PSYC 204: COGNITIVE

PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 3: PERCEPTION
MEYMUNE N. TOPÇU, PhD
 Recap from Lecture 2

Brain Plasticity How to study the

brain

4 main lobes Distributed

in the cortex processing

Three levels of Distribute

analysis d coding
  Perception starts at the receptors
 Bottom-up processing: Physiological
 Bottom-up processing: Behavioral
 Why is it so difficult to design a
perceiving machine?
 Beyond bottom-up processing: Top-down
Lecture Plan processing
 Perceiving objects and people
 Hearing words in a sentence
 Experiencing pain
 Conceptions of object perception
 Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious
inference
(a) Initially Emma thinks she sees a large piece of driftwood far
down the beach. (b) Eventually she realizes she is looking at an
umbrella. (c) On her way down the beach, she passes some
coiled rope.
  Perception occurs when stimulation of the sensory
receptors results in experiences such as seeing,
hearing, taste, smell, and touch
1. Perceptions can change with added info (Her view
become better as she got closer)
The Nature of 2. Perception involves a process similar to reasoning
Perception & problem solving (Remembering having seen that
umbrella the day before)
Emma’s Experience 3. Perception can involve a process (It took time for
her to realize that the driftwood was an umbrella)
4. Perception occurs in conjunction with action (Emma
is running and perceiving at the same time)
 Without perception it is unlikely that feats of
cognition would be possible
DO AN ANALYTICAL INTROSPECTION ABOUT
YOUR PERCEPTIONS AT THE MOMENT
BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING: PHYSIOLOGICAL

 The first step in perception is the stimulation of receptors by stimuli in the environment
 All of our sensory experiences –except imaginations- begins with bottom-up processing
 The light reflected from the umbrella enters stimulates visual receptors in Emma’s eyes
 Electrical signals are transmitted from receptors toward the brain
 Neurons in the cortex called feature detectors respond to simple features like shape and
orientation
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlCG2Z9bnTM
BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING: BEHAVIORAL

 Combining the information provided by the firing of many feature detectors

 Recognition-by-components theory: We perceive objects by perceiving elementary
features called geons
 Geons are perceptual building blocks that can be combined to create objects
BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING: BEHAVIORAL

 Combining the information provided by the firing of many feature detectors

 Recognition-by-components theory: We perceive objects by perceiving elementary
features called geons
 Geons are perceptual building blocks that can be combined to create objects
 Principal componential theory: We can also perceive objects even if portions of
the geons are obscured
 You can tell it’s a flashlight because you can make out its geons
Why is it so 1. The stimulus on the receptors is ambiguous
difficult to  Inverse-projection problem: The task of
design a determining the object responsible for a particular
perceiving image on the retina
machine?  The image created by the book can be created by
an infinite number of objects: a rectangular page,
a tilted trapezoid, a much larger rectangle
 The image on the retina is 2D, the objects are 3D
 Humans solve this problem easily but it poses
problems to computer systems
Can you locate the pencil? The eye-glasses?
Why is it so 2. Objects can be hidden or blurred
difficult to  This problem of hidden objects occurs any time
design a one object obscures part of another object.
perceiving  Occurs frequently in the environment but people
machine? easily understand that the part of an object that is
covered continues to exist
 Remember object-permanence theory
 People are also able to recognize objects that are
not in sharp focus
 Computers perform poorly in these tasks
Why is it so
difficult to 3. Objects look different from different viewpoints
design a  Objects are often viewed from different angles
perceiving  Images of objects are continually changing
machine? depending on the angle from which they are viewed
 Viewpoint invariance: The ability to recognize an
object seen from different viewpoints
 Machines have difficulty doing this
Bottom-line: the process of perception is more
complext than it seems
WHY IS IT DIFFICULT TO DESIGN A
PERCEIVING MACHINE?
Beyond Bottom-up Processing
 Perception needs more information than what is
provided by the activation of the receptors and bottom-
up processing
 Perception involves factors such as:
 Knowledge of the environment
 Expectations people bring to the perceptual situation
 Attention to specific stimuli
 Top-down processing: Processing that originates in the
brain –at the top of the perceptual system
 Three examples:
 perceiving visual objects and people
 hearing words in a sentence
 experiencing pain
Perceiving visual objects and people: The role of context

 Context determines how we identify

visual stimuli
Perceiving visual objects and people: The role of context

 Context determines how we identify visual

stimuli
 Context also plays a role in how we identify
people and assess their emotional expression
 Participants use info from body to make
identification judgments when face is
ambiguous
 In a fear context neutral faces are judged to
express a more negative emotion, while in a
happy context neutral faces are judged to have
a more positive emotion

 Context spontaneously and unconsciously

influence our perception
Perceiving visual objects and people: The role of context

 Context determines how we identify visual

stimuli
 Context also plays a role in how we identify
people and assess their emotional expression
 Participants use info from body to make
identification judgments when face is
ambiguous
 In a fear context neutral faces are judged to
express a more negative emotion, while in a
happy context neutral faces are judged to have
a more positive emotion

