PERCEPTION

• Perception can be defined as our recognition and interpretation of sensory

information.

• Perception in psychology can be defined as the sensory experience of the world,

which includes how an individual recognizes and interpreter sensory information.

• Sensory systems provide the raw materials from which experiences are formed.

• Perception is also necessary for us to survive in our environment.

• For example, before parents feed their babies microwaved food, they taste it in order to
make sure that the temperature isn't too hot. This involves using sensory information (touch
and taste) to make sure that the food is not dangerous for the infant.
• Before we cross a busy street, we rely on our hearing and/or sight to make sure a car is not
coming. Without sensory information, we would not be able to judge which food was too
hot or when an appropriate time to cross the street would be.
• The American Psychological Association (APA) defines perception as
"the process or result of becoming aware of objects, relationships,
and events by means of the senses, which includes such activities as
recognizing, observing, and discriminating.“

• Perception includes the five senses; touch, sight, sound, smell, and 

taste. It also includes what is known as proprioception, which is a set
of senses that enable us to detect changes in body position and
movement.
• Bottom-up processing is an explanation for perceptions that start with an
incoming stimulus and working upwards until a representation of the
object is formed in our minds. This process suggests that our perceptual
experience is based entirely on the sensory stimuli that we piece together
using only data that is available from our senses.
• Bottom-up processing is also known as data-driven processing, because
perception begins with the stimulus itself.

• In bottom-up processing, the system takes in individual elements of the

stimulus and then combines them into a unified perception.

• Processing is carried out in one direction from the retina to the visual cortex,
with each successive stage in the visual pathway carrying out ever more
complex analysis of the input.

• Top-down processing refers to the use of contextual information in pattern

recognition.
• In top-down processing, sensory information is interpreted in light of existing
knowledge, concepts, ideas, and expectations.
• For example, understanding difficult handwriting is easier when reading complete
sentences than when reading single and isolated words. This is because the meaning of the
surrounding words provide a context to aid understanding.
Processing and using incoming sensory information

• The American J. J. Gibson offered a theory of ecological optics.

• According to Gibson, the vast richness of optical information from the world – the
change in texture with distance, the shifting of objects’ images relative to one another
as one walks by them, and so on – is sufficient to solve all vision-related problems that
the world presents us.

• Gibson argued that instinct and biology play a vital part in perception and therefore,
when referring to the nature vs. nurture debate, this theory lies firmly on the nature
side, as Gibson implies that the ability to perceive things and process information is
innate, i.e. that a person is born with such an ability.

• Gibson’s theory has been rejected by most perception scientists as insufficient.

Instead, it is argued, humans require a continually updated image or a model of the
environment within our brains, and it is then based on that model that humans
perceive, make decisions, and behave.
Gibson’s ecological theory
• Because Gibson’s theory suggests that processing can be understood solely in
terms of environmental stimuli, it is something referred to as the ecological
theory of perception.

• Bottom-up processing works like this:

1.We experience sensory information about the world around us, such as light
levels from our environment.

2.These signals are brought to the retina. Transduction transforms these signals
into electrical impulses that can then be transmitted.

3.Electrical impulses travel along visual pathways to the brain, where they enter
the visual cortex and are processed to form our visual experience.
Gregory’s theory
• Psychologist Richard Gregory (1970) argued that perception is a constructive
process which relies on top-down processing.

• Stimulus information from our environment is frequently ambiguous so to

interpret it, we require higher cognitive information either from past
experiences or stored knowledge in order to makes inferences about what we
perceive. Helmholtz called it the ‘likelihood principle’.

• For Gregory perception is a hypothesis, which is based on prior knowledge. In

this way we are actively constructing our perception of reality based on our
environment and stored information.
PERCEPTION IS SELECTIVE: THE ROLE OF ATTENTION

• 100 million sensory messages may be clamoring for your attention. Only a few
of these messages register in awareness; the rest you perceive either dimly or
not at all.
• Attention involves two processes of selection:
• (1) focusing on certain stimuli and
• (2) filtering out other incoming information (Luck & Vecera, 2002).

