Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

R E C A P / E V A L U A T E / R E T H I N K
R E C A P
What principles underlie our organization of the visual world 
and allow us to make sense of our environment?
• Perception is a constructive process in which people go 
beyond the stimuli that are physically present and try to 
construct a meaningful interpretation. (p. 126)
• The gestalt laws of organization are used to describe the 
way in which we organize bits and pieces of information 
into meaningful wholes, known as gestalts, through 
closure, proximity, similarity, and simplicity. (p. 126)
• In top-down processing, perception is guided by 
higher-level knowledge, experience, expectations, and 
motivations. In bottom-up processing, perception 
consists of the progression of recognizing and processing 
information from individual components of a stimuli 
and moving to the perception of the whole. (p. 127) 
How are we able to perceive the world in three dimensions 
when our retinas are capable of sensing only two-dimensional 
images?
• Depth perception is the ability to perceive distance and 
view the world in three dimensions even though the 
images projected on our retinas are two-dimensional. 
We are able to judge depth and distance as a result of 
binocular disparity and monocular cues, such as motion 
parallax, the relative size of images on the retina, and 
linear perspective. (p. 129)
• Perceptual constancy permits us to perceive stimuli as 
unvarying in size, shape, and color despite changes in 
the environment or the appearance of the objects being 
perceived. (p. 130)
• Motion perception depends on cues such as the 
perceived movement of an object across the retina and 
information about how the head and eyes are moving. 
(p. 131) 
What clues do visual illusions give us about our understanding 
of general perceptual mechanisms?
• Visual illusions are physical stimuli that consistently 
produce errors in perception, causing judgments that do 
not refl ect the physical reality of a stimulus accurately. 
One of the best-known illusions is the Müller-Lyer 
illusion. (p. 132)
• Visual illusions are usually the result of errors in the 
brain’s interpretation of visual stimuli. Furthermore, 
culture clearly affects how we perceive the world. 
(p. 132)
• Subliminal perception refers to the perception of 
messages about which we have no awareness. The 
reality of the phenomenon, as well as of ESP, is open to 
question and debate. (p. 134)
feL82795_ch04_096-137.indd Page 135 20/07/10 11:31 PM user-f463
feL82795_ch04_096-137.indd Page 135 20/07/10 11:31 PM user-f463
/Volumes/202/MH00543_r1/hin73516_disk1of1/0073373516/Access_Archive/hin73516_...
/Volumes/202/MH00543_r1/hin73516_disk1of1/0073373516/Access_Archive/hin73516_

---