JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA

DACEE

“UNDERSTANDING PERCEPTION”

Submitted to: Dr Shikha Kapur

Submitted by:

Ramsha Nusrat

M.Sc Development Extension III Semester

Roll number: 20MDE014

 PERCEPTION
The word ‘perception’ comes from the Latin word ‘percepio’, meaning “receiving,
collecting, action of taking possession and apprehension with the mind or senses”.
It basically means: A belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on
how things seem. For example, we have to change the public's perception that
money is being wasted, these photographs will affect people's perceptions of war.

Interest in perception dates back to the time of the ancient Greek philosophers who
were interested in how people know the world and gain its understanding. As
psychology emerged as a science separate from philosophy, researchers became
interested in understanding how different aspects of perception worked,
particularly the perception of color. In addition to understanding the basic
physiological processes that occur, psychologists were also interested in
understanding how the mind interprets and organizes these perceptions. The
Gestalt psychologists proposed a holistic approach, suggesting that the sum equals
more than the sum of its parts.

Today, researchers also work to investigate perception on the neural level and look
at how injury, conditions, and substances might affect perception.

Some definitions of the word Perception given by various dictionaries are:

1. The act or faculty of perceiving, or apprehending by means of the senses or

of the mind; cognition; understanding.

2. Immediate or intuitive recognition or appreciation, as of moral,

psychological, or aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition; discernment.
Example : an artist of rare perception.

3. The result or product of perceiving, as distinguished from the act of

perceiving; percept.
 CONCEPT
While our sensory receptors are constantly collecting information from the
environment, it is ultimately how we interpret that information that affects how we
interact with the world. Perception refers to the way sensory information is
organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced. Perception involves both
bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing refers to the fact that
perceptions are built from sensory input. On the other hand, how we interpret those
sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our experiences, and our
thoughts. This is called top-down processing.

Perception refers to the set of processes we use to make sense of all the stimuli we
encounter every second, from the glow of the computer screen in front of us to the
smell of the room to the itch on your ankle. Our perceptions are based on how we
interpret all these different sensations, which are sensory impressions we get from
the stimuli in the world around us. Perception enables us to navigate the world and
to make decisions about everything, from which T-shirt to wear or how fast to run
away from a bear.

Let’s have a look at an optical illusion. We may see one thing but our friend might
see another thing. That’s because our brains engage in a three-step process when
presented with stimuli: selection, organization, and interpretation.

For example, think of Rubin’s Vase, a well-known optical illusion depicted below.
First we select the item to attend to and block out most of everything else. It’s our
brain’s way of focusing on the task at hand to give it our attention. In this case, we
have chosen to attend to the image. Then, we organize the elements in our brain.
Some individuals organize the dark parts of the image as the foreground and the
light parts as the background, while others have the opposite interpretation.
Some individuals see a vase because they attend to the black part of the image,
while some individuals see two faces because they attend to the white parts of the
image. Most people can see both, but only one at a time, depending on the
processes described above. All stages of the perception process often happen
unconsciously and in less than a second.

THE PERCEPTION PROCESS

The perceptual process is a sequence of steps that begins with stimuli in the
environment and ends with our interpretation of those stimuli. This process is
typically unconscious and happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. An
unconscious process is simply one that happens without awareness or intention.
When you open your eyes, you do not need to tell your brain to interpret the light
falling onto your retinas from the object in front of you as “computer” because this
has happened unconsciously. When you step out into a chilly night, your brain
does not need to be told “cold” because the stimuli trigger the processes and
categories automatically.

SELECTION
The world around us is filled with an infinite number of stimuli that we might
attend to, but our brains do not have the resources to pay attention to everything.
Thus, the first step of perception is the (usually unconscious, but sometimes
intentional) decision of what to attend to. Depending on the environment, and
depending on us as individuals, we might focus on a familiar stimulus or
something new. When we attend to one specific thing in our environment—
whether it is a smell, a feeling, a sound, or something else entirely—it becomes the
attended stimulus.

