Yueh-Ting Tsai

Midterm 2 essay
The central principle of Gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a whole with self-organizing
tendencies rather than parts of sums. This principle explains that the human mind considers objects in
their entirety before, or in parallel with, perception of their individual parts suggesting the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts. In the domain of perception, Gestalt psychologists stipulate that
perceptions are the products of complex interactions among various stimuli. The gestalt effect is the
capability of our brain to generate whole forms, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of
global figures instead of just collections of simpler and unrelated elements
When it comes to our perceptions of the world around us, you might assume that what you see is what
you get. But that is not always the case. But rather the way you see the world is influenced heavily by
your experiences, expectations, motivations, beliefs, emotions, and even your culture. This is known as
the perceptual set. A perceptual set is basically a tendency to view things only in a certain way. Perceptual
sets can impact how we interpret and respond to the world around us and can be influenced by a number
of different factors. Also A perceptual set is a good example of top-down processing. Because in topdown processing perceptions begin with the most general and becomes more specific and it can be
heavily influenced by expectations and knowledge.
Context perception is a perception that is affected by the influence of environmental factors on one's
perception of a stimulus. Context perception can impact our daily lives in many ways such as word
recognition, learning abilities, memory, and object recognition. It can have an extensive effect on
marketing and consumer decisions. For example when we go to the market store when we look at items
that are at the top of the shelf we think that it is a very good brand and it is high in quality while when we
look at the bottom of the shelf we think that they make the same thing but the product isnt as good as the
top. Also In reading difficult handwriting context effects is used to determine what letters make up a
word. This helps us analyze potentially ambiguous messages and decipher them correctly. It can also
affect our perception of unknown sounds based on the noise in the environment.
Depth perception arises from a variety of depth cues. These are typically classified into binocular cues
that are based on the receipt of sensory information in three dimensions from both eyes
and monocular cues that can be represented in just two dimensions and observed with just one eye.
Binocular cues include eye convergence, disparity, and yielding depth from binocular vision through
exploitation of parallax. Monocular cues include size: distant objects subtend smaller visual angles than
near objects, grain, size, and motion parallax.
Motion perception is the process of inferring the speed and direction of elements in
a scene based on visual, vestibular and prospective inputs there are two motion
perceptions the First order motion perception and second order motion perception.
The first motion is used mostly in billboards in which an object is perceived as
moving when, in fact, a series of stationary images is being presented. The second
motion is motion in which the moving contour is defined by contrast, texture, flicker
or some other quality that does not result in an increase in luminance or motion
energy in the Fourier spectrum of the stimulus.