Final Post- Candace Flowers

General Overview-Perception is a great psychology course and an essential aspect for any psychology major. Our perception often involves a process that in most situations involves reasoning that we are unaware of because it appears to be automatic… yet if you have taken a perception course you are more aware at how we arrive at our perceptions or experiences. Our perceptions are so complex  and there are many mechanisms responsible for them. Our sensation and perception book covered many different topics in which I gained knowledge on the complex subject. Since we experience perceptions everyday taking this  course will help you understand how you arrive at your perceptions and understand the mechanisms involved which are quite interesting. An example of varying perceptions is two people looking at the same painting and someone asking what they see or think. Opinions will vary because we all perceive things differently…our senses play a major role in our perceptions, its not just what we see to be there but what we smell, taste, feel etc that could affect how we look at things and perceive them. Our perception causes an action and influences our behavior which then impacts our decision making…again perception is a complex topic but very interesting with many components involved.

Favorite Part-  My favorite part of the course was learning about selective attention, which is what a person selects to pay attention to. The book mentioned something that I ALWAYS DO…It mentioned while reading a book we can stare at the words and move our eyes yet still have no idea what we have just read. I do this ALL the time and often wondered why this was. I have read an entire page in a book many times and then think to myself, now what was that all about? It takes much attention and focus to read and truly comprehend what you are reading. You can not read a book and retain the information without attention. In my previous mini post on the course blog, I mentioned selective hearing and this topic has the same concept. There could be many messages being presented yet someone chooses to focus on one message in particular. It is interesting to learn theories on why we do this. Sometimes selective attention is beneficial when we can select to focus on reading a text book for an exam but selective attention can work against us when we need to multitask and pay attention to more things at once. 

Overall I enjoyed the course and learning about perception. I particularly enjoyed the structure and blog posts. I think that was a GREAT idea, and a perfect way to allow students to express their own thoughts and ideas! I have attached a video to personalize my final post, don’t mind my appearance I look a mess! :)