PERCEPTION

The Psychological Stage

CHARACTERISTICS of Perception
Generally knowledge based Often inferential Categorical Rational Adaptive Operate automatically

FUNCTIONS of Perception
The perceptual system must determine
1. WHAT objects/sounds are out there

2. WHERE these objects/sounds are

 In vision, determining what the objects are is referred to as the process of pattern recognition. It is crucial for survival because often we have to know what an object is before we can infer some of its properties. Determining where visual objects are is referred to as spatial localization. Localization is the means we use to navigate through our environment.

Related Discussion:

 Auditory perception is quite selective according to a predisposition in us, namely by what we want to hear. The cues for the perception of the distance of a sound are amplitude and frequency composition. Distant sounds are much weaker than near sounds. High frequencies are more easily absorbed while travelling through the air than low frequencies. As a result, the farther away one is from the source of a sound, the more the sound will appear lowpitched.

Related Discussion:

 Though researchers have not yet reached agreement on a set of basic odors, the most common system of categorizing odors recognizes the following: (1) ethereal (drycleaning fluid), (2) floral (roses), (3) spicy (aromatic), (4) resinous (balsamic), (5) camphoraceous (mothballs), (6) musky (mens cologne), (7) pepperminty (mint candy), (8) pungent (vinegar), (9) putrid (rotten eggs), and (10) empyreumatic (burned organic matter)

Related Discussion:

 Most odorous sensations are interpreted as perceptions of something. We even lack a vocubulary to designate our olfactory sensations; the most we can do is to describe our olfactory sensations as smells like Olfactory perceptions may be modified by visual perceptions. Example: the odor of onions alone may be unpleasant while the odor of onions with meat may be highly pleasant.

Related Discussion:

 Unlike the case in olfaction, there is an agreed upon vocabulary for describing tastes. Any taste can be described as one or a combination of the four basic taste qualities.

Related Discussion:

PROCESS of Perception
1. SELECTION

2. ORGANIZATION

3. INTERPRETATION

I. SELECTION
Attention is the process by which we determine which sensations will be perceived.

II. ORGANIZATION
Four Basic Types: a) Form Perception b) Depth and Distance Perception

c) Perceptual Constancies
d) Motion Perception

A. FORM PERCEPTION
This kind of organization was of great concern to Gestalt Psychology. The Gestalt psychologists emphasized the importance of perceiving whole objects or forms, and proposed a number of principles of how we organize objects.

Principles of Form Perception

1. Figure-Ground Relationship or Reversible Figure This principle states that in perception, a primary target is selected as the figure against a background. But because there are two plausible scenes or interpretation, an ambiguity exists. Our perception in unstable and alternates between the two.

Note that in this image, you can perceive either the vase or the two profiles as a figure against a background, but only one at a time. This vase was a gift to Queen Elizabeth II on her silver jubilee and shows her profile and that of Prince Philip.

Saxophone Player
or a Womans Face?

The Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire

A reversible figure is in the center of this painting by Salvador Dali (1940). Two nuns standing in an archway reverse to form a bust of Voltaire.

Flying Birds and the Tree

or a Womans Profile

Principles of Form Perception

2. Closure Items are perceived as complete units, maybe interrupted by gaps.

Can you see a figure in this picture?

Were you able to see a horse and its rider?

Can you spot the dog?

Principles of Form Perception

3. Proximity This principle states that items closest to each other are perceived as whole.

In this example, we will likely see 3 rows of stars rather than 9 columns of 27 stars.

Principles of Form Perception

4. Similarity Items that most closely resemble each other are perceived as units.

In this illustration, we perceive rows of objects instead of columns or other arrangements.

Principles of Form Perception

In this example, we will likely see two columns of circles and two columns of squares rather than three horizontal rows of circles and squares.

Principles of Form Perception

5. Continuity Refers to the tendency not to break the continuous flow of a line, pattern, or design in the perceptual awareness. In the drawing on the left below, we see a straight line with a curved line running through it. Notice that we do not see the drawing as consisting of the two pieces in the drawing on the right.

Principles of Form Perception

6. Common Fate This principle highlights the fact that various stimuli that appear to be moving together are seen as bound together in a particular way. This principle is most likely to apply when the object in question is in motion. Because of this principle, we often see flocks of birds or school of fish as one unit.

 DEPTH refers to the distance or measurement from the top of something to its bottom, from front to back, or from the outside in. DISTANCE refers to the length of the space separating two people, places, or things. We can perceive depth and distance by using a variety of visual cues: binocular cues and monocular cues. BINOCULAR CUES require the interaction of both eyes. It results from two general processes: convergence and retinal disparity.

