Perception

Every working moment of our lives we hear, see and feel.

Everything in our vicinity sends the information that we
receive through our senses. When we receive information
through our senses, we call it sensation. Although intimately
related, sensation and perception play two complimentary
but different roles in how we interpret our world.
Sensation is the actual activation of the sense organ. It can also
be referred to as the process of sensing our environment
through touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell. This
information is sent to our brains where perception comes
into play.
Perception is the process by which the brain receives, organizes
and interprets information. The brain receives information
through the sense organs. In order to find meaning, the brain
organizes information in such a way that it makes sense to us
has meaning.
• Sensory organs involved in perception
The sensory system is part of the nervous system responsible
for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists
of sensory receptors, neural pathways and parts of the brain
involved in sensory perception. Commonly recognized
sensory systems are:
- Vision (eyes)
- Hearing (ears). Hearing is the ability to perceive sound by
detecting vibrations.
- Olfactory (nose). Involved in smelling
- Taste (tongue). Taste is the ability to perceive the flavour of
substances including food. Human beings receive tastes
through sensory organs called taste buds concentrated on the
upper surface of the
tongue.
- Somatic sensation (skin). The skin is involved in haptic
perception. Haptic perception is the process of recognizing
objects through touch. It involves combination of
somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin surface.
Most of these receptors are on or near the surface but some
are internal. Thus, we sometimes experience a sense of
pain with a toothache, headache, stomachache, etc.
• Each sensory receptor detects its own special form of
energy and transmits a signal to the brain. The reception
of the signal in the brain represents sensation. How the
brain interprets these signals and makes them meaningful
is called perception.
• Most of the time the interpretation of the
received energy is consistent with the sensation.
Sometimes our interpretation is incorrect. These
misinterpretations are called illusions. When we
witness an illusion, we perceive something that
does not correspond to what is actually out there
—what exists in the real world. Illusions fool us.
They convince us of things that are not true.
• Dictionary definitions of illusion usually state that
an illusion is a sensory perception that causes a
false or distorted impression, or
misrepresentation of a "real" sensory stimulus
• Here's another one that could be a face or it could
just be some trees.
• What you might see first is a really scary devilish face staring
out at you. What other people see first is a couple of women
standing in front of their own reflections in a mirror.
• Mental processes involved in perception
The mental processes involved in perception include:
- Memory
- Attention
- Concentration
- Emotions
- Reasoning
- Intelligence
• Stimulus response theory
This is a concept that refers to a belief that behaviour manifest as
a result of interplay between stimulus and response in
particular the belief that a subject is
presented with a stimulus and then responds to that
stimulus producing behaviour, in other words
behaviour cannot exist without a stimulus of
some sought.
• Sensation: is the process by which our senses gather
information and send it to the brain.
• A large amount of information is being sensed at any one
time such as room temperature, brightness of the lights,
someone talking, a distant train, or the smell of perfume
• With all this information coming into the senses, the
majority of the world never gets recognized. For instance
humans don't notice radio waves, x-rays, or the
microscopic parasites crawling on the skin. We don't sense
all the odors around us or taste every individual spice in a
gourmet dinner.
• We only sense those things we are able too since we don't
have the sense of smell like a bloodhound or the sense of
sight like a hawk; our thresholds are different from these
animals and often even from each other.
•  Absolute Threshold: is the point where something
becomes noticeable to human senses. It is the softest sound
that one can hear or the slightest touch that one can feel. 
Anything less than this goes unnoticed. 
The absolute threshold is therefore the point at which a
stimuli goes from undetectable to detectable to the senses.
• Difference Threshold: once a stimulus becomes detectable,
how do human can recognize if this stimulus changes. 
When we notice the sound of the radio in the other room,
how do we notice when it becomes louder.
• It's conceivable that someone could be turning it up so
slightly that the difference is undetectable.  The difference
threshold is the amount of change needed for us to
recognize that a change has occurred. 
 
