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Sensation and
Perception 2
Jason Bell Perception Lecture May 1
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A quick note on the lab report topic

• Body size misperception is one of my core research interests.

• Misperceptions are common in those suffering an eating disorder and also
in obese individuals.
• The reasons for these biases are poorly understood and so our aim is to
discover the reasons why body size perception is inaccurate- esp in these
groups.
• To do so we need to understand the mechanisms that cause bias.
• Our study measures 2 such forms of bias

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Today

• On Monday we discussed how visual information enters and is processed

in the eye.
• Today we want to discuss how that information is encoded and used to
create our perceptual experience
• The visual scene is processed through many small discrete windows,
each about the size of your thumb at arms reach.
• how does this get put together?
• What are the rules?

• Today we consider the building block of perception: orientation coding

(lines and edges) in the primary visual cortex
• We discuss how and when local lines and edges get grouped
• These are called gestalt principles

• Finally, and relatedly, we will discuss how we group and dissociate things
in order to see the world in 3D
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Putting the pieces together

• At the early stages of the visual system each cell has a very small view of the
scene.
• But we need to combine their responses to detect larger things.

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The primary visual cortex

• Also known as V1. This first stage of cortical processing is involved with
the coding of lines and edges in the visual scene
• We have know this since the 60s, thanks to Hubel and Weisel

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Reconstructing a unified holistic
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perception

• There are rules governing the types of visual cues that are linked and
those that are dissociated
• An important stage in this process is to organize images into figures of
interest and background
• This is known as figure ground segregation
• This can be clear (left), or ambiguous (right)

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Reconstructing a unified holistic
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perception

• There are rules governing the types of visual cues that are linked and
grouped as figure
• These are called Gestalt principles and here are 4 of them
• Similarity
• Proximity
• Closure
• Continuity

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Using prior knowledge to
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disambiguate perception

• The vase face illusion shows perceptual rivalry when two interpretations
are equally plausible- there is no right answer.
• In other instances the system uses knowledge to overcome contradictory
visual information
• On the left we use prior knowledge about the constant size of people to
infer distance rather than miniature status (as the retinal image implies)
• Under ambiguous circumstances (right), context again matters…

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Working out where things are

• Left, right, up, down. These are easily discovered from the retinal image
(even if it is upside down and back to front)
• But how do we work out what is in front and what is behind- and how far
inbetween?
• The visual scene provides depth cues and our visual system has 2 ways
to utilize them
• Monocular depth cues- if you shut one eye, we can still work out depth
(sort of)
• Linear perspective
• Interposition/occlusion
• Height in the horizontal plane
• Clarity/aerial perspective
• Relative size
• Motion parallax
• Binocular depth cues (3D)- think your glasses at the cinema
• Based on differences in the views of the 2 eyes

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Monocular depth cues: Linear
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perspective

• Linear perspective: Lines that are parallel in the three-dimensional world

will appear to converge in a two-dimensional image as they extend into
the distance

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Monocular depth cues: Interposition
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• Interposition (occlusion): A cue to relative depth order in which, for

example, one object obstructs the view of part of another object

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Monocular depth cues: Relative height
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• Relative height: Below the horizon, objects higher in the visual field
appear to be farther away. Above the horizon, objects lower in the visual
field appear to be farther away

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 Monocular depth cues: Clarity
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A depth cue based on the implicit understanding that light is scattered by the
atmosphere
– More light is scattered when we look through more atmosphere
– Thus, more distant objects appear fainter, bluer, and less distinct

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Monocular depth cues: Relative size

Relative size: A comparison of size between items without knowing the absolute
size of either one
– All things being equal, we assume that smaller objects are farther away
from us than larger objects
– NOTE: Left and right images differ in familiarity

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Monocular depth cues: motion
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parallax

• Motion parallax: Images closer to the observer move faster across the
visual field than images farther away

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Binocular cues to depth

Binocular disparity: The differences between the two retinal images of the
same scene
– Disparity is the basis for stereopsis, a vivid perception of the three-
dimensionality of the world that is not available with monocular vision
– Consider the scene below

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Binocular disparity

• Each eye has a slightly different view (see below

figure)
• Observer is staring at the red crayon: so this is on
the fovea of each eye and thus, the same in each
eye.
• Not the difference in position of brown and purple
crayons in each eye but no difference for the blue

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Critical periods- even for innate
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processes

• We tend to share the same perceptual experience

• We all see the same rainbow
• We all know and report vertical, horizontal etc.
• We all recognize Obama
• This implies that we share the same hardware- and by and large we do
• But the innate properties develop across the early life span in a ‘use it or
lose it’ manner
• So there is a critical period, even for visual perception- as Blakemore and
Cooper have demonstrated

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Summary of today

• The visual scene is coded into small spatially discrete samples

• At first we just code for orientation at each location

• There are rules for putting this information together to form perception
• Gestalt principles

• We perceive the world as 3D despite the strictly 2D retinal image

• Two types of cues aid the system to rebuild this percept
• Binocular cues
• Monocular cues

There is a critical period for the development of these processes

Next week
Audition- how do we hear
Touch and pain- real and phantom
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