B. DEPTH and DISTANCE PERCEPTION

Convergence refers to the process whereby the eyes point more and more inward as an object gets closer. As the eyes converge, they send a message to the brain. The brain interprets this message to mean that the more the eyes are pointed inward, the closer the object. Retinal Disparity refers to the fact that because the eyes are in slightly different locations, a slightly different or desperate view of an object falls on each retina.

B. DEPTH and DISTANCE PERCEPTION

 MONOCULAR CUES are cues to depth perception that require input from only one eye. They are used by all of us, but are especially useful for people who are blind in one eye and consequently cannot use binocular cues.

B. DEPTH and DISTANCE PERCEPTION

 Interposition - the overlap between objects. When one object partially obscures our view of another object, we judge the covered object as farther away from us.

 Aerial/Atmospheric Perspective objects that are hazy are perceived to be at a distance, whereas objects that are in focus are perceived to be close.

 Texture Gradient This cue influences depth perception because an object texture is coarser when you are near it and finer when for are far from it.

 Linear Perspective - refers to the fact that parallel lines, such as railroad tracks, appear to converge with distance, eventually reaching a vanishing point at the horizon. The more the lines converge, the farther away they appear.

 Relative Size refers to the perception that larger objects are closer and smaller objects are farther away. The size of objects is determined in relation to their immediate surrounding.

 Shading Cue often used to judge distance or depth.

C. PERCEPTUAL CONSTANCIES
It is the tendency for perceptions of objects to remain relatively unchanged in spite of changes in sensations.

C. PERCEPTUAL CONSTANCIES
1. Shape Constancy the tendency to perceive objects as the same shape, no matter what the angle you view it. 2. Brightness/Lightness Constancy - our perception of an objects lightness or darkness remains constant despite changes in illumination. 3. Color Constancy tendency to perceive the colors of familiar objects as the same regardless of the conditions of illumination.

4. Size Constancy the tendency to perceive objects as staying the same despite changes in our distance from them.

D. MOTION PERCEPTION
This refers to the psychological processes that are involved in the perception of movement. We perceive motion of objects because the real motion correspondingly stimulates different parts of the retina serially. The serial nature of sensation in retina gives the impression of actual movement of the object.

D. MOTION PERCEPTION
Perception of real movement is based on change of position relative to other objects within the visual field. Whenever there is movement, the perceptual system must decide what is moving and what is stationary with respect to some frames of reference.

D. MOTION PERCEPTION
However, movement perception can be attributed to the serially changing stimulations in the retina only partly, because sometimes we also perceive movement without actual movement of the object in the environment. This phenomenon is called apparent motion in which, without any energy movement across the receptor surface of the retina, we still perceive movement.

D. MOTION PERCEPTION
How we perceive real or relative motion is explained by two kinds: Background Motion and Motion Parallax. To explain movement of objects that are not actually in motion, psychologists arrived at three kinds of Apparent Motion: Autokinetic Effect, Phi Phenomenon and Stroboscopic Motion.

I. Relative/Real Motion

a. Background Motion The pattern of blur caused by background motion serves as a clue for object motion.

I. Relative/Real Motion

b. Motion Parallax the tendency to perceive ourselves passing objects at different distances from you appear to move at different rates when you are in motion. Closer objects move fastest and farther objects move slowest.

II. Apparent Motion

a. Stroboscopic Motion - refers to a methodology of displaying a series of still images, giving the perception of continual motion. It is a visual illusion in which the perception of motion is generated by a series of stationary images that are presented in rapid succession.

II. Apparent Motion

b. Phi Phenomenon - refers to the perception of movement as a result of sequential presentation of visual stimuli. It is an illusion of movement caused by flashing lights on and off, one after the other.

II. Apparent Motion

c. Autokinetic Effect - It is the tendency to perceive a stationary point of light in a dark room as moving. For example, if a person stares at or fixates on a small stationary spot of light in a completely darkroom, the spot will eventually appear to move. The auto-kinetic effect has been the subject of many experiments, but there is still no adequate explanation as to how it exactly happens. However, it has been observed that auto-kinetic effect is somewhat influenced by suggestion and subject's prejudice.

NEXT MEETING
1. INTERPRETATION: PERCEPTUAL SET AND CONTEXT 2. ERRORS OF PERCEPTION 3. ESP

Perceiving Motion ; Important Points

The motion of objects tells us not only about where the objects are, but also what they are doing. Ex. A barking dog racing toward an intruder is
perceived not just as a moving dog but as an event, a dog is attacking.

When two objects are in motion, one may perceive one as having caused the motion of the other.

