Every day, various stimuli in our environment stimulate our sense organs. Many of these inputs are picked up by our sense organs and transformed into sensations. These sensations are sent to the appropriate areas of the brain. The brain will then interpret these experiences.
Only after such interpretation do we comprehend what the input is. As a result, in understanding the world around us, attention comes first, followed by sensation, and ultimately by brain interpretation. This ‘interpretation of stimulus’ process is known as perception.
In other words, perception is described 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.”
It enables us to perceive and evaluate stimuli in our environment, allowing us to understand and respond appropriately. While perception may appear straightforward, it is actually a complicated and highly customized process with several psychological components and repercussions.
So perception entails two processes: sensory interpretation and perception. However, the the the the interpretation of any input necessitates prior experience. For example, a child who has never seen an elephant before, either in a photograph or in person will be unable to recognize that animal whereas another child who has seen the animal before can easily identify it. As a result, perception might be defined as “a process of interpreting a present stimulus based on prior experience.”
Perception is not as straightforward as stated above. It is a comprehensive strategy. It is a synthetic process involving several physiological and psychological processes. For example, the precision of sense organs, the purity of sensations, an individual’s mental framework, and so on. Otherwise, our perception may be distorted.
How We See Our Environment
Let’s begin with a brief explanation of the basic mechanisms of perception—that is, the various ways in which we experience our surroundings. Scientists have identified six senses by which humans can collect information about their surroundings:
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Visual perception:
The sense of sight via the eyes
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Auditory perception:
The perception of sounds through the ears
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Gustatory perception:
knowledge of flavor and taste on the tongue
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Olfactory perception:
smelling through the nose
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Vestibular sense:
- perception of balance and motion
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Proprioception:
- perception of the body’s position in space
Perception Psychology
This branch of cognitive psychology explores how humans acquire and comprehend information from their senses. Perception, in psychology is a network of body systems and sensory organs that receive and process information. Our brains interpret information from the physical world as we interact with it in order to make sense of what we are experiencing.
Principles of Perception
Our brains also strive to organize perceptions in order to help us understand and interpret our surroundings. The human mind organizes what it observes using six major principles:
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Similarity:
the grouping of objects that resemble one another. Items with similar shapes, sizes, and/or colors form pieces of perceptual patterns that appear to belong together.
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Proximity:
categorizing things based on their physical proximity to one another. The closer they are together, the more likely the brain will recognize them as a group—even if they have no link to each other.
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Continuity:
the proclivity to regard individual aspects as a whole rather than as a collection of parts
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Inclusiveness:
identifying all elements of an image before recognizing its pieces. For example, you may detect a car before recognizing its color, make, or occupants.
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Closure:
viewing an incomplete image and filling in the gaps with what is assumed to be there. This capacity permits one to disregard a partial comprehension and comprehend the situation as a whole, even when information is missing.
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Prägnanz:
the tendency to reduce complicated stimuli to a single pattern. Consider looking at a complicated building and only noticing the front door while failing to notice the structure’s many other elements.
Perception Factors:
Individual variances in perceptual abilities exist. The same stimulus may be perceived differently by two persons.
People’s perceptions are influenced by the following factors:
1. Perceptual understanding:
Every one of us learns to emphasize certain sensory signals while ignoring others based on prior experiences or special training. For example, a person who has received training in an occupation such as artwork or other specialized jobs may outperform other unskilled individuals. For such perceptive capabilities, experience is the best teacher.
Blind people, for example, recognize people by their voices or the sounds of their footsteps.
2. Mental set:
A mental set is a state of readiness to receive sensory input. Such anticipating prepares the individual to pay close attention and concentrate. For example, when we expect a train to arrive, we listen to its horn or sound even if there is a lot of noise disturbance.
3. Motivations and wants:
Our motivations and needs will undoubtedly influence our view. A hungry person, for example, is motivated to recognize just food objects among other stuff. His focus cannot be diverted to anything else until his motive is satisfied.
4. Cognitive styles:
People are believed to differ in the ways they process information in their typical manner. Every individual will have a unique perspective on the problem. It is stated that people who are flexible have better attention, are less affected by interfering stimuli, and are less dominated by internal demands and goals than people who are constrained.
