People can process information from sensation and memory to detect, acquire, select, organize, recognize, identify, categorize, discriminate, and interpret information about organisms, objects, features, times, and locations {perception}|. Perception establishes current environment and organism state and does not initiate or control action or behavior.
Perception acquires information about physical objects and events, using unconscious inductive inference. Senses measure pressure, temperature, concentration, frequency data, sound intensity, light intensity, angle, position, and time. It detects perceptual features and feature relations. It can detect angles and orientations. It can detect separateness and overlap. It can detect bilateral, radial, rotational, and translational symmetries. It can detect straight, curved, rotational, spiral, translational, and oscillatory trajectories. It can detect circular, elliptical, ovoid, heart, diamond, square, rectangle, and triangle shapes. It can detect spatial and temporal relations, such as under, over, near, far, before, and after. It can separate figure and ground, horizontal and vertical, and static and moving [Goldstein and Maiden, 2001].
requirements
Perception requires sensation and does not require awareness. Perception does not require consciousness, subject, or person.
biology
All mammals have perception. Perception can involve amygdala, septum, hypothalamus, insula, and cingulate gyrus.
properties
Perception has limited information capacity.
Initial perceptions can change with further mental processing.
Sense receptors respond to stimuli with sensitivity, accuracy, and precision.
properties: continuity
Perception is continuous, not discrete. Perceptions have no gaps and no overlaps in intensity, time, space, frequency, or quality.
properties: discrimination
Perception can detect differences between stimuli, patterns, or objects, if difference is above threshold. Visual discrimination takes 40 milliseconds to 100 milliseconds.
properties: formal system
Perception is complete and consistent and so is formal system, which can have axioms, statements, and reasoning. Formal properties describe how mind uses sensations to get perceptions.
properties: intensity
Feature values have intensity range. People typically can identify no more than five different intensity levels. The lowest intensity detectable during measured time is one energy unit, such as photon, which causes one chemical reaction. The highest intensity detectable causes physical changes rather than chemical reactions. It can saturate receptors, stretch cell membranes past elastic limit, coat receptors, or damage cells. Intensity accuracy is one to two orders of magnitude poorer than just-noticeable-difference accuracy. People judge intensity relative to other intensities. Sense qualities change with intensity. Isolated sensory signals can only signal that stimulus exists, not define intensity value.
If people judge intensity by ratio {magnitude estimation, perception}, the preferred method, power law relates perceived intensity {subjective magnitude} and stimulus intensity: S = a * I^k, where a is a constant that depends on sense, k is a constant that depends on attribute, I is stimulus intensity, and S is perceived intensity. Exponent k varies from 0.33 for luminance to 3.5 for electric shock. Using logarithms, subjective magnitude to stimulus magnitude equation is: r = a + b * log(s), where r is response magnitude, s is stimulus magnitude, and a and b are constants.
Neuron has refractory period after spike, so spikes have frequency. Frequency is higher if stimulus is greater, until frequency maximizes. Number of spikes per second is also energy flow. If frequency/flow passes threshold, synapse sends signal to next neuron. Higher frequencies send more signals until flow maximizes. Neurons have energy flow, with amplitude, frequency if flow varies, pressure, resistance, and capacitance. Circuits and processes are the same as fluid or electrical flow in pipes and circuits. Variations in flow make perception speckle or vary in density.
properties: intensity fade
If not renewed, inhibition reduces intensity, leaving only empty space.
properties: invariance
Connected lines, topological order, texture, and color do not change with distance or perspective.
properties: labeling
Mind labels intensities, locations, times, and objects and labels links among features and objects {labeled link, mind}. Mind uses labels for learning, memory, and recall.
properties: reference frame
Perceptions seem to be in a stationary world, in which body, head, and eyes move. Fixed reference frame optimizes distance and trajectory calculations and minimizes body, head, and eye deviations from straight-line motion. Fixed reference frame minimizes intensity and distance ratios, allowing perceptual constancies.