ORGANIZATION
Once we have chosen to attend to a stimulus in the environment (consciously or
unconsciously, though usually the latter), the choice sets off a series of reactions in
our brain. This neural process starts with the activation of our sensory receptors
(touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing). The receptors transduce the input energy
into neural activity, which is transmitted to our brains, where we construct a mental
representation of the stimulus (or, in most cases, the multiple related stimuli) called
a percept. An ambiguous stimulus may be translated into multiple percepts,
experienced randomly, one at a time, in what is called “multistable perception.”

INTERPRETATION
After we have attended to a stimulus, and our brains have received and organized
the information, we interpret it in a way that makes sense using our existing
information about the world. Interpretation simply means that we take the
information that we have sensed and organized and turn it into something that we
can categorize. For instance, in the Rubin’s Vase illusion mentioned earlier, some
individuals will interpret the sensory information as “vase,” while some will
interpret it as “faces.” This happens unconsciously thousands of times a day. By
putting different stimuli into categories, we can better understand and react to the
world around us.

Perception includes the five senses; touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. It also
includes what is known as proprioception, a set of senses involving the ability to
detect changes in body positions and movements. It also involves the cognitive
processes required to process information, such as recognizing the face of a friend
or detecting a familiar scent.

Although our perceptions are built from sensations, not all sensations result in
perception. In fact, we often don’t perceive stimuli that remain relatively constant
over prolonged periods of time. This is known as sensory adaptation. Imagine
entering a classroom with an old analog clock. Upon first entering the room, you
can hear the ticking of the clock; as you begin to engage in conversation with
classmates or listen to your professor greet the class, you are no longer aware of
the ticking. The clock is still ticking, and that information is still affecting sensory
receptors of the auditory system. The fact that you no longer perceive the sound
demonstrates sensory adaptation and shows that while closely associated, sensation
and perception are different.

There is another factor that affects sensation and perception: attention. Attention
plays a significant role in determining what is sensed versus what is perceived.
Imagine you are at a party full of music, chatter, and laughter. You get involved in
an interesting conversation with a friend, and you tune out all the background
noise. If someone interrupted you to ask what song had just finished playing, you
would probably be unable to answer that question.

Therefore, we can say perception is the sensory experience of the world. It

involves both recognizing environmental stimuli and actions in response to these
stimuli.

TYPES OF PERCEPTION
Some of the main types of perception include:

 Vision
 Touch
 Sound
 Taste
 Smell

There are also other senses that allow us to perceive things such as balance, time,
body position, acceleration, and the perception of internal states. Many of these are
multimodal and involve more than one sensory modality. Social perception, or the
ability to identify and use social cues about people and relationships, is another
important type of perception.
The perceptual process is a sequence of steps that begins with the environment and
leads to our perception of a stimulus and action in response to the stimulus. It
occurs continuously, but you do not spend a great deal of time thinking about the
actual process that occurs when you perceive the many stimuli that surround you at
any given moment.

For example, the process of transforming the light that falls on your retinas into an
actual visual image happens unconsciously and automatically. The subtle changes
in pressure against your skin that allows you to feel objects occur without a single
thought.

Perception acts as a filter that allows us to exist and interpret the world without
becoming overwhelmed by the abundance of stimuli.

Our perceptions can also be affected by our beliefs, values, prejudices,

expectations, and life experiences. The shared experiences of people within a given
cultural context can have pronounced effects on perception. For example, Marshall
Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits (1963) published the results of a
multinational study in which they demonstrated that individuals from Western
cultures were more prone to experience certain types of visual illusions than
individuals from non-Western cultures, and vice versa. One such illusion that
Westerners were more likely to experience was the Müller-Lyer illusion. The lines
appear to be different lengths, but they are actually the same length.
These perceptual differences were consistent with differences in the types of
environmental features experienced on a regular basis by people in a given cultural
context. People in Western cultures, for example, have a perceptual context of
buildings with straight lines, what Segall’s study called a carpentered world
(Segall, 1966). In contrast, people from certain non-Western cultures with an
uncarpentered view, such as the Zulu of South Africa, whose villages are made up
of round huts arranged in circles, are less susceptible to this illusion (Segall.,
1999). It is not just vision that is affected by cultural factors. Indeed, research has
demonstrated that the ability to identify an odor, and rate its pleasantness and its
intensity, varies cross-culturally (Ayabe-Kanamura, Saito, Distel, Martínez-
Gómez, & Hudson, 1998).

