PSY3051

Perception and personality

Dr Barry Richardson, Mr Peter Macris and Prof Dexter Irvine

6 points - Three 1-hour lectures and one 2-hour laboratory per week - Distance education students must complete a minimum of 12 hours on-campus weekend school laboratory work - First semester - Caulfield, Clayton, Gippsland, Peninsula and distance - Prerequisites: PSY2011 and PSY2022

Objectives On the completion of this subject students will be able to understand the central problem faced by any perceptual system and to use this as a framework in which to think about the evolution of perceptual principles and current theories of perception; understand the broad principles of perception which apply to all modalities. These include neurophysiological mechanisms at the levels of receptors, pathways, and brain structures; top-down and bottom up processing, and feature detection, and the constructive nature of perception. A knowledge of these principles will help students integrate modality-specific topics; appreciate the sensory and perceptual processes specific to vision, audition, the haptic senses, and the chemical senses. This objective concerns knowledge of specifics that may be of particular value in research and professional settings; explain the origins and underlying assumptions of the personality theories of Jung, Eysenck, Costa and McCrae, Bandura, Mischel, Kelly and Rogers; understand the practical applications, experimental procedures and research interests associated with each of the above personality theories; critically evaluate and compare the above personality theories.

Synopsis This subject covers sensory processes involved in vision, audition, touch, kinesthesis, proprioception, smell and taste. Overarching principles such as psychophysical measures and spatio-temporal coding are explained to help students understand the links between these modalities. The mechanisms by which we perceive colour, objects, depth, movement, sounds, speech, and chemical stimuli are also found to have aspect in common and help us understand how external stimuli and internally coded. The second half of this subject will consider the development and comparison of the following personality theories: the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Jung, the phenomenological theories of Kelly and Rogers, the three factor theory of Eysenck, the five factor model of Costa and McCrae and the social cognitive theories of Bandura and Mischel. Emphasis will also be placed on the application and critical evaluation of these theories

Assessment One 3-hour examination: 60% - Two 2000-word research reports: 20% each

Back to the 1999 Science Handbook