How do humans perceive objects? More specifically, how do we recognize them? Most people walk throughout their daily lives distinguishing the difference between a television, pencil, car, stop sign, etc. and do not know as to how their brain processes this information. There are many approaches to explain object recognition. These include the bottom-up and top-down approach, and the prototypes, template, and feature matching approaches. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach in which I will be discussing. Richard Gregory came up with the top-down process theory in 1970. His theory states that perception is a hypothesis and you make your best guess on what you’re seeing/ perceiving. He also makes the point that when we perceive things we use prior know facts, information, experiences, or memories to infer them. (Gregory, 1966) The top-down process is like reading. If you are trying to understand the whole page, you would need to read the beginning, middle, and end, instead of trying to understand based on two or three sentences. Gregory also argues that we lose around 90% of visual information before it reaches the brain to be processed. (Gregory, 1966). This would explain visual illusions. In 1935, John Ridley …show more content…
For example, the letter T has one horizontal line and one vertical line and this makes up a T. The letter E has three horizontal lines and one vertical line. Each alphabetical letter has its own unique features, just like every other object does. Squares have four sides and four 95-degree angles; circles have no sides and no angles. An advantage to this theory is that it can recognize abstract concepts, unlike a template. For example, it can recognize features of love, freedom, or sadness. A disadvantage to this theory is that sometimes you would need to require many features to recognize just one
The ultimate goal for a system of visual perception is representing visual scenes. It is generally assumed that this requires an initial ‘break-down’ of complex visual stimuli into some kind of “discrete subunits” (De Valois & De Valois, 1980, p.316) which can then be passed on and further processed by the brain. The task thus arises of identifying these subunits as well as the means by which the visual system interprets and processes sensory input. An approach to visual scene analysis that prevailed for many years was that of individual cortical cells being ‘feature detectors’ with particular response-criteria. Though not self-proclaimed, Hubel and Wiesel’s theory of a hierarchical visual system employs a form of such feature detectors. I will here discuss: the origins of the feature detection theory; Hubel and Wiesel’s hierarchical theory of visual perception; criticism of the hierarchical nature of the theory; an alternative theory of receptive-field cells as spatial frequency detectors; and the possibility of reconciling these two theories with reference to parallel processing.
In Beau Lotto’s Ted Talk “Optical Illusions Show How We See” we could appreciate how our perception can vary based on the context. He explained the importance that color has in our lives and all of the factors that can alter how we perceive a color, such as illumination. Lotto showed how the light that comes through our eyes could mean anything, however it is our brain’s job to give meaning to that information by using patterns, associations, knowledge from past experiences, etc.
For example, sense perception for the processes of Aristotle’s term “abstraction” plays an important role. This was the argument against Plato’s theory of “recollection” from the book “Aristotle Introductory Reading” by Terence Irwin (see Book 2). Aristotle argued that what we perceive in our senses and collect into what we learn and understand is abstraction. The knowledge of everything we know does not come from the soul, which contains unlimited amount of information as Plato’s theory of recollection suggests, but its actually a process called abstraction. The process of collection and storing information through our senses. But the problem can be that people misunderstand or misuse what their senses perceive and draw a wrong understanding from the information they 've gathered, which leads to an illusion rather than understanding. For example, we grow prejudice towards certain things and likes towards others by simple view of it. If we dislike a color, or a shape we may not further investigate it, or even ignore it, gathering the information and understanding it wrongfully just because of how we felt about it. Same can be said about liking something that we may sometimes over exaggerate and overprice, just because we like it that much even though it does not possess that much of what we would want it to.
In examining the world around us we notice many similarities. There is a great deal of reoccurrence, which we can not help but to notice. The same shape occurs over and over in so many different objects. Rings, cans, bottles, candies, the same property we term roundness is found in all these objects. Likewise we see the same color in so many different objects. Often people say these recurrences make the world a dull place. The same set of properties continuously shows up. The best we can hope for is a new combination of these old features. Although this repetition is somewhat boring it is also incredibly important. The right sorts of recurrences, like musical notes, can make a musical piece much more captivating. If the world did not have these similarities running through it there would be no way of recognizing anything. No concepts could ever be made; thinking even in its most basic state would be impossible. The world would only be an experience.
