3.1.2.6.1 Perceptual set and the influence of culture, motivation, emotion and expectation Quiz: AQA Psychology, Unit 2

The 20 questions

1. What is a perceptual set?

   • A physical limit on how many objects the eyes can detect in a single view at one time
   • A readiness or tendency to perceive something in a particular way, shaped by expectation and past experience
   • A list of items that a viewer recalls in the order in which they were first presented in view
   • A fixed record of an object kept in the sensory store for a few seconds after input is received

2. Which factors affect perception, according to the specification?

   • Serial position, primacy, recency and interference in the list being shown to the viewer
   • Culture, motivation, emotion and expectation
   • Sensory coding, acoustic coding, semantic coding and visual coding of the stimulus input
   • Relative size, occlusion, linear perspective and height in plane of objects in the scene

3. How can culture affect perception?

   • People from different cultures always perceive identical images in the same way, whatever their learning
   • People from different cultures store images in different stores, so they cannot recall them at all
   • People from different cultures have different receptors in the eyes, so they detect different light
   • People from different cultures may perceive the same image differently, because of the environments they have learnt in

4. How does motivation affect perception?

   • A person's needs or desires can make them more ready to perceive things related to those needs
   • A person's needs or desires change the number of items the short-term store can hold at once
   • A person's needs or desires stop their eyes from detecting light, so they see less of the scene
   • A person's needs or desires remove depth cues, so every object looks the same size to them

5. How can emotion affect perception?

   • A person's emotional state can make them more ready to notice or interpret certain stimuli in a particular way
   • A person's emotional state changes the amount of light the eye receives, which alters the image
   • A person's emotional state controls the serial position of items in the list the viewer recalls
   • A person's emotional state removes the need for sensory input, so perception is made from memory

6. How can expectation affect perception?

   • If a person expects something, the stimulus is coded acoustically so that it is harder to interpret
   • If a person expects something, they may interpret an ambiguous stimulus as the thing they expected
   • If a person expects something, the stimulus is stored in long-term memory before it is perceived
   • If a person expects something, their eyes detect more light from the scene than they would otherwise

7. Which example shows a perceptual set influenced by expectation?

   • Someone primed with a set of food words reads an ambiguous shape as a food-related word
   • Someone stores a shape in the sensory store for a second before it fades from view
   • Someone recalls the first shape in a list more accurately than the middle shapes
   • Someone with clear eyesight sees a bright shape against a dark background as a light

8. Why are perceptual sets useful?

   • They increase the capacity of the short-term store, so more items can be held at once
   • They help people interpret ambiguous or fast input quickly, using what they expect to be likely
   • They stop people noticing anything new, so every stimulus is perceived in the same way every time
   • They remove the need for depth cues, so depth is always perceived from the eyes alone

9. Which statement about perceptual set is correct?

   • It can make people misperceive an ambiguous stimulus, because they are ready to see it in a certain way
   • It is only found in young children, who have no past experience to shape what they see
   • It is a feature of the sensory store, which holds the same expectations for every person
   • It makes perception identical across people, because all people share the same expectations

10. Which factor is most likely to lead two people to perceive the same ambiguous figure differently?

    • Differences in culture and expectation, which shape what each person is ready to see
    • Differences in the sensory store capacity, which change how many lines of the figure are held
    • Differences in the serial position of the figure in the drawing, which change its apparent shape
    • Differences in the speed of recall, which change which part of the figure is recalled first

11. How does emotion relate to perceptual set?

    • Emotion changes the serial position of the stimulus, so it is recalled at the start of the list
    • Emotion increases the sensory store capacity, so more of the stimulus is held for longer
    • Emotion removes perceptual set, because emotional people always see the stimulus as it is
    • Emotion can make a person more ready to perceive stimuli that match their emotional state

12. Which factor would most likely cause a hungry person to see a plate of food more quickly than others?

    • Culture, because hungry people always come from cultures where food is valued more highly
    • Serial position, because the plate of food is always at the start of the list of objects
    • Motivation, because the need for food makes them ready to perceive food-related stimuli
    • Relative size, because the plate of food is always judged to be larger than the other objects

13. Which pair of factors is most closely linked to the idea of a perceptual set in the specification?

    • Acoustic coding and capacity
    • Retinal disparity and convergence
    • Serial position and primacy
    • Expectation and culture

14. A person who expects to see a word in a blurred picture reads a close shape as the word. What is this?

    • An effect of primacy, because the word was the first item the person saw in the picture
    • An effect of perceptual set, because expectation makes the person ready to read the shape that way
    • An effect of retinal disparity, because each eye sees the blurred picture from a different angle
    • An effect of the sensory store, because the blurred picture is held there for a second

15. Why is emotion described as a factor that can affect perception?

    • Because emotions change the order in which the brain stores items in the long-term store
    • Because emotions change the wavelength of light that the eyes can detect in a scene
    • Because emotions decide the number of items the short-term store can hold at any moment
    • Because emotional states can change how people interpret and notice stimuli around them

16. Which example best illustrates the influence of culture on perception?

    • A person raised among rectangular buildings reads a drawn room's angles in line with those buildings
    • A person's eyes detect a red light more strongly than a person from another culture's eyes do
    • A person's sensory store is larger than another person's sensory store because of their culture
    • A person stores a list of words in a different order from a person from another culture

17. What is priming in the context of perceptual set?

    • Focus on a single object so that it is transferred out of the sensory store at once
    • Exposure to a set of words or images beforehand, which makes a related interpretation more likely later
    • Repetition of a list in its original order, so that each item is recalled first later on
    • Practice of a physical skill that makes it automatic for the learner in later performance

18. A football fan sees an ambiguous figure and reads it as their team's logo. Which factors affect perception here?

    • Serial position and primacy, because the logo is at the start of a list of images shown
    • Retinal disparity and convergence, because the logo is seen by both eyes at the same time
    • Acoustic coding and capacity, because the logo is coded as a sound in the short-term store
    • Motivation and expectation, because the fan is ready to see the logo they want to see

19. A frightened person hears a noise and perceives it as a threat. Which factor is being shown?

    • Culture, because the noise is a sound that people from that culture always find dangerous
    • Emotion, because the fear makes the person ready to read the noise as dangerous
    • Serial position, because the noise was the first sound in a list of sounds the person heard
    • Interference, because the noise was disrupted by other sounds in the room at the time

20. Why can perceptual sets sometimes lead to errors?

    • Because they stop the eyes detecting light, so the stimulus never reaches the brain at all
    • Because readiness to see something can override the actual stimulus, so an ambiguous input is misread
    • Because they make the sensory store hold the stimulus for longer than it should be held
    • Because they remove all depth cues, so every object is judged to be at the same distance away

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