SESSION 5 Perception

SESSION 5
Perception: Why Do things Look the Way they Do?
I. OBJECTIVES
After completing this chapter, you will be able to
• State the Gestalt laws of perception.
• Describe the role that learning plays in perception.
• Explain what illusions teach us about perception.
• Explain how both binocular vision and monocular cues play a role in depth
perception.
• Discuss some of issues associated with the topic of extrasensory perception.
II. INTRODUCTION
• The link between sensation and perception is clear. Perception is possible
because we have sensations.
• The raw data of experience—sensations— become organized wholes at the
level of perception. We experience a world of objects—trees and songs—not
flashes of light and random bits of sound.
• In this lesson you will learn how this organization arises.
• Kurt Koffka (born March 18, 1886, Berlin, Germany—died November 22,
1941, Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S.) German psychologist and
cofounder, with Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer, of the Gestalt school
of psychology.
• Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, said that
the great question of perception is: “Why do things look the way they do?”
• You learned that visual images on your retina are upside- down. Nonetheless,
you perceive them as right side up. At the level of sensation, it’s an inverted
world. At the level of perception, the world doesn’t look inverted at all.
• Koffka’s question does not have to be limited to the sense of vision. The
same question could be adapted to the other senses. The principles set forth
in this chapter, largely in connection with vision, can be readily applied to
perception in general.
Sensation, as indicated, is the raw data of experience. Perception, on the
other hand, is the organization and the meaning we give to primitive
information.
It can be said with some degree of confidence that we use sensory
information to create a psychological world.
• Returning to Koffka, he said that there is a distinction between the geo-
graphical world and the psychological world.
• The geographical world is the actual world “out there,” the world as defined
and described by physics.
• The psychological world is the world “in here,” the world as experienced by
the subject. Although common sense usually says it’s the so-called “real
world” or physical world that determines our behavior, it can be argued that
common sense isn’t sufficiently analytical. Reflection suggests that we
behave in terms of what we perceive to be true, not necessarily in terms of
what is true.
III. The Gestalt Laws: Is Our Perception of the World Due to Inborn Organizing
Tendencies?
• The perceptual field that surrounds the figure. This is figure-ground
perception. One of the features of this kind of perception is that the figure is
usually smaller than the ground and tends to be seen as coming forward
from the ground. Other examples include seeing a button on a blouse, a book
on a table, or a car on the road.
• It can be argued that this kind of perception, the ability to distinguish a figure
from a field,
o Is an inborn organizing tendency.
o We aren’t taught to do it.
o We probably start doing it spontaneously early in infancy.
• Max Wertheimer’s Gestalt law
o Wertheimer proposed a set of supplemental inborn organizing
tendencies, or Gestalt laws. (The Gestalt laws are also traditionally
called innate tendencies, which simply means “inborn.” The words
innate and inborn can be used interchangeably.)
▪ First, proximity refers to the nearness of the elements that
make up a perception.
▪ Second, similarity refers to characteristics that elements have
in common.
▪ Third, closure is the tendency to fill in gaps in information and
make a perceptual object into a complete whole.
▪ Fourth, common fate exists when all of the elements of a
perceptual object move or act together.
IV. Learned Aspects of Perception: Is the Infant’s World a Buzzing, Blooming
Confusion?
• William James said that the infant’s world is “a buzzing, blooming,
confusion.” There are flashes of light, noises, pressure on the skin, and so
forth.
• But do they have any organization? Are patterns perceived? Or is there just a
lot of random sensory activity? One gets the impression from James’s
comment that the infant, at least temporarily, inhabits a chaotic
psychological world.
• We have seen from the exposition of the Gestalt laws that this is probably not
completely correct.
• Innate organizing tendencies either immediately or very quickly help the
infant to stabilize perceptions and introduce some sort of order into whatever
is happening.
• Nonetheless, it is important to appreciate that learning also plays a role in
perception. The Gestalt laws may play a primary role, but learning certainly
plays a secondary, and important, role.
V. Illusions: What Do They Teach Us about Perception?

• Illusion
o Something that deceives by producing a false or misleading
impression of reality.
o The state or condition of being deceived, misapprehension.
o Illusion, hallucination, delusion refer to false perceptions or ideas. An
illusion is a false mental image produced by misinterpretation of
things that exist1.
o Illusions teach us that perceptions are, to some extent, created by the
brain and nervous system, that we are not passive observers of our
world.
VI. Extrasensory Perception: Is It Real?

• Extrasensory perception, or ESP, is the capacity to be aware of external
events without the use of one of the conventional senses such as vision or
hearing.
• ESP is referred to as the sixth sense, but as we move along in our study, there
are at least seven readily identified senses.
1
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/illusion
• ESP should more accurately be called the eighth sense.
• There are four kinds of extrasensory perception:
1. Precognition
o Precognition is the power to know what will happen in the future.
o Example: Living almost five hundred years ago, the French
physician and astrologer Nostradamus is one of the more famous
individuals in history purported to have had precognitive powers.
2. Telepathy
o Is the power to send and receive mental messages.
o The ability to read the minds of people who can’t read yours is also
considered to be a telepathic power.
o (e.g The Mentalist)
3. Clairvoyance.
o Is the power to have visions and “see” something out of the range
of normal vision. (The word clairvoyance has French roots
meaning “clear seeing.”)
o Some clairvoyants are asserted to be able to give medical readings
and visualize an illness in another person in the same way that an
X-ray machine can.
o Example: The Good Doctor
4. Psychokinesis or PK
o Although not a form of ESP, there is another power often
associated with it. This is psychokinesis or PK.
o Psychokinesis is the power to move objects using only energy
transmitted by the mind.
o “May the Force be with you” (Star wars)

SESSION 5 Perception

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SESSION 5 Perception

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

SESSION 5 Perception

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

SESSION 5

Perception: Why Do things Look the Way they Do?

V. Illusions: What Do They Teach Us about Perception?

VI. Extrasensory Perception: Is It Real?

You might also like