This change is referred to as the Just Noticeable Difference.
• Signal Detection Theory: Have you ever been in a crowded
room with lots of people talking? 
• Situations like that can make it difficult to focus on any
particular stimulus, like the conversation we are having with
a friend. 
• We are often faced with the daunting task of focusing our
attention on certain things while at the same time
attempting to ignore the flood of information entering our
senses. 
• When we do this, we are making a determination as to what
is important to sense and what is background noise. 
• This concept is referred to as signal detection because we
attempt detect what we want to focus on and ignore or
minimize everything else.
• Sensory Adaptation: refers to stimuli which has
become redundant or remains unchanged for an
extended period of time. 
• Ever wonder why we notice certain smells or
sounds right away and then after a while they fade
into the background? 
• Once we adapt to the perfume or the ticking of the
clock, we stop recognizing it. 
• This process of becoming less sensitive to
unchanging stimulus is referred to as sensory
adaptation, after all, if it doesn't change, why do we
need to constantly sense it?
 Perception
• As mentioned in the introduction, perception refers
to interpretation of what we take in through our
senses.
• The way we perceive our environment is what
makes us different from other animals and different
from each other.
 Gestalt Principles of Grouping
• The German word "Gestalt" roughly translates to
"whole" or "form," and the Gestalt psychologist's
sincerely believed that the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts. 
• In order to interpret what we receive through our
senses, they theorized that we attempt to organize
this information into certain groups
• This allows us to interpret the information
completely without unneeded repetition.
• For example, when you see one dot, you perceive it
as such, but when you see five dots together, you
group them together by saying a "row of dots.
• Without this tendency to group our perceptions,
that same row would be seen as "dot, dot, dot, dot,
dot," taking both longer to process and reducing
our perceptive ability.
• The Gestalt principles of grouping include four
types: similarity, proximity, continuity, and closure.
• Similarity refers to our tendency to group things together
based upon how similar to each other.
• In the first figure above, we tend to see two rows of blue dots
and two rows of black dots. The dots are grouped according
to similar colour.
• In the next figure, we tend to perceive three columns of two
lines each rather than six different lines. The lines are
grouped together because of how close they are to each
other, or their proximity to one another.  
• Continuity refers to our tendency to see patterns and
therefore perceive things as belonging together if they form
some type of continuous pattern. In the third figure, although
merely a series of dots, it begins to look like an "X" as we
perceive the upper left side as continuing all the way to the
lower right and the lower left all the way to the upper right. 
• Finally, in the fourth figure, we demonstrate
closure, or our tendency to complete familiar
objects that have gaps in them. Even at first glance,
we perceive a circle and a square.
• Maintaining Perceptual Constancy: Imagine if every
time an object changed we had to completely
reprocess it. 
• The next time you walk toward a building, you
would have to re-evaluate the size of the building
with each step, because we all know as we get
closer, everything gets bigger. 
• The building which once stood only several inches is
now somehow more than 50 feet tall.  
Luckily, this doesn't happen. Due to our ability to maintain
constancy in our perceptions, we see that building as the
same height no matter what distance it is.
• Perceptual constancy refers to the ability to see things
differently without having to reinterpret the object's
properties. There are typically three constancies
discussed, including size, shape, brightness.
- Size constancy refers to an ability to see objects as
maintaining the same size even when the distance from
them makes things appear larger or smaller.  This holds
true for all of our senses.  As we walk away from our
radio, the song appears to get softer.  We understand,
and perceive it as being just as loud as before.  The
difference being our distance from what we are sensing.
- Everybody has seen a plate shaped in the form of a
circle.  When we see that same plate from an angle,
however, it looks different.  Shape constancy allows
one to perceive that plate as still being a circle even
though the angle from which one views it appears to
distort the shape.
- Brightness constancy is the ability to recognize that
colour remains the same regardless of how it looks
under different levels of light.  That deep blue shirt
you wore to the class suddenly looks black when you
walk indoors.  Without colour constancy, we would
be constantly re-interpreting colour and would be
amazed at the miraculous conversion our clothes
undertake.
• Perceiving Distance:We determine distance using
two different cues: monocular and binocular. 
Monocular cues are those cues which can be seen
using only one eye.  They include size; texture,
overlap, shading, height, and clarity.
• Size refers to the fact that larger images are
perceived as closer to us, especially if the two
images are of the same object
• The texture of objects tend to become smoother as
the object gets farther away, suggesting that more
detailed textured objects are closer.
• Due to overlap, those objects covering part of
another object is perceived as closer. 
• The shading or shadows of objects can give a clue
to their distance, allowing closer objects to cast
longer shadows which will overlap objects which
are farther away
• Objects which are closer to the bottom of our visual
field are seen as closer to us due to our perception
of the horizon, where higher (height) means farther
away.
•  Similar to texture, objects tend to get blurry as they
get farther away, therefore, clearer or more crisp
images tend to be perceived as closer (clarity).  
• Binocular cues refer to those depth cues in which
both eyes are needed to perceive.  There are two
important binocular cues; convergence and retinal
disparity. 
- Convergence refers to the fact that the closer an
object, the more inward our eyes need to turn in
order to focus. The farther our eyes converge, the
closer an object appears to be. 
- Since our eyes see two images which are then sent
to our brains for interpretation, the distance
between these two images, or their retinal
disparity, provides another cue regarding the
distance of the object. 
 Factors influencing perception
• Past experience
• Current drive state
• Emotions
• Individual values
• Environment
• Cultural background and experience
• The influence of past experience is evident through the
effects of size constancy and depth perception.
• Past experience, expectations and individual values will
combine to influence perception. For example,
experiments of symptom perception show that just
telling people a stimulus might be painful makes them
more likely to report pain in response to it.
• Current drive state affects what we perceive in different
ways. First our level of arousal determines how much
attention we will pay to the environment
- Second, our motivational state will determine what we
pay attention to in our environment. For example when
we are hungry we are likely to notice food-related
stimuli
• Emotions will also affect what we attend to and perceive.
It has been well established that anxiety results in an
increased perception of threat and a narrowing of
attention onto threatening stimuli. Perceptual changes
can also be seen for positive emotions.
• The environment provides external stimuli that we
interpret into experience. Our knowledge of the
environment can override what we see and result in a
distorted perception.
• Cultural factors influence perception less than be
expected. May aspects of visual perception are consistent
across cultures. We are quicker and better at recognising
people of our own ethnic group compared to people of
another ethnic group.
This can influence how healthcare professionals
interact with patients of different ethnicity.
Abnormal perceptual processes are relevant to many
disorders, including autism and schizophrenia. For
example, people with autism and antisocial
characteristics both have poor perception of facial
expressions of emotions. Schizophrenia and other
psychotic experiences involve the perception of
illusory events as real.
 Visual illusion
• The organizational mechanisms of vision are best
demonstrated by illusions.
• Illusions illustrate that perception is a creative
construction that the brain makes in interpreting
visual data …. Learning does not prevent us from
being taken in by these illusions
• We do not see the world as it really is; perception is
always biased by the perceiver’s motivational state.
• The images below – while limited to the visual
modality – illustrate that perception is an active
construction of the mind rather than a valid
representation of objective reality.
• Not easy, is it? Your RIGHT brain tries to say the
COLOUR but your LEFT BRAIN insists on reading
the WORD