Individual perception discrepancies
Theoretical claims regarding perception are frequently made as if they apply to all species, or at the very least to all people. Perhaps perceptual concepts of such broad applicability will be discovered in the future. Meanwhile, it is known that there are significant variances in perceptual functioning across individuals, between groups of individuals, and within the same individual from one event to the next.
Age
Perceptual functioning should alter with the age of the perceiver because psychological growth results from maturation and learning. Indeed, there is strong empirical evidence supporting age-related changes in perception. There is trustworthy research, for example, indicating perceptual constancies improve with age, with improvement peaking around the age of ten. Similarly, there is considerable evidence for both decreased and increased vulnerability to certain optical illusions as one gets older. Those illusions that become less pronounced with age are most likely due to changes in scanning and the subject’s increased ability to separate parts of a pattern from one another; illusions that become more pronounced are most likely due to the operation of expectancies that develop through experience.
Practice Effects
Investigating the effects of practice provides the most direct assessment of perceptual learning. The observer is needed to detect the presence or absence of a particular stimulus in so-called detection tasks. The effects of practice on visual acuity, for example, were investigated by asking observers to discern simple orientation (left or right) in a row of leaning characters.
Absolute judgment tasks demand far more of the observer than simple or sophisticated detection tasks. For example, he may be required to calculate the diameters of circular targets in inches or centimeters.
Sex
It is difficult to determine if differences in perceiver sex are physiologically based or the cultural result of conventional inequalities in sex roles. Biological sex and sex roles have been hopelessly muddled in human subject investigations thus far.
Sex variations in perception, whatever their cause, can be seen in studies on differences in perception styles. This stylistic distinction manifests itself in extremes of response to context. When a person perceives the world as highly differentiated, he tends to resist contextual influences and is said to be field independent; when a person perceives in an exceedingly diffuse style, he is said to be field dependent. Thus, field-independent subjects outperform field-dependent subjects in locating a simple visual figure (e.g., a triangle) embedded in a complex pattern; similarly, field-independent subjects outperform field-dependent subjects in adjusting a rod in a slanted frame to the real vertical when no other visual clues to verticality are present.
These differences in perceptual style are found to be influenced by both age and gender. Field dependency, in particular, declines with age, as does the closely linked sensitivity to optical illusions.
Principles of Perceptual Organization:
According to William James, an American psychologist, understanding the world as it seems to us will be a vast booming-buzzing jumble. As a result, we do not view things as they seem, but as we want, i.e. more meaningfully.
During the perceptual process, we focus our attention on a specific stimulus and interpret it. Similarly, when required, many discrete inputs in our visual area are organized into a form and perceived more significantly than they appear.
Gestalt psychologists explained this phenomenon well. They hypothesized that the brain generates a coherent perceptual experience by viewing a stimuli as a whole rather than detecting distinct elements.
Figure-ground Relationship:
According to this principle, any figure can be viewed more meaningfully in the context of a background and cannot be detached from that context. Letters created with a white chalk piece, for example, stand out on a blackboard background.
Stimulus Grouping in Perceptual Organization
According to the gestalt principle, when items are grouped together, they can be perceived meaningfully. We adhere to certain guidelines in order to make our view more meaningful.
These are their names:
1. Closeness/Proximity:
Proximity denotes closeness. By grouping objects that are close together, they can be perceived more meaningfully. For example, the word ‘Man’, despite the letters are distinct, has some meaning when put together.
2. Similarity:
Stimuli do not need to be in close proximity for perception. If these objects are comparable, they are grouped together and perceived, even if they are far away.
3. Closure:
When presented with gaps in a stimulus, the human instinct is to regard that figure as complete by filling the gaps psychologically.
4. Symmetry:
Objects with symmetrical shapes are regarded as groupings.
Perceptual Constancy:
This relates to perception’s stability. Despite a shift in the image that we get, we have a tendency to see objects as generally constant and unchanging in shape and size.
For example, when we see a person from 5′ away, the size of the image in our eyes is different than when we see the same person from 100′ away.
Even still, we see him as the same guy. When we look down from the top of the hill, we will see people and houses that are as small as Lillyputs. But this does not perplex us. According to their true size, we view them accurately.
