How do humans perceive objects? More specifically, how do we recognize them? Most people walk throughout their daily lives distinguishing the difference between a television, pencil, car, stop sign, etc. and do not know as to how their brain processes this information. There are many approaches to explain object recognition. These include the bottom-up and top-down approach, and the prototypes, template, and feature matching approaches. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach in which I will be discussing. Richard Gregory came up with the top-down process theory in 1970. His theory states that perception is a hypothesis and you make your best guess on what you’re seeing/ perceiving. He also makes the point that when we perceive things we use prior know facts, information, experiences, or memories to infer them. (Gregory, 1966) The top-down process is like reading. If you are trying to understand the whole page, you would need to read the beginning, middle, and end, instead of trying to understand based on two or three sentences. Gregory also argues that we lose around 90% of visual information before it reaches the brain to be processed. (Gregory, 1966). This would explain visual illusions. In 1935, John Ridley …show more content…
Stroop created an experiment in which there were two conditions of words shown to participants. The first condition had color words printed in a different color. For example the word RED would be printed in green print (as shown), the correct answer would be red. The participants were asked to read the word itself, not the color of the print; they had no trouble doing this. The second list of words tested were the same as before, a color word typed in a different color print. This time they had to claim the color of the print, not the word. For example, given RED, the color of the print would be green, so green would be the correct answer in this scenario. Doing this took 74% longer than just reading the word. (Stroop, 1935) This shows how much top-down processing affects recognizing objects. The longer it takes you to get to the bottom of the page and understand the context, the longer it is going to take to recognize the object. Advantages of top-down processing are that it makes it easier to recognize objects because you might have had previous experience with it. A disadvantage would be that the top-down method can lead to misleading information because you canmake an incorrect hypothesis. For example, using the reading a page technique, you might skip over a word and fill the gap with a word that looks similar to the one you’re reading but this leads to an incomplete understanding and misreading of the page. Bottom-up processing is the opposite of the top-down approach to object recognition. According to The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology the bottom-up definition is, “The notion is that the person deals with the information by beginning with the “raw” stimulus and then “works their way up” to the more abstract, cognitive process.” (Reber, 1985) James Gibson came up with this theory in 1966. Gibson argues against Gregory in that visual illusions are artificial and do not fit a real world example. (Gibson, 1979) Gibson also states that perception is direct and that our environment supplies the object we perceive well enough without prior experience or knowledge. Our environment supplies distance, shape, size, etc. (Gibson, 1979) An example of this would be motion parallax, which is the idea that objects that are close pass by faster than objects that are farther away. This means we are able to gauge the distance of closer and further objects. The advantage of this theory is that it is simple, what we see perceive is how the world actually is. A disadvantage is that Gibson’s theory does not have a reliable explanation for visual illusions. On to prototypes…what is a prototype? A prototype is something that serves as a standard for any idea or category. A prototype can also be described as, “… common properties (that are) necessary and sufficient to define the concept” (Smith & Medin, 1981) For example the standard prototype for a car is four wheels, an engine, windows, two or four doors, etc. prototypes can be made from many different compilations of similar types of different objects. When recognizing objects, we look for a typical prototype in which we can match it with, so that we can recognize it. An advantage would be that if an object did match a prototype, then it would be able to be recognized faster. A disadvantage of this is objects are harder to recognize if there is no prototype that is quite similar enough to the object. What is a template? A template is basically a representation of a person’s idea of an object. When people template match the process consists of deciding, “ …whether or not a particular object belongs to a class by determining whether or not the object provides an overall or holistic match to the template representing the class. (Smith & Medin, 1981) an example of a real life template is CAPTCHA’s. Internet sites to determine whether or not a human is trying to gain access to their site and not a virus or something else that is harmful use CAPTCHA’s. CAPTCHA’s will give you a word and you will have to type it in exactly how it looks, capital letter for capital letter and lowercase for lowercase. Advantages to prototypes are for this exact purpose. A disadvantage is if something that matches to the overall idea of a template may not be able to be matched to the template because it doesn’t match the one template. For example A, a, A, and a are the same thing but if a template is calling for an A and you came across an A, then this would be an incorrect match, even though technically, they are the same thing, just represented differently. (Reber, 1985) This means we would have to store almost an endless amount of templates to be able to recognize objects. Another huge disadvantage to this theory is that, “Templates look like what they represent (which) means they can only be used to represent concrete objects.” (Seymour, 1979) This creates a limitation. There isn’t a template for justice, love, or any abstract ideas that exist in our world. Feature matching in object recognition is what it sound like, matching certain features to fit a recognizable description of the object.
For example, the letter T has one horizontal line and one vertical line and this makes up a T. The letter E has three horizontal lines and one vertical line. Each alphabetical letter has its own unique features, just like every other object does. Squares have four sides and four 95-degree angles; circles have no sides and no angles. An advantage to this theory is that it can recognize abstract concepts, unlike a template. For example, it can recognize features of love, freedom, or sadness. A disadvantage to this theory is that sometimes you would need to require many features to recognize just one
object. There are multiple theories that researchers have come up to try and explain object recognition. These include the bottom-up and top-down approach, and the prototypes, template, and feature matching approaches. The advantages and disadvantages of each have been discussed. In addition to each approach, there is the disadvantage that each approach differs based on each individual human. Each prototype, template, and feature matching will differ based in the individual and this could make recognizing object among groups hard. How we recognize objects is important in trying to explain the phenomena’s of the different types of aphasia and agnosia. As Elizabeth Bowen once said, “No object is mysterious. The mystery is in our eye.” or in my opinion, our ability to recognize it.
Marr, D. (1976). Early processing of visual information. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London Ser. B, 275, 483-524.
