Psychology 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Gestalt Psychology, Change Blindness

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: John Campbell

Document Summary

Involves 2 processes of selection: focusing on certain stimuli, filtering out other incoming information. Shadowing = participants wear earphones and listen simultaneously to 2 messages, asked to repeat/shadow one of the messages. Participants can usually repeat one message successfully. Generally have hard time remembering second message. Shadowing experiments demonstrate we can"t attend completely to more than one thing at a time. Can shift attention rapidly back and forth between messages. Sat participants in front of a video screen and tested reaction times in response to images that sped from background. Significantly faster reaction times for images that were coming towards their head compared to images that would just miss their head. Perceptions have an organization and a structure - gestalt principles. Tend to organize stimuli into central/foreground figure and background. Central figure usually in front of ot on top of what we perceive to be background. Figure tends to be more striking and more memorable than background.