Perceptual constancy is influenced by a variety of elements such as previous experience, expectation, habits, motivations, cognitive styles, learning, imagination, and so on.
Perceptual consistency types include:
There are various sorts of perceptual inconsistencies. Shape and size, brightness and color, size consistency, and so on are examples.
Depth Perception:
Depth perception refers to a person’s ability to discern distance. This is a highly vital skill to evaluate the distance between ourselves and other people, objects, and moving cars, especially when we are on the road. This is also referred to as the third dimension. The remaining two dimensions are left and right, as well as above and below.
Cues:
Certain cues allow for depth perception. These cues assist us in determining the distance between two people or objects.
There are two kinds of cues:
i. Monocular cues:
These are cues that can function when only one eye is open. Some examples of such cues are:
ii. Linear perspective:
The distances between images of distant objects appear to be smaller. Consider the following scenario: you are standing between railway lines, looking off into the distance. At the opposite end, it appears that the tracks are becoming closer and closer together.
iii. Aerial perspective:
Closer items appear clearer than farther away objects. A hill in the distance, for example, appears further away because the features are obscured.
When one object blocks our view of another, the front one appears closer than the partially obscured one.
iv. Gradient structure
A gradient is a continuous change in anything that does not have abrupt transitions. The parts closest to the observer usually have a coarse texture and many features. The texture becomes finer and finer as the distance increases.
This happens gradually and provides information about the depth or distance.
Other monocular cues include movement, shadow, and so forth.
v. Binocular cues:
Depth can sometimes be experienced when both eyes are engaged. This is known as binocular cue. There are two types of binocular cues:
vi. Retinal disparity:
The image of the object on both retinas differs. When the thing is close, the disparity is greater than when it is far away.
The depth can be perceived depending on the correspondence between the distance and the level of difference.
vii. Eyeball convergence or divergence:
As the thing travels closer to our eyes, our eyeballs converge, and as the object moves away from us, our eyeballs diverge. This technique serves as a binocular cue for determining depth.
Movement Perception:
When we see the same object appear in different places at different times, we know it is moving. This is known as movement perception. This ability to recognize movement is acquired naturally at birth.
This is an extremely crucial skill. Only by this ability can the organism comprehend its surroundings and can detect risks / threats in the movement, allowing it to swiftly avoid such dangers.
Motion that is visible:
We sometimes sense objects to be moving. In actuality, the objects are stationary, which means they will not move. As a result, the perception of an object that is not moving, as an object that is moving is an illusion. When we are going quickly in a bus, for example, trees, plants, and other non-moving objects appear to move in the opposite direction.
Similarly, even the movements of figures in a video look to move, even when they do not. Because moving pictures are shot continually and the film reel is run at a high speed, a movement sensation known as stroboscopic motion is produced.
Perception Errors:
As previously stated, perception is the process of analyzing and comprehending a stimuli as it is. However, it is not always feasible to comprehend stimuli as they are. We misinterpret the input, whether deliberately or unknowingly.
It could be due to a deficiency in our sensory organs or a malfunctioning brain. Many times, errors in perception are caused by prejudices in the individual, the time of perception, an unfavorable background, a lack of clarity of stimulus, confusion, conflict in the mind, and other things. There are two types of mistakes:
i. Illusion:
An illusion is a distorted vision. In this case, the person will misinterpret a stimulus and experience it incorrectly. In the dark, for example, a rope may be misidentified as a snake, or vice versa. The voice of an unfamiliar individual is misidentified as that of a friend. A stranger standing at a distance may be misidentified as a known person.
The majority of our illusions are visual and auditory in nature. However, illusions involving other senses are also possible.
ii. Hallucination:
There are times when an individual experiences stimuli even when it is not present. This is referred to as hallucination. The person may perceive an object, person, or voice, even though there are no objects or noises in reality.
Hallucinations include all feelings that people experience, but visual and auditory hallucinations are the most common. Hallucinations are more common in those who are mentally ill, emotionally disturbed, alcoholics, or in states of confusion. However, hallucinations are particularly common in abnormal people and intoxicated people.
Aside from these mistakes, there are some irregularities in our sense perceptions known as anaesthesia (no sensation), hyperesthesia (excessive sensitivity), and paraesthesia (distorted or incorrectly localised sensation).