Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Attention, perception and media Hoorcollege - Using...

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media

Attention, perception and media

Hoorcollege - Using Media week 2


Agenda

Aim of college

Learning goals

What is perception?

The problem of perception

Attention and perception

Perception as problem solving

Perception as pattern recognition

Models of perception

Summary


Aim

I argued in week 1 that persuasion will often (perhaps mostly) be your goal when using media Persuasion is an ethical way of trying to change the

receiver’s behaviour

However, achieving this goal is complicated by the workings of the human cognitive system

My aim therefore is to highlight how the cognitive system can affect your ability to persuade via media


Learning goals

By the end of this hoorcollege you should: Understand of what attention and perception involve (from

one theoretical position) Know what is meant by top-down and bottom-up models of

perception Be aware of the selective nature of attention Understand perception as a purposive (doelgericht) activity

involving the recognition of patterns in order to solve problems

Be in a position to think about how these theories might apply to your own use of media


What is perception?


Perception and human cognition

Week 1

Week 2


What is perception?

This seems to be an easy question to answer

Perception is what we receive through our senses from the external world

Perception is reality However…


What do you see?


What do you hear?

Destudentzeidedocentiseendwaas

De student zei de docent is een dwaas

De student, zei de docent, is een dwaas

De student zei: de docent is een dwaas

You probably hear…

Or this…

But definitely not this…


The problem of perception

Philosopher used to use examples like these to suggest scepticism about the existence of an external world Many ancient Greeks, Hume, Descartes, etc., etc. Perception is not reality, because we cannot be sure reality

actually exists

However, even if reality exists it is remarkable it is that we perceive anything at all…

How on earth do we do this?


Attention and perception


We do not perceive everything we are exposed to

Attention is seen as a filter on the all the stimuli we are exposed to

Attention is selective and is usually based on our purposes This means that perception is not a passive activity It is active with the perceiver actively (though

unconsciously) choosing what to let through the filter


Types of attention


Some examples of the purposefulness of attention

Fixation tracking based on two separate tasks

Split earphone listening


Perception as problem solving


Making sense of the external world

One way of thinking about perception is that it is a way for us to make sense of the external world

We never see the thing itself We translate the reaction of our retina to light striking it into

a mental representation

We never hear a real sound We translate the changes in pressure on our ear-drums

caused by movement a medium

Perception involves solving the problem of translating this strange data into something we can understand


How do we distinguish all the items here?


Perceptual parsing

Parsing means breaking something into smaller parts or groups

Perceptual parsing methods Figure - ground Perceptual grouping


Figure-ground


Perceptual grouping (Gestalt theory)


Perception as pattern recognition


Pattern recognition

Perceptual parsing shows us how we separate external stimuli, but how do we work out what it is that we perceive Pattern recognition helps us understand this


Models of pattern recognition

The bottom-up model Stimulation activates component features and build up to

an overall thing E.g. Geons

The top-down model Stimulation activates higher level concepts and ideas that

affect units lower down


Bidirectional processing

Today many psychologists believe the process of recognition is bidirectional We use top-down and bottom-up processing

We tend however, to use top-down processing when we are in a hurry or stressed


Bi-directional processingTop-down


Bi-directional processingBottom-up


Summary

Attention is a filter on all the stimuli

People can control their attention Attention is purposive

Perception is a remarkable thing

Perception is can be seen as pattern recognition aimed at solving a problem (“what is that?”)

These factors can be important to keep in mind when using media


Some links on perception

Try some perceptual experiments http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/zaps/welcome.htm (click

on the zaps demos - they’re free!)

Look at some visual illusions http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/gman7/content/articles/c

h05article1.asp

Videos used in experiments on change blindness and inattentional blindness http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/demos.html

Also here is the gorilla/basketball passes video to amaze your friends and family (get them to count how many passes the team in white make to each other - it’s 14 BTW and then ask them first how many passes and secondly whether they saw the gorilla) http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Attention, perception and media Hoorcollege - Using...

Documents

Transcript of Hogeschool van Amsterdam Interactieve Media Attention, perception and media Hoorcollege - Using...