Distortions in the form of disagreement between percept and reality.
Sensation
Study of sensory processes first contact between the organism and the environment. Focus on less complex aspects of experience.
Perception
Interested in conscious experience of objects. How do we form conscious representations?
Cognition
Meaning how we know the world. Lies between perception and learning and is very broad.
Information processing
Used to describe the whole process which leads to identification and interpretation of stimuli. Assumed to incluce a sensory (or registration) phase a perceptual (or interpretation)stage
Levels-of-processing
Analysis of all stages of information processing.
Biological reductionism
Based on the notion that for any given aspect of the observer's sensation there is a corresponding physiological event.
Modularity of perception
Views the mind as a set of distinct units or mudules each of which is complete in itself and has a specific funcition with specific neural hardware.
Direct perception
Believes that all information needed to form a conscious percept is available in the stimuli that reach our receptors.
Invariants
Are fixed properties of a stimulus.
Affordances
Acition possibilites which are available to the observer: Picking up an object and using it.
Computational theories
Label for the calculating features of objects or aspects of the environment from aspects of the stimuli reaching the observer.
Intelligent perception
In addition to the information from our senses we use our previous experiences our expectations
Constructive theories
State that our final conscious impression may involve combining a number of different factors to ""construct"" the final percept.