Inattentional Blindness
• Inattentional blindness refers to the failure of unattended stimuli to register in
consciousness (Mack, 2003). We can look right at something without “seeing”
it if we are attending to something else.
*Gorilla-passing the ball experiment (Simons & Chabris, 1999)
Environmental and Personal Factors in Attention

• Attention is strongly affected by both the nature of the stimulus and by

personal factors. Stimulus characteristics that attract our attention include
intensity, novelty, movement, contrast, and repetition. Advertisers use these
properties in their commercials and packaging.
• Internal factors, such as our motives and interests, act as powerful filters and
influence which stimuli in our environment we will notice.
• Advertisers are adept at using attention-getting stimuli to attract potential
customers to their products.
Gestalt Principles of Perceptual Organization

• Gestalt psychology set out to discover how we organize the separate parts of
our perceptual field into a unified and meaningful whole. Gestalt is the German
term for “pattern,” “whole,” or “form.”
• The Gestalt theorists emphasized the importance of figure-ground relations,
our tendency to organize stimuli into a central or foreground figure and a
background.
Gestalt laws of perceptual organization:
similarity, proximity, closure, and continuity
• Gestalt law of similarity, which says that when parts of a configuration are
perceived as similar, they will be perceived as belonging together.

• The law of proximity says that elements that are near each other are likely to be
perceived as part of the same configuration.

• The law of closure, which states that people tend to close the open edges of a
figure or fill in gaps in an incomplete figure so that their identification of the form
(in this case, a circle) is more complete than what is actually there.

• Finally, the law of continuity holds that people link individual elements together so
they form a continuous line or pattern that makes sense. Thus
Gestalt Principles of Perception
 PERCEPTION INVOLVES HYPOTHESIS TESTING

• Recognizing a stimulus implies that we have a perceptual schema—a mental

representation or image containing the critical and distinctive features of a
person, object, event, or other perceptual phenomena.
• Schemas provide mental templates that allow us to classify and identify sensory
input in a top-down fashion.
• Perception is, in this sense, an attempt to make sense of stimulus input, to
search for the best interpretation of sensory information we can arrive at based
on our knowledge and experience.
PERCEPTION IS INFLUENCED BY EXPECTATIONS: PERCEPTUAL
SETS
• Fear and expectation create a psychological context within which the
sensory input is interpreted in a top-down fashion.

• Perceptual set—a readiness to perceive stimuli in a particular way.

• Sometimes, believing is seeing.
PERCEPTUAL CONSTANCIES
• Stimuli are recognizable under changing conditions: this is because of perceptual
constancies.

• Perceptual constancies allow us to recognize familiar stimuli under varying

conditions.
In vision, several constancies are important.
• Shape constancy allows us to recognize people and other objects from many
different angles.
• Because of brightness constancy, the relative brightness of objects remains the
same under different conditions of illumination, such as full sunlight and shade.
• Size constancy is the perception that the size of objects remains relatively
constant even though images on our retina change in size with variations in
distance.
PERCEPTION OF DEPTH, DISTANCE, AND MOVEMENT

• The ability to adapt to a spatial world requires that we make fine distinctions
involving distances and the movement of objects within the environment.

• DEPTH AND DISTANCE PERCEPTION

• One of the more intriguing aspects of visual perception is our ability to perceive depth.
• The capability to see the world in three dimensions is called depth perception.

• The retina receives information in only two dimensions (length and width), but the brain
translates these cues into three-dimensional perceptions.

• It does this by using both monocular depth cues, which require only one eye, and binocular
depth cues, which require both eyes.
Monocular Depth Cues

• Patterns of light and shadow

• Linear perspective
• Interposition
• Height in the horizontal plane
• Texture
• Clarity
• Relative size
• Motion parallax- tells us that if we are moving. (Nearby objects appear to move faster
in the opposite direction than do faraway ones)
Binocular Depth Cues

• Binocular disparity, in which each eye sees a slightly different image.

• Convergence, is produced by feedback from the muscles that turn your

eyes inward to view a close object.
PERCEPTION OF MOVEMENT
• Stroboscopic movement, the illusory movement produced when a light is
briefly flashed in darkness and then, a few milliseconds later, another light is
flashed nearby.
• (termed the “phi phenomenon” by Wertheimer, 1912)
ILLUSIONS: FALSE PERCEPTUAL HYPOTHESES
• Illusions, compelling but incorrect perceptions.
• An illusion is a perception that does not correspond to reality: People think they see something
when the reality is quite different. Another way of thinking of illusions is as visual stimuli that
“fool” the eye.
Context produces geometric illusions
Factors That Influence Perception
• Human perception of the world is obviously influenced by things such as culture and
misinterpretations of cues.

• People often misunderstand what is said to them because they were expecting to hear
something else.

• People’s tendency to perceive things a certain way because their previous experiences
or expectations influence them is called a perceptual set or perceptual expectancy.
• Past experiences
• Individual differences
• Attitude
• Beliefs
• Emotional state/Mood
• External Factors, Etc..