PSYC 2110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Heredity, Reinforcement, Classical Conditioning
1 Nov 2016
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Chapter seven - early cognitive foundations: sensation, perception, and learning. Sensation - detection of stimuli by the sensory receptors and transmission of this information to the brain. Perception - process by which we categorize and interpret sensory input. Empiricist philosophers believed that an infant was a tabula rasa (a blank state) who must learn to interpret sensation = nurture; william james. Nativist philosophers too the nature side of the nature/nurture issue, arguing that many basic perceptual abilities are innate. Adaptive perceptual understandings are built into the human nervous system over the course of evolution = nature; rene descartes and immanuel kant. Enrichment theory - theory specifying that we must add to sensory stimulation by drawing on stored knowledge in order to perceive a meaningful world. Differentiation theory - theory specifying that perception involves detecting distinctive features or cues that are contained in the sensory stimulation we receive.