III. INTERPRETATION
Our interpretation of the things we perceived depends on how we organized them and most often are influenced by set and context. There are two related concepts on how our interpretation of things we organized are influenced by several factors: Perceptual Set and Perceptual Context

A. Perceptual Set
- The tendency for our perception of an object to be influenced by what we expect to see, hear, smell, touch or taste.
Ex.: 1. A student who is in a hurry to go out of the classroom, waits for the bell in anticipation. When the bell rings, he stands up immediately and rushes out of the room. 2. A hungry person looking for an eating place notices restaurant better than beauty shops. 3. A girl in an office awaiting the call of a boyfriend may be more aware of her ringing cellphone than of her boss calling her.

A. Perceptual Context
- The tendency for our perception of an object to be influenced by other stimuli that are present.

Carefully examine the message. Note that the two characters in the word is and the number 15 are identical. In addition the h in the word phone and the b in the word number are identical, as are the d in the word code and the I in the word call. But in each instance you interpret these identical stimuli as different due to the context in which they appear.

You could probably read the text, but not as easily as when you read letters in their usual orientation. Knowledge and experience allowed you to understand the text. You could read the words because of your knowledge of letter shapes, and maybe you even have some prior experience in reading text upside down. Without knowledge of letter shapes, you would perceive the text as meaningless shapes, just as people who do not know Chinese or Japanese see the characters of those languages as meaningless shapes. Note that in the example above, you did not stop to read every single letter carefully. Instead, you probably perceived whole words and phrases. You may have also used context to help you figure out what some of the words must be. For example, recognizing upside may have helped you predict down, because the two words often occur together. For these reasons, you probably overlooked problems with the individual letterssome of them, such as the n in down, are mirror images of normal letters. You would have noticed these errors immediately if the letters were right side up, because you have much more experience seeing letters in that orientation.

Ordinarily, when you read, you use the context of your prior experience with words to process the words you are reading. When you are reading and you encounter an unusual word, you may be able to determine the meaning of the word by its context. Similarly, when looking at the world, you routinely make use of context to interpret stimuli. For instance, look at Example A in the illustration called Context Effects. Note that you can perceive an identical stimulus as either a B or an 8, depending on whether you read the row of letters or the column of numbers. Your perception depends on the context. Although context is useful most of the time, on some rare occasions context can lead you to misperceive a stimulus. Look at Example B in the Context Effects illustration. Which of the green circles is larger? You may have guessed that the green circle on the right is larger. In fact, the two circles are the same size. Your perceptual system was fooled by the context of the surrounding red circles.

1.ERRORS OF PERCEPTION 2.ESP

ILLUSIONS and HALLUCINATIONS

Illusion is a mistake in the perception of a sensory experience. It occurs when our perception of an object does not agree with the true physical characteristics of an object.

Hallucinations are also perceptions that occur under abnormal conditions. This happens when an individual sees, hears or feels things that are not actually present yet he believes them to be present.

ILLUSIONS and HALLUCINATIONS

Errors in perception are only considered illusions if they are experienced by a large number of people. For example, if you are the only person who misreads a word, that is not an illusion. But if a large number of people misread the word in exactly the same way, then it may be considered an illusion. Illusions occur in normal people, but hallucinations are usually experienced only by people suffering from the effects of fever, mental illness, or drugs.

Shape

Illusion

Zllner Illusion
Against a background of slanted lines, a perfect square appears trapezoidalthat is, wider at the top than at the bottom. This illusion may occur because the lines create a sense of depth, making the top of the square seem farther away and larger.

Length Illusion

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L e Illusion Ponzo n g t h
The illustration i o n I l l u s shows the two monsters are identical in size. Because the upper monster is perceived as being farther away, it is also perceived as being larger than the monster in front.

Ponzo Illusion
Illusion named after Italian psychologist Mario Ponzo. The depth cue of linear perspective causes the top horizontal bar to appear longer than the bottom bar even though both have the same size.

Illusion of Size

When we are led to misperceive distances, we not only misjudge length and shape, but we also misjudge size. This is an actual, unretouched photograph. But the girl on the right appears like a giant compared to the woman on the left, even though they are really about the same height. How is this possible? Even though they seem about the same distance from the camera, the smaller person is actually much farther away than the larger person. The room itself is constructed in such a way that it provides misleading cues about distance. The left corner of the room is actually farther away from the viewer than the right corner of the room. In addition, the right side of the room is elevated so that the feet of both people appear at roughly the same relative height on the visual field. This contributes to the size illusion, because normally when two people stand at different distances, the feet of the more distant person appear higher in the visual field. This unusual room is called the Ames room after American ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames, who first constructed such a room in the 1940s.

Impossible Figure
This illusion occurs when one perceive an object as reasonable, although it is actually impossible to construct. One reason proposed by psychologists to explain this is that we do not see an object in its entirety, but instead see only portions of the object at one time.

Movement Illusion
This illusion occurs when one perceive an object is in motion when in fact it is not.