Study guides › P/S › Psychology
Perception, Attention & Consciousness
Perception turns raw sensation into meaningful experience, attention decides what gets processed, and consciousness shifts across sleep, hypnosis, meditation, and drug states. You will learn the organizing principles, the cues, the sleep stages, and the terms the MCAT asks you to apply.
Study this chapter in PrepMed (free)
What this chapter covers
- Bottom-Up, Top-Down & Gestalt Organization. Expect scenario questions that ask you to name the principle at work, so precise definitions matter.
- Depth, Constancy & Motion. Depth cues are sorted into binocular or monocular, and the MCAT loves illusions that reveal how constancy normally works.
- Attention & Information Filtering. Filter models, search tasks, and attention failures are commonly tested through short experiment descriptions.
- Sleep Stages & Sleep Disorders. Connecting each EEG waveform to its sleep stage and each disorder to its stage is high-yield.
- Hypnosis, Meditation & Psychoactive Drugs. Know the drug classes by mechanism, the reward pathway, and the vocabulary of tolerance, dependence, and addiction.
Key points to know
- Bottom-up = stimulus driven; top-down = knowledge and expectation driven
- Perceptual set: a readiness to perceive in a particular way
- Binocular cues: retinal disparity and convergence
- Monocular cues: relative size, interposition, linear perspective, texture gradient, aerial perspective, motion parallax
- Cherry: dichotic listening, shadowing, cocktail party effect
- Broadbent early filter; Treisman attenuation; Deutsch and Deutsch late selection
- SCN sets circadian rhythm; pineal gland releases melatonin in darkness
- Beta awake, alpha relaxed, theta N1/N2, delta N3, REM beta-like
Try a practice question
Which best describes bottom-up processing?
- Using expectations to interpret ambiguous input
- Interpreting a scene from its context
- Building a percept from features detected by receptors
- Focusing attention on one conversation among many
Show the answer
C. Bottom-up processing is stimulus driven and builds up from features. Expectations and context describe top-down processing, and focusing on one conversation is selective attention.
Common questions
What does this chapter cover?
Perception, Attention & Consciousness covers Bottom-Up, Top-Down & Gestalt Organization, Depth, Constancy & Motion, Attention & Information Filtering, Sleep Stages & Sleep Disorders, Hypnosis, Meditation & Psychoactive Drugs.
What should I know first?
Bottom-up = stimulus driven; top-down = knowledge and expectation driven Perceptual set: a readiness to perceive in a particular way Binocular cues: retinal disparity and convergence
25 original practice questions accompany this chapter in the app. Spaced review brings missed ideas back at the right time; it helps memory but cannot promise you will not miss an idea again.