How Do We Construct the Outside World?

• Sensation – detecting physical energy from the environment and encoding it as neural signals

• Perception – the process of selecting, organising and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.

• SENSATION PERCEPTION = MEANING

Selective Attention

• At any moment, our awareness focuses (like a flashlight beam in the dark) on a limited aspect of all that we experience.

• Some researchers believe that ever second our five senses take in 11,000,000 bits of information (while we are conscious of 40 of them)

Inattentional Blindness

• Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

Psychology and Optical Illusions

• Psychologists LOVE visual illusions, because they reflect visions preeminence among our senses

• Fun Fact: When vision competes with one of our other senses vision usually wins (this is called visual capture)

Perceptual Consistency

• Perceiving objects as unchanging (e.g., having consistent lightness, colour, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change

Are the lines straight or bent?

Colour Consistency

• http://listverse.com/2007/09/16/20-amazing-optical-illusions/

Size – Distance Relationship

Shape Constancies

Lightness Constancy

• http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/shadow.html

Perceptual Set• Our experiences assumptions and

expectations may give us a mental predisposition that greatly influences what we perceive

Movement?

Multistable Perception

Count the Fs

• +++++++++++++++++++++++++++FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THEEXPERIENCE OF YEARS+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Try Reading This

• Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Sound Illusions

• Falling Bells

• Drum Beat

• Phantom Voices?

• McGurk Effect

• Can You Hear This?