 Context spontaneously and unconsciously

influence our perception
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfCCUd8mFtg
Hearing words in a sentence: The role of knowledge and
experience
 When you hear someone talk in a foreign
language. E.g., Spanish
 You won’t understand anything the people
are saying
 The dialogue will probably sound like an
unbroken string of sound
 Except when a familiar word pops out like
gracias
 Someone who understands Spanish
perceives this unbroken string of sound as
individual, meaningful words in a
conversation
 Speech segmentation: Being able to tell
when one word ends, and the next one
begins due to knowledge of the language
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5cEOwFNhAw
 Recap from Lecture 3
Perceiving Top-down
machine? processing

Bottom-up The role of

processing: context
Behavioral

Bottom-up The role of

processing: knowledge and
Physiological experience
  Conceptions of object perception
 Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious inference
 Gestalt principles of organization
 Taking regularities of the environment into
account
 Bayesian Inference

Lecture Plan  Neurons and knowledge about the

environment
 The interaction between perceiving and
taking action
 Movement facilitates perception
 The interaction of perception and action
 The physiology of perception and action
Experiencing pain: The influence of attention

 In the 50s pain was explained by the direct

pathway model
 Pain occurs when receptors in the skin,
nociceptors, are stimulated and send their signals
in a direct pathway from the skin to the brain
 In the 60s people started to realize that the level
and presence of pain depends on other factors
 E.g., athletes who feel the pain of a broken toe
after the final sprint; feeling the pain after seeing
the cut in the finger
 Pain can be influence by expectation and
attention
 E.g., placebo, the effect of gaming
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNnL6Clpe08
WHAT IS BOTTOM-UP AND TOP-DOWN
PROCESSING?
WHAT ARE THE THREE EXAMPLES OF TOP-
DOWN PROCESSING?
All of the examples illustrate that perception is created not only signals from the
environment (bottom-up processing) but what the individual brings to it (top-down
processing)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttd0YjXF0no
  The idea that perception depends on multiple
sources of information supports the idea that
perception involves a complex process
Conceptions of  How perceivers use this information?
object  4 prominent approaches
perception  Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious inference
 The Gestalt principles of organization
 Taking regularities of the environment into
account
 Bayesian inference
1. HELMHOLTZ’S THEORY OF UNCONSCIOUS INFERENCE

 Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) realized that the image on the retina is
ambiguous
 Helmholtz’s question: how does the perceptual system “decide” that this
pattern on the retina was created by overlapping rectangles?
The display in (a) is
usually interpreted as
being (b) a blue
rectangle in front of a
red rectangle. It could,
however, be (c) a blue
rectangle and an
appropriately positioned
six-sided red figure.
1. HELMHOLTZ’S THEORY OF UNCONSCIOUS INFERENCE

 The likelihood principle: we perceive the object that is most likely to have
caused the pattern of stimuli we have received
 This judgment of what is most likely occurs by a process called unconscious
inference
 Unconscious inference: Our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions,
or inferences, that we make about the environment
 Helmholtz’s description of the process of perception resembles the process
involved in solving a problem
 To solve the problem the perceptual system applies the observer’s knowledge of the
environment
 This seems automatic but it is actually the result of a rapid and unconscious
process
2. THE GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

 The Gestalt approach originated, in part, as a reaction to

Wundt’s structuralism
 Gestalt psychologists rejected the idea that perceptions are
formed by simply adding up sensations – the whole is more
than the sum of its parts
 Gestalt means “whole”
 They proposed a number of principles of perceptual
organization to explain the way elements are grouped
together to create larger objects
1. Figure-ground principle
 We perceive something by grouping elements in such a way
that a distinction is made between what is the foreground and
what is in the background
2. THE GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

2. Good continuation
 Points that, when connected result in straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as
belonging together
 The lines tend to be seen in such a way to follow the smoothest path
2. THE GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

3. Pragnanz
 Means good figure
 The perceptual field an objects within it will take on the simplest and most
encompassing structure permitted by the given conditions
2. THE GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

4. Similarity
 Similar things appear to be grouped together
 Similarity of color, size, shape, orientation, enclosure, proximity
2. THE GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

 There are many other principles of organization proposed by original gestalt

psychologists
 They realized that visual perception is based on more than just the pattern of
light and dark on the retina, it is determined by specific organizing principles
 Where do these principles come from?
 Intrinsic laws: they are built into the system
 This differs from Helmholtz’s likelihood principle
 Modern perceptual psychologists see our experience with the environment as a
central component in the process of perception
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPjeLxo9PaM
3. TAKING REGULARITIES IN THE ENVIRONMENT INTO ACCOUNT

 Perception is influenced by our knowledge of the

characteristics of the environment that occur
frequently and strongly influence what we expect
to see
1. Physical regularities
 Regularly occurring physical properties of the
environment
 E.g., There are more vertical and horizontal
orientations in the environment then oblique
(angled) orientations. People can therefore
perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than
other orientations
3. TAKING REGULARITIES IN THE ENVIRONMENT INTO ACCOUNT