Gibson (1979) developed an ecological approach to the study of visual perception, which is a new and radical approach to the whole field of psychology that humans perceive their environment directly without mediation by cognitive process or by mental entities. According to his assertion of direct perception, there is enough information in our environment to make sense of the world (Gibson, 1977). Gibson (1979) said “direct perception is an activity of getting information from ambient array of light” (p. 147), and further called this a process of information pickup. That is, there is no need for mental processing since every object and event in the world have inherent meanings that are detected and exploited by humans. So his perception is based on information, not on sensations, which is in contrast with the conventional perspective of perception.
Although pointing is a generally crude method of object identification, it can be useful in identifying a particular object, not only through time, but space as well. Quine believes that, at the most rudimentary level of ostension, space and time are inseparable, and therefore provide an essential function in object specification as a platform upon which similarities among particulars can be recognized. Identity also provides an unchanging point of reference for the accumulation and arrangement of objects into groups of kindred particulars. Conversely, it might be said that a particular
Sajda P. & Finkle, L.H. (1995) Intermediate Visual Representations and the Construction of Surface Perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 267-291.
What are some of the elements involved in creating visual illusions? What role does culture play?
In response, they proposed that perception is based on the organization of stimuli into holistic and meaningful forms. They are well-known for the phrase "the whole is different than the sum of its parts. " They proposed several "laws" (really heuristics or "rules of thumb") that are referred to as the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization. These are discussed in the module later on.
In Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “Some close encounters of a mental kind,” Gould discussed about how certainty can be both blessing and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be blessing because it can provide warmth, comfort and secure. However, it can also be a danger because it can trick our mind with false information of what we see and remember in our mind. Gould also talked about the three levels of possible error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention and retrieval. According to Gould, our human mind is the greatest miracle of nature and the wicked of all frauds and tricksters mixed. To support his argument and statements, he used an example of an experiment that Elizabeth Loftus, a professor from University of California Irvine, did to her students and a personal experience of his childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our mind can be tricky and trick us into believing what we see/hear is real due to the three potential error of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and tricky.
seen in its simplest case. A symbol sums up a large number of ideas and
Michael Tye comments that, “Viewers of [a] painting can apprehend not only its content... but also the colors, shapes, and spatial relations obtaining among the blobs of paint on the canvas.” In this sense, qualia explains how humans can understand and recognize images on an everyday basis. If a person that had never seen a tree before was shown a drawing of a brown rectangle with a green circle attached to the top, the image would be foreign and unrecognizable. However, if a person had seen a tree before and was given the same drawing, they would recognize the general shape and colors of the image and assume it was a tree. By giving objects and experiences distinct, subjective qualia, images become recognizable and organized in the
Prior knowledge plays a pivotal role in every aspect of human life. Knowledge can be stored in various formats like images, features, statistical patterns, all these formats help in making sense of the environment. Using prior knowledge humans can perform various activities including, but not limited to: focusing attention, organizing information in to groups, categorizing objects around, hypothesizing, understanding language, and generating inferences(Smith & Kosslyn, 2007). Processing of information is influenced by prior knowledge during the top down processing. Once signal has been detected by the biological visual system, we try to infer meaning using the prior related knowledge which has been stored in the long term memory based on category, association and similarity in features and statistical patterns(Wickens, Lee, Liu, & Becker, 2004). Prior knowledge has no boundaries and it keeps on changing based on experience with the environment making it easier for us humans to understand our surrounding better and quicker as time passes.
There are many different Visual Perception principles in perception. The main principles are Gestalt. Gestalt is a German word meaning 'form' or 'shape'. Gestalt psychologists formulated a series of principles that describe how t...
Blakslee, S. (1993, August 31). The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2014, from www.nytimes.com: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/31/science/seeing-and-imagining-clues-to-the-workings-of-the-mind-s-eye.html