PSY 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Gestalt Psychology

• School: University of Iowa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1001
• Professor: Habashi Meara

Document Summary

Sensation: the immediate, basic components of a sense experience: at the neural level. Perception: organization of sensation components into a recognizable form, object, or event. Two main processes: bottom-up: initiated by the stimulus input, top-down: initiated by prior expectation or belief. Top-down processing is most important when: we have strong expectations, the situation is familiar, the stimulus information is weak or ambiguous. Bottom-up processing is most important when: the situation is unfamiliar (we have no relevant knowledge, the stimulus is clear and unambiguous. Process by which a sensory information turns into neural information. Each sense has its own transduction process: breaks down information, always uses neurons to relay information to the brain. Physical stimuli: taste (gustation): food chemicals, vision: photons of light, hearing (audition): sound waves, touch (somatosensation): pressure and temperature, smell (olfaction): air chemicals. Taste (gustation: physical stimulus: food chemicals, transduction: Prefer one flavor and fire to one flavor. Basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter.