Episode 301: Believing is Seeing?

It’s Back 2 Basics: Psychology edition! Do coins look bigger to poor people? Do hills look steeper to people wearing heavy backpacks? What’s the difference between perception and attention, or perception and judgment? David and Tamler discuss the long standing debate over whether our beliefs, desires, and past experience can penetrate our vision and change our visual perception. Plus some thoughts on the passing of Tamler’s favorite artist David Lynch.

Firestone, C., & Scholl, B. J. (2016).  Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and brain sciences, 39, e229.

Cognitive Penetration and the Epistemology of Perception by Nico Silins 

Bruner, J. S., & Goodman, C. C. (1947). Value and need as organizing factors in perception. The journal of abnormal and social psychology, 42(1), 33.

Fodor, Jerry A. "Precis of the modularity of mind." Behavioral and brain sciences 8.1 (1985): 1-5.