Percep on – Notes based on material covered in lectures

What is perception?

 Distinction between sensation and perception

 Sensory receptors: Vision, Hearing, Taste, Smell, Touch
 Kinesthesis (position of limbs and state of tension in the muscles, tendons
and joints)
 Vestibular sense: Movement and stationary position of the head, key
sense in maintaining balance

Sensation vs Perception

 Sensation - initial contact with the external world through our sense
organs
 Sensory receptors – cells specialized in transduction.
 Perception – interpretation of raw sensory inputs
Rules of interpretation?
 Two basic sub-processes: Pattern recognition and attention
 Pattern recognition - Perceiving a form in a stimulus
 Theories of pattern recognition – complexity of a process that is
automatic and beyond realization
Template matching
 Templates - specific patterns stored in memory
 A simplistic approach
 Criticism
Prototypes
 Prototypes are abstract patterns
Feature detection/ Distinctive features
 A stimulus as a configuration of some basic features
 Gibson (1968, 1969): Letter recognition
 Special feature detectors
Geons
 Entire shape taken into consideration – three dimensional objects
 Geons are simple geometric three-dimensional components
 Geons can be combined to produce complex ones.
Issue
 Top down or Bottom up?

A en on
 Concentration of mental activity
 Focus and a margin
 Concept of filtering
 Role of motivational and expectancy factors

Methods of studying a en on
 Divided attention and selective attention
Divided attention
 In DA tasks people must attend to several simultaneously active messages
and respond to each
Selective attention
 People are confronted with two or more simultaneous tasks and are
required to focus their attention on one while disregarding the other.
 Classic study by Cherry (1953): Shadowing and dichotic listening
 Cocktail party phenomenon
 Stroop Effect

Sensory Thresholds
 For any sensation and subsequent perception to take place the stimuli
must first cross a certain sensory threshold (certain minimum
intensity)

Absolute Limen
 It has been defined as the magnitude of physical energy that can be
detected 50% of the time.
 Variation in AL

Difference Limen
 Difference limen - minimum amount of change required in a stimuli, for
it to be detected
 Jnd or just noticeable difference
Subliminal Percep on
 Stimuli outside conscious awareness
 Experimental evidence

Sensory Adapta on
 Reduction in sensitivity when stimuli don’t change
 Advantages of sensory adaptation
 Disadvantages

Object percep on
 Internal representation of the world is full of objects
 Representation is formed even when some ambiguity is there
 Gestalt approach: Perceptual processes operate by grouping visual
elements in the simplest possible manner.
 Laws of perceptual organization
 Contours in visual form perception

Gestalt Laws of Percep on

 Law of Prägnanz
 Proximity
 Figure and ground
 Closure
 Closure
 Gap Filling
 Similarity
 Continuity
 Unitary shapes
 Superimposition/Overlap
 Common Fate

Percep on as a construc ve process

 Stimulus ambiguous - Perception may alternate
 Ambiguous Figures
 Two alternative hypotheses
 Combination of bottom up and top-down processes
Ac ve nature of percep on
 Example: Necker’s cube
 Perception is dynamic
 In case of ambiguity hypothesis selection becomes apparent
 Influence of context on perception
 Context can influence perception

Illusions
 When our perception of an object does not match with its true physical
characteristics, we experience an Illusion
 Some Illusions are due to physical distortion of the stimuli and others are
due to misinterpretation
 Examples: Ponzo illusion, Mϋller –Lyer Illusion
 Illusion and size constancy - Explanation in terms of misplaced size
constancy
 Ponzo illusion – upper line appears to be longer
 Muller – Lyer illusion – Outward pointing arrows (line appears near
 Illusion: Active nature of perception
 Illusion of Shading

Paradoxical figures
 Even though we realize that they are impossible figures, our perceptual
system tries to test the 3-D hypothesis
Perceptual Constancy
 The ability to perceive an object as unchanging, despite changes in the
sensory information that reaches our eyes
 Size Constancy
 We perceive size of objects as constant
 Perceptual system takes into account an object’s distance from the
perceiver
 Shape Constancy
 Perceptual system maintains constancy of shape
 Location Constancy
 Stationary objects don’t appear to move even though their images on the
retina shift as the viewer moves around.
 Brightness Constancy
 Visual objects appear constant in their degree of whiteness, grayness, or
blackness
 Colour Constancy
 Familiar objects retain their colour under a variety of lighting situations

Depth Perception
 Retinal images - two-dimensional (three-dimensional world)
 Perception of distance (depth) - enables perception in a three-dimensional
way.
Monocular Cues
 Linear perspective
 Relative Size
 Interposition
 Texture Gradient
 Light and Shadow:
 Atmospheric Perspective:
 Motion Parallax
Binocular Cues
 Binocular cues depend on the movement of both the eyes.
 Retinal Disparity
 Convergence

Motion Perception
 Actual physical movement of the objects in the environment - real
motion.
 Perception of motion can also take place in the absence of actual physical
movement in the environment.
Real Motion
 Concept of “brain comparator” - comparing muscle movement with that
movement of retinal image .
Apparent Motion
 In apparent motion, movement is perceived in the absence of actual
physical movement
 Stroboscopic Motion
 Autokinetic effect
 Induced Motion