Babies develop fixed reference frame as they compensate for motions as they move.
properties: scale
Mind represents sizes and locations at multiple scales. Local signals have high precision, and global signals have low precision [Clarke, 1995].
properties: senses inside and outside
Sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell detect stimuli outside body {outside sense, perception}. Posture, movement, and pain detect stimuli inside body {inside sense, perception}.
properties: sense interaction
Perception in one sense can affect perception in another sense. Smell and taste affect each other when eating food, in retronasal area. Taste and touch affect each other when eating food. Balance and sight affect each other for head and eye position and to find vertical. Touch and sight affect each other when handling nearby objects. Touch and hearing mechanical vibrations overlap near 20 Hertz.
properties: shortest perception
The shortest perception lasts 120 milliseconds to 130 milliseconds. Visual stimuli lasting less than 120 milliseconds make perceptions that last 120 milliseconds to 130 milliseconds.
properties: simultaneity
Events whose times differ by less than 100 milliseconds seem simultaneous to perception, but not to sensation or neurons.
properties: spatial relations
Spatial relations among object features do not change with changing viewpoint.
properties: subject
Perception is subjective and requires subject. Body-movement, sense-quality, and mental-state covariance defines subject and location, distinguishing it from environment, other organisms, and other minds. Subjective states have different being/reality than objective things [Schreiber, 1973].
properties: synchronicity
Events whose times differ by less than several milliseconds seem to be same event to perception.
properties: timing
Perceptual quality appears 20 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds after stimulus signal reaches brain. During interval between signal and perception, other stimuli can affect lateral inhibition, contrast enhancement, color finding, depth estimation, line orientation, texture analysis, feature detection, iconic memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory [Clifford et al., 2003].
properties: transformations
Object subtends different visual angles at different distances. It can retain same shape as it grows or shrinks in size. It can add or subtract parts or change spatial relations among parts. It can have different textures and lighting. It can have partial occlusion. It can fall on different retina locations. Viewing objects from different positions can change line orientations and angles.
properties: transient
Mind tends to perceive movement or change. However, high attentional load can cause change blindness, repetition blindness, attentional blink, and inattentional blindness.
properties: perception principles
Principle 1: Discontinuous motion between two nearby points indicates boundary. Principle 2: Similar-size surface markings indicate object, especially if other-size markings surround surface. Principle 3: Shallow objects have smooth boundary above deeper objects. Principle 4: Objects are rigid, so curvatures stay constant. Principle 5: Projection laws are true. Principle 6: Oscillating and swinging are in planes. Principle 7: Two surfaces intersect to make concave discontinuities. Principle 8: Minimum-curvature points mark section boundaries.
purpose
Perception evolves to detect behaviorally useful information. Perception models physical reality. Perception improves survival, adaptation, and reproduction. It models reality for these purposes.
Perception does not find true nature of physical world.
factors: awareness
People can be aware that they perceive stimulus. Perhaps, people have experiences when they think about perceptions [Burle and Bonnet, 1997] [Burle and Bonnet, 1999] [Colquhoun, 1971] [Dehaene, 1993] [Efron, 1970] [Fries et al., 2001] [Geissler et al., 1999] [Gho and Varela, 1988] [Harter, 1967] [Hirsch and Sherrick, 1961] [Kristofferson, 1967] [Lichtenstein, 1961] [Makeig et al., 2002] [Pöppel, 1978] [Pöppel and Logothetis, 1986] [Purves et al., 1996] [Quastler, 1956] [Rizzuto et al., 2003] [Rock, 1983] [Sanford, 1971] [Stroud, 1956] [VanRullen and Koch, 2003] [Varela et al., 2001] [Venables, 1960] [Wertheimer, 1912] [White, 1963] [White and Harter, 1969].
factors: consciousness
Conscious processes can modify perceptions.
factors: culture
Fundamental sense qualities can be innate, with no affect from culture, environment, or experience. For example, all cultures have same basic colors, though languages can have rudimentary or sophisticated color vocabulary. Alternatively, different cultures and environments can cause different sense categories. People can learn colors and other sense qualities by perceiving environment and using language. For example, culture affects shape perception, geometric pattern orientation, and shape constancy. Differences in behavior and language indicate differences in perception.
Figures that cause illusions in USA have less effect in cultures in which rectangular objects and arrangements are rare. Horizontal-vertical illusions are stronger for observers living in savanna.
Cultures can describe salt as sour. Cultures can describe sweet, sour, and bitter as tasting like monosodium glutamate salt (MSG).
Ability to interpret relations among items in pictures differs with culture.
