Question

What are “perceptual committees”? Is there ever an incident where perceptual committees fail? If so, why?

6. What is the global superiority effect? Give an example of this phenomenon. How does this impact our day-to-day lives?

7. Compare and contrast Direct and Constructivist accounts of perception.

Answer 1

• 7. Gibson’s direct perception theory and Gregory’s constructivist perception theory both focus on the visual perception.
• Visual perception is based on two kinds of processing. One of the two is the (bottom-up) processing, which is dependant on external stimuli. Second of the two is (top-down) processing, which is dependant on an individual’s knowledge and expectations.
• In comparing Gibson with Gregory, Gibson concentrated on the (bottom-up) process of visual perception as his theory on the direct perception states that information transmitted from the visual environment provides the individual to interact and move around within the environment without involving internal processing.
• Opposing theorist Gregory concentrated on the (top-down) process of visual perception. His constructivist theory stated that perception is very much an individually active and self constructive process seen to be influenced by hypothesis and expectations.
• Gibson’s theory started of with the notion of the optic array which is the pattern of light reaching the eye; the optic array is thought to have all the visual information obtainable at the retina.
• This optic array provides unambiguous information about the layout of an objects space. The information can come in the form of optic flow patterns and texture gradients. He states that perception entails retrieving the high information given by the optic array without having to process information concerned.
• Perception and action is of particular importance to Gibson’s direct perception theory, perception and action is based on the supposition that there is a direct or close relationship between perception and action.
• The notion of this is that an observer can collect valuable information based on the environment by moving about.
• Gregory states that perceptions are constructions which com from the fragmentary scraps of data signalled by senses and taken from the brain memory banks, themselves constructions from the snippets of the past. Therefore the insufficient information given to the sense organs is used as the basis for creating inferences of forming hypothesis concerning the visual environment.
• Some of the concepts that Gregory explores include; the influence of expectations, the influence of motivational factors, explaining visual illusions and the misapplied size-constancy theory.
• In summary these concepts are all linked to the way in which information based on visual perception is very much based on the individual’s knowledge and expectations therefore making the individual constructive.
• In contrast the main strength of Gibson’s theory of direct perception is that it emphasises on the notion that the visual environment provides much more information than what previous studies had assumed.
• It is said that he was correct in assuming that the moment-by-moment changes in the optic array taking place when we are moving provide very useful information about the layout of the visual environment.
• The main strength of Gregory’s constructivist theory is that Gregory very much emphasises the importance of the bottom-up processes , and he also has performed demonstrations that show that top-down processes should be not be ruled out or ignored.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation