BCS 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Subjective Constancy, Gestalt Psychology, Taste

• School: University of Rochester
• Department: Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Course: BCS 111
• Professor: Yang

Document Summary

Perception: taking sensory input and interpreting it meaningfully. Forms of perception: visual, auditory, olfactory, haptic (touch), and gustatory (taste) Visual perception: each object is a distal stimulus. The reception of information and its registration by a sense organ make up the proximal stimulus. Light waves reflect from the object to your eyes to the retina at the back of the eye. There an image of the object is formed (a retinal image). This image is two-dimensional and its size depends on your distance from the object. The image is also upside down and is reversed with respect to left and right. The meaningful interpretation of the proximal stimulus is the percept (your interpretation that the object is a tree, for example) You must interpret the proximal stimulus to see a set of objects you recognize and see how far away an object is.