In Beau Lotto’s Ted Talk “Optical Illusions Show How We See” we could appreciate how our perception can vary based on the context. He explained the importance that color has in our lives and all of the factors that can alter how we perceive a color, such as illumination. Lotto showed how the light that comes through our eyes could mean anything, however it is our brain’s job to give meaning to that information by using patterns, associations, knowledge from past experiences, etc.
In Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “Some close encounters of a mental kind,” Gould discussed about how certainty can be both blessing and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be blessing because it can provide warmth, comfort and secure. However, it can also be a danger because it can trick our mind with false information of what we see and remember in our mind. Gould also talked about the three levels of possible error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention and retrieval. According to Gould, our human mind is the greatest miracle of nature and the wicked of all frauds and tricksters mixed. To support his argument and statements, he used an example of an experiment that Elizabeth Loftus, a professor from University of California Irvine, did to her students and a personal experience of his childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our mind can be tricky and trick us into believing what we see/hear is real due to the three potential error of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and tricky.
For example, sense perception for the processes of Aristotle’s term “abstraction” plays an important role. This was the argument against Plato’s theory of “recollection” from the book “Aristotle Introductory Reading” by Terence Irwin (see Book 2). Aristotle argued that what we perceive in our senses and collect into what we learn and understand is abstraction. The knowledge of everything we know does not come from the soul, which contains unlimited amount of information as Plato’s theory of recollection suggests, but its actually a process called abstraction. The process of collection and storing information through our senses. But the problem can be that people misunderstand or misuse what their senses perceive and draw a wrong understanding from the information they 've gathered, which leads to an illusion rather than understanding. For example, we grow prejudice towards certain things and likes towards others by simple view of it. If we dislike a color, or a shape we may not further investigate it, or even ignore it, gathering the information and understanding it wrongfully just because of how we felt about it. Same can be said about liking something that we may sometimes over exaggerate and overprice, just because we like it that much even though it does not possess that much of what we would want it to.
seen in its simplest case. A symbol sums up a large number of ideas and
In examining the world around us we notice many similarities. There is a great deal of reoccurrence, which we can not help but to notice. The same shape occurs over and over in so many different objects. Rings, cans, bottles, candies, the same property we term roundness is found in all these objects. Likewise we see the same color in so many different objects. Often people say these recurrences make the world a dull place. The same set of properties continuously shows up. The best we can hope for is a new combination of these old features. Although this repetition is somewhat boring it is also incredibly important. The right sorts of recurrences, like musical notes, can make a musical piece much more captivating. If the world did not have these similarities running through it there would be no way of recognizing anything. No concepts could ever be made; thinking even in its most basic state would be impossible. The world would only be an experience.
Gibson (1979) developed an ecological approach to the study of visual perception, which is a new and radical approach to the whole field of psychology that humans perceive their environment directly without mediation by cognitive process or by mental entities. According to his assertion of direct perception, there is enough information in our environment to make sense of the world (Gibson, 1977). Gibson (1979) said “direct perception is an activity of getting information from ambient array of light” (p. 147), and further called this a process of information pickup. That is, there is no need for mental processing since every object and event in the world have inherent meanings that are detected and exploited by humans. So his perception is based on information, not on sensations, which is in contrast with the conventional perspective of perception.
Sajda P. & Finkle, L.H. (1995) Intermediate Visual Representations and the Construction of Surface Perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 267-291.
Although pointing is a generally crude method of object identification, it can be useful in identifying a particular object, not only through time, but space as well. Quine believes that, at the most rudimentary level of ostension, space and time are inseparable, and therefore provide an essential function in object specification as a platform upon which similarities among particulars can be recognized. Identity also provides an unchanging point of reference for the accumulation and arrangement of objects into groups of kindred particulars. Conversely, it might be said that a particular
What are some of the elements involved in creating visual illusions? What role does culture play?
Michael Tye comments that, “Viewers of [a] painting can apprehend not only its content... but also the colors, shapes, and spatial relations obtaining among the blobs of paint on the canvas.” In this sense, qualia explains how humans can understand and recognize images on an everyday basis. If a person that had never seen a tree before was shown a drawing of a brown rectangle with a green circle attached to the top, the image would be foreign and unrecognizable. However, if a person had seen a tree before and was given the same drawing, they would recognize the general shape and colors of the image and assume it was a tree. By giving objects and experiences distinct, subjective qualia, images become recognizable and organized in the
There are many different Visual Perception principles in perception. The main principles are Gestalt. Gestalt is a German word meaning 'form' or 'shape'. Gestalt psychologists formulated a series of principles that describe how t...
In response, they proposed that perception is based on the organization of stimuli into holistic and meaningful forms. They are well-known for the phrase "the whole is different than the sum of its parts. " They proposed several "laws" (really heuristics or "rules of thumb") that are referred to as the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization. These are discussed in the module later on.
Prior knowledge plays a pivotal role in every aspect of human life. Knowledge can be stored in various formats like images, features, statistical patterns, all these formats help in making sense of the environment. Using prior knowledge humans can perform various activities including, but not limited to: focusing attention, organizing information in to groups, categorizing objects around, hypothesizing, understanding language, and generating inferences(Smith & Kosslyn, 2007). Processing of information is influenced by prior knowledge during the top down processing. Once signal has been detected by the biological visual system, we try to infer meaning using the prior related knowledge which has been stored in the long term memory based on category, association and similarity in features and statistical patterns(Wickens, Lee, Liu, & Becker, 2004). Prior knowledge has no boundaries and it keeps on changing based on experience with the environment making it easier for us humans to understand our surrounding better and quicker as time passes.
Blakslee, S. (1993, August 31). The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2014, from www.nytimes.com: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/31/science/seeing-and-imagining-clues-to-the-workings-of-the-mind-s-eye.html