Question

How does past experience affect our perception psychology?

Answer 1

Of course both are affected by our experience.

Our experience, our history is something that is recorded in our structural memory which is housed in the cerebral cortex. But in turn, this structural memory determines the construction of a operative memory, which is the one that registers our motor responses, that then, with experience, will become habits.

This whole process takes as a starting point in our perception. Perception is a complex process of unconscious nature that allows us to build our history or our experience of life.

This does not mean that it has something to do with the 'unconscious inference' of Helmholtz, which is a theoretical construct that was applied to visual perception, but in reality, has no scientific basis.

We must distinguish level of consciousness of unconscious. The latter is a functional aspect of the cerebral cortex that can not be accessed by consciousness, and is responsible for managing the basic psychic structure that lies in the cerebral cortex; while the level of consciousness is a functional psychic state where they are also involved several brain structures, in addition of cortex, although there is not some psychic structure to represent it, it's just a way to make evident the psychic functional aspects, such as thinking. In this sense, the unconscious activity is not opposed to wakefulness or consciousness state.