Recitation Sections Learning Objectives

Recitation Section #8 (Perception) – March 22nd-23rd

Homework #7 (homework questions are highlighted)
1. Describe a recent time when, while your attention was focused on one thing, you
were oblivious to something else (perhaps to pain, to someone calling you, or to
background TV).

2. Name and describe the 5 principles of perceptual grouping in form perception.

How did the Gestalt psychologists contribute to our understanding of perception?

3. What do we mean when we say that, in perception, the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts?

4. How does the floating finger sausage in Figure 6.9 help explain the way we see 3-
D movies or 3-D scenes in Viewmaster toys?

5. How does motion serve as a cue to depth?

6. Why do the two tabletops in Figure 6.12 look different in shape when, in fact,
they have identical shapes? What is perceptual constancy? What is the difference
between shape constancy and size constancy?

7. Why do the two girls in Figure 6.16 look different in height when, in fact, they are
equally tall?

8. Why do the checkerboard squares A and B in Figure 6.12 look different in color
when, in fact, they are the same color?

9. What is inattentional blindness? Describe an experiment performed to test for this

phenomenon. What’s the difference between change blindness, change deafness,
and choice blindness? Provide examples.

10. What is depth perception? What are the contributions of monocular and binocular
cues to depth perception? What is a visual cliff? How does the visual cliff help in
understanding whether our ability to perceive depth comes from nature or
nurture?

11. Name and describe six cues to depth.

12. What is perceptual set? Give an example of how it influences what we do or do

not perceive? What is a face schema? Give an example of how a face schema
influences the perception of faces.
13. Can ESP be tested by a controlled experiment? Describe how you would do it for
one of the paranormal phenomena: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, or
psychokinesis.

14. Why are so many people predisposed to believe that ESP exists when no single
person has yet emerged who can demonstrate a single, reproducible ESP
phenomenon?