Psychology 2320 Cognitionand Perception: Thinking and Seeing Dr.Matthew Tata Department of PsychologyandNeuroscience University of Lethbridge

1. Gain insight and knowledge into the functioning of the mind. 2. Learn to think critically and creatively about perplexing questions. 3. Discover weird and interesting things about perception and cognition. Objective

-Sensory Physiology -Hearing -Vision -Attention -Memory Perception Cognition The Plan

-Selected readings available at the bookstore -Sensation and Perception, Coran, Porac & Ward on reserve in library -Cognitive Psychology, Robinson- Riegler on reserve Text

Evaluation Mid-Term 1 15% Mid-Term 2 30% Final 45% Ideas Journal 10% Extra credit available through Psych Subject Pool Midterms and final are WebCT taken in the WebCT Test Centre

Ideas Journal Record your thoughts and questions about perception and cognition Keep track of your ideas - you never know when you’re going to have a good one! You will be graded on how good your ideas are!

A Good Idea: “the size of your eye has to be just right to match the focusing power of the cornea. How does the eye know when to stop growing? Is it because the brain tells it to stop when images are clearly focused? We could test this by looking at the size of the eyeballs in children who are born with cataracts since their brains don’t get accurate visual information from their eyes”

A Bad Idea: “Matt was wearing a blue sweater today. I like blue. Blue is my favorite color. I wish I had a blue sweater.”

Put Ideas in a Book

Grades Rounding will be down except when I decide otherwise!

Interaction My Office hours: immediately after class –Rules: –1. No ing the night before a test –2. is for making appointments not asking questions –3. Put “2320” in the subject line

Interaction Try to understand on your own FIRST!

Rules If your cell phone rings, I get to answer it. If you need to take a nap, take it.

If You Were in my Psych 1000 Lecture… There will be no Gorillas in this course…if you know what I mean.

Perception: It’s not as Easy as it Looks

Purpose of this Lecture: See cool illusions Notice (and begin thinking about) the mysteries of perception and cognition

What is an Illusion? When what you perceive is not what is really out there Visual Illusions happen in your visual system Optical illusions occur when the physical stimulus itself is distorted

What is an Illusion? Optical IllusionVisual Illusion

Size Constancy Big and small = near and far !? System adjusts size based on perceived distance

Ponzo Illusion:

Muller - Lyer Illusion

Kaniza Triangle

Illusory Contours Kaniza Triangle Neurons in higher levels of visual pathways “build” contours from information in lower levels

Apparent Motion Object disappears and reappears somewhere else Visual system “interpolates” motion in between

Frazer Spiral:

Who did you see?

The Necker Cube Reversible Figure

Impossible Staircase

Shepard Tone

Attention and Perception Your perception of a rich visual environment is an illusion! You actually are only aware of the small part of the scene that you are attending to

Attention and Perception Change Blindness: you can’t notice changes in a scene unless you attend to the location of the change

Attention and Perception

Illusions Are cool. Highlight questions about how perception happens. Make you think.

Next Time: A bit of philosophy and a bit of biology