APPROACHES TO PERCEPTION Neuroscience and Direct Perception

Bottom up theories

•Approaches where perception starts with the

stimuli whose appearance you take in through
your eye

•The four main bottom-up theories of form and

pattern perception:

•Direct perception

•Template theories

•Feature theories •About 30 to 100 milliseconds after a visual

stimulus, mirror neurons start firing.
•Recognition-by-components theory
•Mirror neurons -active both when a person
acts and when he or she observes that same act
performed by somebody else.
Gibson’s Theory of Direct Perception
•Before we even have time to form hypotheses
•The information in our sensory receptors,
about what we are perceiving, we may already
including the sensory context, is all we need to
be able to understand the expressions,
perceive anything.
emotions, and movements of the person we
•The environment supplies us with all the observe
information we need for perception,
•Studies indicate that there are separate neural
•Also called ecological perception pathways (what pathways)in the lateral
occipital area for the processing of form, color,
•We do not need higher cognitive processes or and texture in objects.
anything else to mediate between our sensory
experiences and our perceptions. •When asked to judge the length of an object,
for example, people cannot ignore the width.
•We are biologically tuned to respond to
contextual information •However, they can judge the color, form, and
texture of an object independently of the other
•We use texture gradients as cues for depth qualities
and distance.

•Those cues aid us to perceive directly the

relative proximity or distance of objects and of
parts of objects.
Template Theories Feature-Matching Theories

•We attempt to match features of a pattern to

•Suggest that we have stored in our features stored in memory, rather than to
mindsmyriad sets of templates match a whole pattern to a template or a
prototype
•Templates-highly detailed models for patterns
we potentially might recognize. •Pandemonium Model –metaphorical
“demons” with specific duties receive and
•We recognize a pattern by comparing it with
analyze the features of a stimulus (Selfridge,
our set of templates then choose the exact
1959).
template that perfectly matches what we
observe •Four kinds of demons:

•Suggests that expertise is attained by acquiring •“Image demons” -receive a retinal image and
chunks of knowledge in long-term memory that pass it on to feature demons.
can later be accessed for fast recognition
•“Feature demon” -calls out when there are
•Ex. Chess players who have knowledge of matches between the stimulus and the given
many games use a matching strategy in line feature. These matches are yelled out to the
with template theory to recall previous cognitive (thinking) demons.

•“Cognitive demons” -shout out possible

patterns stored in memory that conform to one
or more of the features noticed by the feature
demons.

•“Decision demon”- listens to the

pandemonium of the cognitive demons. It
decides on what has been seen, based on which
cognitive demon is shouting the most
frequently (i.e., which has the most matching •Explains our ability to perceive 3-D objects
features) with the help of simple geometric shapes

•Global versus Local features •Recognition-by-components (RBC) theory

•Local features •We manipulate a number of simple 3-D

geometric shapes called “geons” (geometrical
•constitute the small-scale or detailed ions).
aspects of a given pattern.
•bricks, cylinders, wedges, cones, and their
•There is no consensus as to what exactly curved axis counterparts
constitutes a local feature.
•We quickly recognize objects by observing the
•Global features edges of them and then decomposing the
•the features that give a form its overall shape. objects into geons

•Ex. •The geons also can be recomposed into

alternative arrangements

•The objects constructed from geons are

recognized easily from many perspectives

•RBC theory explains how we may recognize

general instances of chairs, lamps, and faces,
•In panel (a), the local features (small Hs and but it does not adequately explain how we
Ss) correspond to recognize particular chairs or particular faces

the global ones.

•In panel (b), the local features do not Top-Down Theories

correspond to the global
•Constructive approach
ones.
•Constructive perception the perceiver builds
(constructs) a cognitive understanding
(perception) of a stimulus.
Recognition-by-Components Theory
•The concepts of the perceiver and his or
her cognitive processes influence what he or
she sees.

•The perceiver uses sensory information as

the foundation for the structure but also uses
other sources of information to build the
perception.
 •Also known as intelligent perception •Unconscious inference-the process by which
because it states that higher-order thinking we unconsciously assimilate information from a
plays an important role in perception. number of sources to create a perception

•Emphasizes the role of learning in

perception (Fahle, 2003).
Context Effect
•Perception both affects and is affected by
the world as we experience it. •Context Effect

•Links human intelligence to the processes •the influences of the surrounding

of perception environment on perception

•During perception we quickly form and test •Configural-superiority effect

various hypotheses regarding percepts. •objects presented in certain
•The percepts are based on three things: configurations are easier to recognize than the
objects presented in isolation, even if the
•what we sense (the sensory data) objects in the configurations are more complex
than those in isolation.
•what we know (knowledge stored in
memory)

•what we can infer (using high-level Synthesizing Top-down and Bottom-up

cognitive processes) Theories

•We consider prior expectations.

•Ex. You’ll be fast to recognize your friend

from far away on the street when you have
arranged a meeting.

•We use what we know about the context.

•Ex. When you see something

approaching on rail tracks you infer that it must
be a train.

•We also may use what we reasonably can

infer, based both on what the data are and on
what we know about the data. •Both theoretical approaches have garnered
empirical support
•we usually make the correct attributions
regarding our visual sensations. •Constructivists emphasize the importance of
prior knowledge in combination with relatively
simple and ambiguous information from the
sensory receptors.
•Direct perception theorists emphasize the
completeness of the information in the
receptors themselves.

•Sensory information may be more richly

informative and less ambiguous in interpreting
experiences than the constructivists would
suggest.

•But it may be less informative than the direct-

perception theorists would assert

•later-stage representations are not

independent of our attentional focus

•Visual control of action is mediated by cortical

pathways that are different from those involved
in visual control of perception

•In other words, when we see an object,

such as a cell phone, we process it differently
than if we intend also to pick up the object.

•In general we perceive objects holistically.

•But if we plan to act on them, we perceive

them more analytically so that we can act in an
effective way.

•Current theories concerning the ways we

perceive patterns explain some, but not all, of
the phenomena we encounter in the study of
form and pattern perception