Perception and Attention Paper free essay sample

Perception and Attention Paper In the exploration of cognitive psychology, the theory of cognitive processes has been brought to light. These processes could include attention, memory, perception, sensory, and visual perception. Memory is composed of different factors such as short-term memory, long-term memory, screen memory, remote memory, replacement memory, and immunologic memory. Visual perception deals data intake from a visual standpoint. The five senses, touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing also time into the cognitive process. Perception gives an individual the ability to have insight into any given situation. This is also how an individual can gain knowledge or intuition. On the other hand, there is attention, which gives an individual to ability to focus mentally. While each concept is equally important to cognitive processes, this will paper will explore perception, attention, and the relationship between the two. Define the concept of perception Let thinks about all the things around us and how we look at them on a daily basis. When thinking about perception an individual should think about all their senses, these senses involve the ability to become aware of the changes within one’s body and mind. As you travel, you may see objects that cause you to think of various things in your life. Think about the touch of objects, the smell of various aromas the may remind you of a home-cooked meal and different types of music playing can also have an affect on a individual differently. All of these things help create a conscious familiarity and allow one to connect with the people and objects around us. However, these perceptions vary from individual. Therefore, many individual see and recognize thing for various prospective when looking at identical thing or situation. Moreover, the suggestion might not be the same to each individual. When looking at one individual’s perspective there might be a considerable change to the meaning to someone else. The flowing together of complex sensory inputs often a time creates a perception that is unreliable or unverifiable. In other words, it is based in reality (Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Breaking Down the Perceptual Organizational Process The perceptual organizational process is, according to Ruth Kimchi (2009) as the processes that create visual information into understanding units. Visual attention is the method that forms illustration information in a picture chosen. The selection chosen are important for the ability to form an opinion of his or her imaging surroundings and visuomotor, which is relevant to connecting images and motor processes. The motor process is the part that deals with movement, letting the body knows that the mind has the body’s attention. Define the concept of attention The processes that allow us to perform these dynamic cognitive operations on the information that held awareness include what referred to as working memory (Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Robinson-Riegler (2008), states that attention is limited, and that an individual cannot possibly process everything that heard. If we stop and think about it, has there ever been a time where we remember everything that we have heard or seen. It is hard enough to focus on what done, so if we are looking at our surroundings and not paying attention to what done, than we will probably not do a good job at what we are doing. It is also known that attention is considered to be flexible in a way that individuals can change from initial modes of attention to late modes (Robinson-Riegler p6 2008). Every individual has the control of how their incoming information processed in a way that they can decide the information they want processed. There are two types of attention divided attention and selective attention. In divided attention, Robinson-Rielger (2008) describe it as tasks that consist of the processing of multiple inputs, where selective attention involves choosing one input to process at the expense of others. An example would be parents who are constantly doing more than one thing at a time, whether it is cooking, changing diapers, or even picking up after their children. In selective attention, it is referred to as keeping an individual from being distracted and having them focus. For example, a student is trying to study in the library but cannot seem to focus due to the copier going off and people talking. The student knows the studying has to be done, so therefore finds way to block out all the noise. Attention is very important for everyone to understand; once an individual has, a better understanding of how they handle their attention span it will be easier for them to function in their everyday lives. Analyzing the Nature of the Attention Process The nature of the attention process is easy to comprehend; attention is the result of identifying the stimuli, be it a sound, object or image. According to Yeshurun, Kimchi, Sha’shoua, and Carmel (2007) researchers have demonstrated that perceptual organization has an effect on the routine, stimulus-driven operation of attention. For example, if an object flew extremely fast by a window, the onlooker would assume the object is a bird or a plane. The sound, whether a chirp or a hum the object made, finishes the determination of the object. In another light of attention, for example, when people required to take visual tests to obtain his or her driver’s licenses. Flashes of stars may show in different points of the screen: above, beneath, middle, and center. A reason for attention star’s movement is to see if the potential driver can hold his or her attention while driving. The other reason is to see how well the driver’s vision is. Perception and Attention Attention serves as the foundation for the beginning of an individual’s perception. The span of people’s attention is either spatial or object-based when using visual cues for perception (Robinson-Riegler and Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Spatial visual attention refers people paying attention to the space in front of them. Object-based visual attention refers to the focus on particular objects and the importance given to these objects within a scene. Visual attention brings information into focus for the people to draw conclusions from and behave correspondingly. Visual attention depends on the value people give to incoming visual stimuli. For example, when told to focus on one aspect of visual cues people may look over other aspects of the visual scene because of the inability for individuals to process all visual cues of an environment simultaneously. Inattentional blindness refers to things unfocused on in the scene and attentional capture refers to those things that are perceived by the individual (Robinson-Riegler and Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Visual stimuli combined with auditory stimulus presents a variety of ways to capture an individual’s attention. Auditory attention presents in the same manner as visual attention. People are presented with an auditory stimuli, the outcome of response is based on what characteristics attention given to the auditory stimuli. Several theories exist explaining the process of attention in receiving auditory stimuli. One is the early selection theory where information is received and filtered by a selection process by which the received information is processes (Robinson-Riegler and Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Attenuation theory refers to the process by which audible stimuli is still possibly received even when individuals attention is caught somewhere other than the exact stimulus (Robinson-Riegler and Robinson-Riegler, 2008). Whether people are aware of the auditory stimulus or not the information still passes into a degree of awareness to be later used or recalled. The information is obtained in memory because of an individual’s stored information that recognizes the auditory stimulus. Researchers also developed the late-selection theory to account for the process of audible stimuli catching ones attention when it appears to have done so. Late-selection theory states individuals perceive all audible stimuli; however, not all information receives the same attention (Robinson-Riegler and Robinson-Riegler, 2008). The information unattended to is then held in the individual’s consciousness to be used or retrieved when the individual finds a use for the information. If the information is meaningful the person perceives it. Attention strengthens the degree to which people perceive information; however, perception also occurs in the face of unconscious awareness. People perceive information despite not having consciously directed their attention toward the stimulus. Numerous studies indicate that perception occurs without awareness although the ability to recall information or the true validity of the information is obscured in some form (Merikle, Smilek, and Eastwood, 2001). Individual perception depends on the valued information observed by the individual whether visual or audible. The attention to information is what provides the ability for individuals to make perceptions about their environmental stimuli. From the information provided it is understood that perception and attention are important concepts to cognitive processes and development. It can be said that are closely related and can rely or support each other. Individuals are in control of how they feel and react in any given situation. Such feelings and reactions can dictate perception and the attention that is given to the situation at hand. One should also understand the environmental impact that can tie into these cognitive processes. References Merikle, P. M. , Smilek, D. , Eastwood, J. D. (April, 2001). Perception without awareness: perspectives from cognitive psychology. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness, 79(1-2), 115-134. oi: 10. 1016/S0010-0277(00)00126-8 Robinson-Riegler, G. Robinson-Riegler, B. (2008). Cognitive psychology:Applying the science of the mind (2nd ed). Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon Ruth Kimchi (2009) Perceptual organization and visual attention, Prog Brain Res. ; 176: 15–33, Doi: 10. 1016/S0079-6123(09)17602-1 Yaffa Yeshurun, Ruth Kimchi, Guy Sha’shoua, Tomer Carmel (2007) Perceptual objects capture attention, Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel http://dx. doi. org. ezproxy. apollolibrary. com/10. 1016/j. visres. 2008. 01. 014