PSYCH211 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Plantar Reflex, Depth Perception, Color Vision
Document Summary
The function of perception is to allow us to behave sensibly in the world with respect to our survival and our reproductive interests; the function of perception is adaptive behavior rather than knowledge. Different species are sensitive to different kinds of information in the environment; they need and can make use of this information depending upon the adaptive problems that they have to resolve adaptive function. Physical fatigue affects perception e. g. : the steep hill experiment. Our perceptual systems are not designed to see the truth about the world but are designed to help us produce adaptive behaviors. Sense organs have a cost to build them as well as metabolic cost to operate them. Our inability to appreciate the complexity of our mental processes because they seem automatic and inevitable to us. : you know how to use your vision but you don"t know the smallest details about it.