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Perception Essay, Research Paper

Perception

INTRODUCTION Perception is defined as a process by which organisms interpret and organize sensation to produce a meaningful experience of the world. Sensation usually refers to the immediate, relatively unprocessed result of stimulation of sensory receptors in the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin. Perception, on the other hand, better describes one’s ultimate experience of the world and typically involves further processing of sensory input. In practice, sensation and perception are virtually impossible to separate, because they are part of one continuous process. Our sense organs translate physical energy from the environment into electrical impulses processed by the brain. For example, light, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, causes receptor cells in our eyes to activate and send signals to the brain. But we do not understand these signals as pure energy. The process of perception allows us to interpret them as objects, events, people, and situations. Without the ability to organize and interpret sensations, life would seem like a meaningless jumble of colors, shapes, and sounds. A person without any perceptual ability would not be able to recognize faces, understand language, or avoid threats. Such a person would not survive for long. In fact, many species of animals have evolved exquisite sensory and perceptual systems that aid their survival. PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION Organizing raw sensory stimuli into meaningful experiences involves cognition, a set of mental activities that includes thinking, knowing, and remembering. Knowledge and experience are extremely important for perception, because they help us make sense of the input to our sensory systems. You could probably read the text, but not as easily as when you read letters in their usual orientation. Knowledge and experience allowed you to understand the text. You could read the words because of your knowledge of letter shapes, and maybe you even have some prior experience in reading text upside down. Without knowledge of letter shapes, you would perceive the text as meaningless shapes, just as people who do not know Chinese or Japanese see the characters of those languages as meaningless shapes. Reading, then, is a form of visual perception. Note that in the example above, you did not stop to read every single letter carefully. Instead, you probably perceived whole words and phrases. You may have also used context to help you figure out what some of the words must be. For example, recognizing upside may have helped you predict down, because the two words often occur together. For these reasons, you probably overlooked problems with the individual letters?some of them, such as the n in down, are mirror images of normal letters. You would have noticed these errors immediately if the letters were right side up, because you have much more experience seeing letters in that orientation. How people perceive a well-organized pattern or whole, instead of many separate parts, is a topic of interest in Gestalt psychology. According to Gestalt psychologists, the whole is different than the sum of its GESTALT LAWSparts. Gestalt is a German word-meaning configuration or pattern. OF GROUPING The three founders of Gestalt psychology were German researchers Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang K?hler. These men identified a number of principles by which people organize isolated parts of a visual stimulus into groups or whole objects. There are five main laws of grouping: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, and common fate. A sixth law, that of simplicity, encompasses all of these laws. Although most often applied to visual perception, the Gestalt laws also apply to perception in other senses. When we listen to music, for example, we do not hear a series of disconnected or random tones. We interpret the music as a whole, relating the sounds to each other based on how similar they are in pitch, how close together they are in time, and other factors. We can perceive melodies, patterns, and form in music. When a song is transposed to another key, we still recognize it, even though all of the notes have changed. 1) PROXIMITY The law of proximity states that the closer objects are to one another, the more likely we are to mentally group them together 2) SIMILARITY The law of similarity leads us to link together parts of the visual field that are similar in color, lightness, texture, shape, or any other quality 3) CONTINUITY The law of continuity leads us to see a line as continuing in a particular direction, rather than making an abrupt turn 4) CLOSURE According to the law of closure, we prefer complete forms to incomplete forms.This tendency allows us to perceive whole objects from incomplete and imperfect forms. 5)COMMON FATE The law of common fate leads us to group together objects that move in the same direction . 6) Simplicity Central to the approach of Gestalt psychologists is the law of pr?gnanz, or simplicity. This general notion, which encompasses all other Gestalt laws, states that people intuitively FIGUREprefer the simplest, most stable of possible organizations & GROUND Not only does perception involve organization and grouping, it also involves distinguishing an object from its surroundings. Notice that once you perceive an object, the area around that object becomes the background. For example, when you look at your computer monitor, the wall behind it becomes the background. The object, or figure, is closer to you, and the background, or ground, is farther away. Gestalt psychologists have devised ambiguous figure-ground relationships?that is, drawings in which the figure and ground can be reversed?to illustrate their point that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. Consider the accompanying illustration entitled “Figure and Ground.” You may see a white vase as the figure, in which case you will see it displayed

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