and then
covering, or masking, the target with another stimulus
ii. Stimulus onset asynchrony: The temporal delay between the first stimulus and a masking
stimulus.
iii. Priming: The tendency for some initial stimuli to make subsequent responses to related
stimuli more likely.
iv. Marcel thought that these studies lent support to the idea that “when an indirect measure
of perceptual processing is used, such as associative effects of the undetected word on a
subsequent task, all participants show effect of undetected stimuli.
1. Direct measures vs indirect measures: Participants’ reports that they have seen a
stimulus, as opposed to the effects of an undetected stimulus on a subsequent task.
h. Objective and Subjective Thresholds
i. Dissociative paradigm: An experimental strategy designed to show that it is possible to
perceive stimuli in the absence of any conscious awareness of them.
ii. Dissociation paradigm: An experimental strategy designed to show that it is possible to
perceive stimuli in the absence of any conscious awareness of them.
iii. Perception without awareness: A stimulus has an effect even though it is below the
participant’s subjective threshold of awareness.
iv. Objective and subjective thresholds: The point at which participants can detect a stimulus
at a chance level versus the point at which they say they did not perceive it.
v. Process dissociation procedure: An experimental technique that requires participants not to
respond with items they have observed previously
1. “In short, participants were not in conscious control of their own behaviour”
2. Implicit perception: The effect on a person’s experience, thought, or action of an
object in the current stimulus environment in the absence of, or independent of,
conscious perception of that event.
i. Conscious and Unconscious Processes: Summary and Conclusion
i. Percept: The visual experience of sensory information.