Sensation and Perception Post #2

Recently, we have been discussing sensation and how our sense bring in information and transduce that information in order for our brain to interpret the information.  Today and tomorrow we will begin to examine the perception side of things.  Many people feel their perception high and they can view things around them and take in all the details.  However, as the book The Invisible Gorilla points out to us in the chapter "Illusion of Attention", that our abilities to spot details and recognize things going on around us is questionable at best.  When thinking about this, two terms come to mind: inattentional blindness and changed blindness.

Your assignment is as follows: describe the two terms above.  Then, give an example of how inattentional blindness can be beneficial and how changed blindness can be detrimental.  Be sure to be specific.  Also, below are the links to the videos we watched in class.

http://www.simonslab.com/videos.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u9hB4ff4Hc

This is due Friday by the beginning of class for 5th hour, and Monday at the beginning of class for 1st hour.

Sensation and Perception Post #1

Over the next couple of weeks we will be examining a very fascinating topic, Sensation and Perception.  How we take in information from our senses and process that information is extremely important to understanding how the mind works and examines information.  Today we discussed bottom-up processing and top-down processing and selective attention.  For your post, I want you to give me an example of top-down and bottom-up processing working together (not one from the book or class) and then explain the importance of selective attention and the affects it has on both.  This is due Wednesday morning by 9am.