AP Psychology / Unit 2: Cognition
2.1 Perception
Notes
Perception organizes and interprets sensations.
- Bottom-up (from the senses) vs top-down (expectations, schemas, perceptual set).
- Gestalt principles: figure-ground, proximity, similarity, closure.
- Depth cues: binocular (retinal disparity, convergence) and monocular (relative size, interposition, linear perspective).
- Selective attention (cocktail party effect), change blindness.
Practice
Seeing a circle with a gap as a complete circle is:
Filling in gaps.
Your expectations shaping what you see is:
Prior knowledge guides perception.
Which depth cue needs both eyes?
Binocular.
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