PSY 3377 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Olympic Symbols

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 3377
• Professor: Sylvain Gagnon

Document Summary

The gestalt laws of perceptual organization; not everything comes from stimulation. We have developed in a way that we organize and interpret perceptual information so that it makes more sense: the law of simplicity (the resulting structure of a given pattern is as simple as possible). Ex. the olympic rings, we see the symbol as a whole, not all the individual shapes and parts: the law of similarity (we tend to group things that are similar). Ex. groups shapes together: the law of continuity, the law of proximity. Most are top-down (we make interpretations, is it familiar, unfamiliar? what is the object? etc this all requires previous knowledge) this process is working at a really subconscious level. Heuristics, the best guess at a given time, most of the time we come up with the right answer (what are we perceiving) but sometimes we can be wrongperceive something the wrong way. Algorithms guarantee that you will solve a given problem.