Child-rearing style and culture social structure vary with field dependence.
factors: individuality
Receptor and brain differences, and different viewpoints, cause the same physical event to cause different perceptions in different people.
factors: learning
Learning can change later object or event perceptions by changing how perception extracts, values, and links perceptual features.
factors: memory
Memory can change how perception extracts, values, and links perceptual features.
processes: curvature and orientation
To find curvature and orientation at a surface point, measure angles or areas of six equilateral triangles forming a regular hexagon around the point.
processes: deconvolution
If situation has many sources, use convolution and deconvolution to reduce number of source tests. To convolute sources, array cells can receive from more than one source. Some sources cause effects, but most do not. Test cells for effect. Cells with effective source will have responses in all cells in which source is present. Compare results from cells to see which sources are effective. If pattern determined the convolution, deconvolution pattern indicates effective sources. If sources must interact to be effective, pattern shows effective interactions. Brain uses interacting sources to cause effects, so deconvolution can be way that memory and action work. For example, ten feature sensors can feed into 100 cells, with each node receiving from two sensors. Sensors are in two array nodes. If two sensors need to interact to be effective, only the cell with both will have response over threshold. Array can have weights for sensors or node connections. If weights can change, it is like neural net but with starting structure.
processes: declarative knowledge
Perception involves statements about objects and events. Mind can process declarative knowledge both non-consciously and consciously.
processes: distance
To find surface distance, measure surface-orientation and sight-line angle. Angle becomes smaller as objects become more distant. Angle is near perpendicular for nearer objects. At very great distances, brain cannot measure orientation angle accurately. Brain also uses triangulation to find distance.
processes: equilibrium
Perhaps, input disturbs equilibrium, and sense qualities restore equilibrium. New stimuli cause imbalance, then flows associated with sense qualities restore balance.
processes: magnitude
Mind can compare two stimulus intensities by ratio {magnitude, perception}, rather than difference. For small intensity range, next higher magnitude n+1 can be double or triple preceding magnitude n. For large intensity range, next higher magnitude can be ten times more than preceding magnitude. Magnitude judgments require minimum-stimulus zero level but no intensity measurement unit.
processes: motion as cause
Perceptions grow out of objects in motion. At extremes of pain and low frequency, mechanical movements, involving only mass, charge, space, and time, blend with and are identical to sense qualities, in all senses.
Mind can detect mechanical vibration up to twenty cycles per second, the same as lowest detectable sound frequency. Sound detects rapid mechanical vibrations. Mind can feel sound, as well as hear it, at low frequency. Vision blurs succession of frames at twenty cycles per second into continuous motion. Touch and temperature border each other at twenty cycles per second. Below twenty cycles per second, senses perceive mechanical motion, which has and needs no sense qualities. People cannot breathe, flick tongue, or do anything at rates greater than twenty cycles per second. Twenty cycles per second is limiting rate for body mechanical motions.
All sense qualities use sense organ motions. Smell and taste use matter in motion. Food or air texture is always part of taste and smell, as is pressure. Fingers move. Eyes move. Ears cock, or heads turn.
At high intensity, pain is similar for all senses, and all senses are alike at high intensity. High firing rate overcomes all correlations that distinguish senses, and sense qualities become only pain. High intensity can feel like pressure [Smith and Smith, 1962].
processes: movement
Perception laws depend on movement patterns [Smith and Smith, 1962].
processes: prediction
Organisms detect stimulus associations, patterns, laws, and regularities and use them to predict or track events, by analogy or generalization. Mind uses most stimuli to build predictive abilities, rather than to initiate response. Animals habituate to stimuli that have no predictive value [Dodwell, 1970].
processes: object categories
Organisms need to recognize food/prey, dangerous situation/predator, and related organism: mate, child, relative, and self. They can recognize different levels, such as food that is easier to get or more nutritious.
processes: optimization
Perception is like relaxation or optimization, which finds the most-likely pattern.
processes: response to stimulus
All stimulus responses are complex. Response motor output causes internal feedback stimuli by stimulating kinesthetic receptors and external feedback stimuli by changing environment. All responses involve anticipation.
processes: space
Psychological spatial concepts derive from object location, size, and orientation perceptions. Special visual system encodes spatial properties.
Separate visual system encodes object shapes, colors, and textures.
processes: stimulus
Stimuli are structured energy patterns that reach body sensors. All stimuli affect multiple sensors and are complex.
processes: surface perception
Surfaces have extents, locations, orientations, durations, depths, and other perceptual properties. Greatest perceptual-property change rate is at surface boundaries. Surface has temporal and spatial scale, which mind can expand and contract. Mind uses surfaces and surface boundaries to perceive patterns, objects, scenes, and events. Objects or patterns are surface sets. Object sides are convex, concave, or flat surfaces, which have surface textures, such as number of points or bumps.
Social Sciences>Psychology>Cognition>Perception
6-Psychology-Cognition-Perception
Outline of Knowledge Database Home Page
Description of Outline of Knowledge Database
Date Modified: 2022.0224