 Perception is influenced by our knowledge of the

characteristics of the environment that occur frequently
and strongly influence what we expect to see
1. Physical regularities
 Regularly occurring physical properties of the
environment
 E.g., Light-from-above assumption: we assume that light
is coming from above, because light in the environment –
the sun or artificial lighting- usually comes from above
 We are able to perceive and recognize objects better
than robots because we respond to physical
characteristics of the environment
3. TAKING REGULARITIES IN THE ENVIRONMENT INTO ACCOUNT

2. Semantic regularities
 In perceiving scenes semantic refers
to the meaning of a scene, which is
related to what happens in a scene
 The characteristics associated with
the functions carried out in scenes
 E.g., visualize an office, a mosque, a
Shinto temple, a lion
 Scene schema: The knowledge of
what a scene typically contains Palmer’s
 People are often unaware of the experiment

specific info they are using

4. BAYESIAN INFERENCE

 The integration of two ideas: (1) Helmholtz’s likelihood principle; (2)

regularities in the environment
 Our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by two
factors:
 Prior probability: our initial belief about the probability of an outcome
 Likelihood: The extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the
outcome
4. BAYESIAN INFERENCE

 The inverse projection problem

 A huge number of possible objects could be associated with a particular image on the
retina
 To solve this problem and create perception, information from the retinal image is
combined with prior probabilities based on our past experiences.
 While the retinal image is still the starting point for perceiving the shape of the book,
adding the person’s prior beliefs reduces the number of possible shapes
 Bayesian inference is used to develop computer vision systems
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6OOtzbTXSU
  The approaches of Helmholtz, regularities in environment, and
Bayesian inference all argue that the environment shapes our
Comparing the patterns of perception
four approaches  Gestalt psychologists argue that the principles of organization are
built in
 Modern cognitive psychologists  experience with environment
WHAT ARE THE FOUR APPROACHES TO
OBJECT PERCEPTION?
NEURONS AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT

 There are more neurons in the animal and human visual cortex that respond to
horizontal and vertical orientations than to oblique ones
 Cortical area that is responsible for scene perception (PPA) shows higher fMRI activity top
cardinal than oblique orientations
 Is this because we are born with more of those neurons, or did it happen after birth?
NEURONS AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT

 Theory of natural selection  organisms whose visual

systems contained neurons that fired to important things in
the environment would be more likely to survive and pass on
the enhanced ability to sense verticals and horizontals
 Experience-dependent plasticity  The structure of the brain
is changed by experience
 E.g., A kitten is born with neurons that respond to all
orientations. When a kitten is reared in a space with only
vertical orientations, later they respond more to vertical than
horizontal objects
 E.g., The activation in FFA increases after participants get an
extensive training for recognizing greebles, i.e., computer-
generated beings. Same with car and bird experts
 Neurons can become adapted to respond best to regularities
  Everyday perception typically occurs in dynamic situations
PERCEPTION  Movement facilitates perception

AND ACTION  Helps us perceive objects in the environment more accurately

 Moving reveals aspects of objects that are not apparent from
a single point view
PERCEPTION AND ACTION

 Movement is also important for coordination that continually occurs between

perceiving stimuli and taking action towards it
 The simple action of grasping the cup requires continually perceiving the
position of the cup, of your hands and fingers relative to the cup, while
calibrating actions to grasp the cup without spilling coffee
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF
PERCEPTION AND
ACTION

 Research suggests that there

are two processing streams in
the brains
 For perceiving objects
 For locating and taking action
toward objects
 Two methods are used: Brain
lesioning & Neuropsychology
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF
PERCEPTION AND
ACTION

a) Object discrimination task

 The neural pathway that reaches
the temporal lobes is responsible
for object perception – The What
Pathway

b) Landmark discrimination task

 The pathway that leads to the
parietal lobe is responsible for
determining an object’s location _
The Where Pathway
 These pathways can operate quite
independently
PERCEPTION AND
ACTION STREAMS

 D.F. – 34-year-old women with

damage to temporal lobe
 Visual agnosia
 She can no longer recognize
everyday objects, familiar faces
and geometrical shapes
 No difficulty in guiding her hand
to reach something and pick it
up
 Separation between vision-for-
perception & vision-for-action
PERCEPTION AND
ACTION STREAMS
 Participants experienced a strong
perceptual illusion
 Their anticipatory grip aperture
(the opening between thumb and
index finger) was not affected by
this illusion when asked to pick up
the central disc
 The “what-perception” pathway is
affected by the illusion, the
“where-action” pathway is not
 Similar pathways in auditory
system
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WmS_un1p-g
WHAT IS EXPERIENCE DEPENDENT
PLASTICITY?
EXPLAIN THE WHAT AND WHERE PATHWAYS
AND HOW THEY ARE STUDIED
THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN PERCEPTION

 Perceptual processes are influence by culture

 Distinct processing styles
 Context-independent analytics perceptual
processes in Western cultures
 Context-dependent holistic perceptual
processes in East Asian cultures
 Attributed to cultural differences in social
structure and social practice
 The Ebbinghaus illusion and visual clutter
 The comparison of Japanese, British,
Traditional Himba, Urbanized Himba
 Exposure to urban environments changes
processing style
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzo45hWXRWU