Psychology / Unit 3: Sensation and Perception
3.1 Sensation vs Perception
Notes
Sensation is detecting physical energy from the environment. Perception is organizing and interpreting that information to give it meaning.
- Transduction is converting stimulus energy into neural signals the brain can use.
- Bottom-up processing starts with the raw sensory data. Top-down processing uses expectations and knowledge to interpret it.
- Example: reading a messy handwritten word by using the sentence around it is top-down processing.
- Selective attention is focusing on one stimulus and ignoring others (the cocktail party effect).
Practice
Turning light waves into neural signals in the eye is an example of:
Transduction converts stimulus energy into neural impulses.
Sam reads a smudged word as "lunch" because the sentence is about a cafeteria. This is mainly:
His expectations and context shape the interpretation.
Which is the best description of perception?
Sensation detects; perception interprets.
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