Perception
Video Notes:
- There are no absolutes, everything comes from where you compare it
- The attentional system con only pay attention to one thing at a time
- Color to shape, brain assigns colors to the shape
- Point of view, from how we were looking at it, it looked like the balls
were going up, but they were actually going down
- The brain is using stratus
World and Me interactions
- Detect sensation
- Make meaning perception
- Act
Definitions
- Sensation
o The raw sensory information at the point that it reaches our
receptors
- Perception
o Conscious awareness of a stimulus or stimuli
o How we make meaning of stimuli
- The Perceptual Process
o The process by which we detect, interpret, and act on the world
- Heuristics
o a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision,
pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal
mental effort
- Perception Adaptation
o This refers to the ability of the body to adapt to an environment
by filtering out distractions.
o Detect sensation
o Make meaning perception
o Act
o Past experience
What is perception?
- Recognizing an odorant is the smell of a gardenia
- Distinguishing the flowers from the leaves, one shrub from another
shrub
- Being able to connect the visual image with the olfactory image – to
see them as the same
o Like at the movies where the sound is in back, but you “hear” it
from the screen
Do our perceptions match the physical world?
- Our sensory systems are not like mechanical or electrical instruments.
o The eye, for example, is not a camera
Think about the spaces you hear between words as I talk
- Think_about_the_space
o They are not real.
- Thinkaboutthespaces
- In fact, not everything I say be said clearly, either because I
mispronounce it, mumble, speak too softly, or the speaker doesn’t pick
it up... and yet you will be able to perceive the word
o Think’bouttspeces gets translated into Think_about_the_spaces
- Now consider traveling to a non-English speaking country
o We don’t know the edges of words, so it sounds like noise
o We may hear English words even though no English was spoken
Frog Eyes are not Human Eyes
- (Lettvin et al., 1959)
- Recorded from Frog Optic Nerve
- Three types of fibers
o Sharp edges and boundaries
o Sudden darkness
o Small objects moving in irregular pattern
- Human retinas create different responses through the same process
Perception is about
- Helping us to distinguish objects
- Helping us make sense of the world
o Note: prior experience shapes current experience
- Consequently, perception is not about creating an exact image of the
world, it is about creating an image that best helps us understand and
respond to the world
- Our sensory systems help us detect what we need to detect and to not
see what we don’t need to detect
- One other note: we have a number of internal sensory systems
monitoring important homeostatic process
o For example, receptors on your hypothalamus monitor blood
temperature
o These systems don’t help us understand the world (we are not
aware of them unless something goes wrong); they help us to be
in an optimal state for responding to the world
- And it is even about creating things that are not inherent to the
physical stimulus
The Perceptual Process
What do you see?
- Colors
- Shapes
- Depth
- Movement (not in the picture, but if it was real world)
- Dorsal Stream
o Where
- Ventral Stream
o What
Color Perception
- Color is not inherent to light waves
o Our brain creates color
- Why/How do objects have color?
o Objects absorb some light and reflects the rest.
o What light is absorb/reflected depends on the light that is
available
- If visible light does not have color, why does color feel real? (The
question of Qualia.)
- One purpose: Predator Detection
Why Color Vision?
- Did it develop just to see colors?
o Certainly, colors make for a pleasant experience.
- Probably not. Probably developed to help with:
o Perception of form, shape
o Grouping of objects
o Perception of contours
o Perception of texture
o Object detection and identification
o Perception of depth
o Perception of motion
o Recognition of shadows
Is Color Real?
- Not real in the sense that wavelengths are not actually colored
- Real in the sense that “color” is an inherent property of objects –
blackberries and raspberries have same shape, but they reflect
different light waves, therefore they are inherently different colors
- Color than is another way that our perceptual systems help us to
gather information and add meaning to environmental stimuli
o It does so quickly and easily (compared to using illumination
alone)
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a
sound?
Similarly
- Our perceptual systems are good at detecting patterns
- Fully processing stimuli takes time and resources
o We don’t always have time
o Cognition is a limited resource
- They use heuristics, rules of thumb, to quickly detect these patterns
Gestalt Rules for Perceptual Grouping
We can use two eyes for depth
- Binocular Disparity
- But we only need…
o One eye: heuristics for depth perception
What does this mean?
- Our perceptual systems are designed to help us see the world as we
need to see it
o They help us see, hear... differences between things
o They help us see, hear... patterns in things
- They do it quickly and efficiently, not necessarily accurately, at first
because of the design of a priori processes
- Through action, attention, and cognition we can evaluate our first
impression and correct
- Experience shapes perception; perception shapes experience...