Children described as thrill seekers are more likely to show taste preferences for
intense sour flavors (Liem, Westerbeek, Wolterink, Kok, & de Graaf, 2004), which
suggests that basic aspects of personality might affect perception. Furthermore,
individuals who hold positive attitudes toward reduced-fat foods are more likely to
rate foods labeled as reduced fat as tasting better than people who have less
positive attitudes about these products (Aaron, Mela, & Evans, 1994).

LAWS OF PERCEPTION
 LAWS OF PRGANIZATION: GESTALT PRINCIPLES
In the early 20th century, three German psychologists Max Wertheimer,
Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka proposed new principles for explaining
perception called as Gestalt principle. According to these psychologists, the
process of perception does not involve perceiving an array of stimuli as an
object but it involves our tendency to seek a form or pattern in it. The literal
meaning of the word Gestalt is form or configuration. The basic premise of
Gestalt psychology is that ‘whole is different from the sum of its part’. Based
on this basic premise, Gestalt psychologists proposed a number of principles or
laws to explain the process of perceptual organisation i.e., how we perceive
smaller units of stimuli as a whole, having a particular pattern.
 Figure-ground Relationship
This principle states that we have a tendency to segregate our world in the form
of figure and ground. Figure is that part of stimuli which has our focus of the
visual field, whereas the ground is background. Figure has a definite shape and
is better remembered whereas; background is shapeless and has no limits. Now
look at the Figure, what do you see? people or pieces of chess? When we focus
on people, chess pieces disappear in the background and when we focus on the
chess pieces, people become the background.

 Law of Proximity
In order to perceive stimuli meaningful, stimuli which are closer to each other are
perceived by us belonging to one group. Due to this reason, people tend to see
following circles as cluster or group rather than individual circles. Our brain tends
to group large elements as one to make us interpret more easily.

 Law of Similarity

This principle states that stimuli similar to each other are grouped together. For
instance, in the Figure 8, we tend to group circles based on its colours. In real
life also, we use this principle extensively. For example, during a cricket
match, we tend to group players based on the colour of their jersey.

 Law of Continuity or Good Continuation

It refers to our tendency to perceive figures in continuation rather than in parts.
This principle is exhibited more in the perception of line is generally perceived by
us as a line instead of separate circles.

 Law of Closure

This law states that we have a tendency to perceive stimuli as closed shapes even
with some missing parts.

 Law of Common Region/Common Fate

This principle states that stimuli moving in similar directions are perceived as
belonging to same group, as shown in Figure.
  Law of Good Form/Pragnaz
The word Prgnaz is a German in origin, meaning “good figure”. This principle is
also called as “law of good figure”. According to this principle, out of all possible
ways of grouping stimuli, we tend to group stimuli in the simplest and stable
shape. Thus, we can say that simpler forms are more perceived by us. For example,
instead of perceiving Figure, as consisting of four circles, we tend to perceive it as
a symbol of Olympics
REFERENCES:

1. https://www.verywellmind.com/gestalt-laws-of-perceptual-organization-
2795835
2. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/gestalt-principles
3. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/61380/1/Unit3.pdf
4. https://www.verywellmind.com/perception-and-the-perceptual-process-
2795839#:~:text=Perception%20is%20the%20sensory
%20experience,are%20critical%20to%20our%20survival.
5. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-
psychology/chapter/introduction-to-perception/
6. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/msstate-waymaker-
psychology/chapter/reading-what-is-perception/
7. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/perception