Sensation & Perception

Chapter 3
Part II

William G. Huitt

Last revised: May 2005

Sensation and Perception

Sensation
The process through which the senses pick up
visual, auditory, and other sensory stimuli and
transmit them to the brain; sensory information that
has registered in the brain but has not been
interpreted

Perception
The process by which sensory information is
actively organized and interpreted by the brain

Perception
Gestalt principles of perceptual organization
Figure-ground
Organization depends on what we see as figure (object) and
what we perceive a ground (context).

Similarity
Objects that have similar characteristics are perceived as unit.

Proximity
Objects close together in space or time perceived as
belonging together.

Continuity
We tend to perceive figures or objects as belonging together if
they appear to form a continuous pattern.

Closure
We perceive figures with gaps in them to be complete.

Perception

You can see a white vase as figure against a

black background, or two black faces in profile
on a white background

Perception

Perception
Perceptual constancy
The tendency to perceive objects as maintaining
stable properties (e.g., size, shape, brightness, and
color) despite differences in distance, viewing angle,
and lighting
Size constancy
Perceiving objects as being about the same size when
they move farther away

Shape constancy
Perceiving objects as having a stable or unchanging shape
regardless of changes in the retinal image resulting from
differences in viewing angle

Perception

Perception
Monocular depth cues
Depth cues that can be perceived by only one eye
Types of cues
Interposition
When one object partly blocks your view of another,
you perceive the partially blocked object as farther
away
Linear perspective
Parallel lines that are known to be the same distance
apart appear to grow closer together, or converge, as
they recede into the distance

Perception
Monocular depth cues
Types of cues
Relative size
Larger objects are perceived as being closer to the
viewer, and smaller objects as being farther away
Texture gradient
Near objects appear to have sharply defined textures,
while similar objects appear progressively smoother
and fuzzier as they recede into the distance
Atmospheric perspective
Objects in the distance have a bluish tint and appear
more blurred than objects close at hand

Perception
Monocular depth cues
Types of cues
Motion parallax
When you ride in a moving vehicle and look out the
side window, the objects you see outside appear to be
moving in the opposite direction
Objects seem to be moving at different speeds those
closest to you appear to be moving faster than those in
the distance
Objects very far away, such as the moon and the sun,
appear to move in the same direction as the viewer

Perception
James Gibson
Pointed out that our perceptions of motion appear to
be based on fundamental, but frequently changing,
assumptions about stability
Our brains search for some stimulus in the
environment to serve as the assumed reference
point for stability
When youre driving a car, you sense the car to be
in motion relative to the outside environment

Perception
Depth perception
The ability to see in three dimensions and to estimate
distance

Binocular depth cues

Depth cues that depend on two eyes working together
Convergence
Occurs when the eyes turn inward to focus on nearby
objects the closer the object, the greater the convergence

Binocular disparity (or retinal disparity)

Difference between the two retinal images formed by the
eyes slightly different views of the objects focused on

Perception
Ambiguous figures
Can be seen in different ways to make different
images
Best known ambiguous figure is Old Woman/Young
Woman, by E. G. Boring

What do you see?

Now what do you see?

Copyright Allyn & Bacon 2005

Perception
Impossible figures
Do not seem unusual at first
Figures that cannot be built

Perception

Perception
Illusion
A false perception of actual stimuli involving a
misperception of size, shape, or the relationship of
one element to another

Perception

Mller-Lyer Illusion
The two lines above are the same length, but the diagonals
extending outward from both ends of the lower line make it look
longer than the upper line

Influences on Perception
Bottom-up processing
Information processing in which individual
components or bits of data are combined until a
complete perception is formed

Top-down processing
Application of previous experience and conceptual
knowledge to recognize the whole of a perception
and thus easily identify the simpler elements of that
whole

Influences on Perception

Influences on Perception

Influences on Perception
Perceptual set
An expectation of what will be perceived, which can
affect what actually is perceived

David Rosenhan
David Rosenhan and some of his colleagues were
admitted as patients to various mental hospitals with
diagnoses of schizophrenia
Once inside, they acted normal but the staff
members only saw what they expected to see and
not what was actually occurring
The real patients were the first to realize that the
psychologists were not really mentally ill

Influences on Perception
Inattentional blindness
The phenomenon in which we miss an object in our
field of vision because we are attending to another

Influences on Perception
Simons and his colleagues
Showed participants a videotape of a basketball
game in which one team is uniformed in white and
the other in black
Instructed them to count how many times the ball
was passed from one player to another either on the
white or black team
About a third of participants typically fail to later
recall the presence on the screen of even extremely
incongruent stimuli (e.g., a man dressed in a gorilla
costume) under such conditions

Influences on Perception
Social perception
Facial expressions, the visual cues for emotional
perception, often take priority over the auditory cues
associated with a persons speech intonation and
volume, as well as the actual words spoken