Question

Sensations are typically fragments of sensory input sent to the brain. Our brains impose an organization on these fragments. After reading the text, consider which factors impact this organization. Select one of the following to include in your discussion: One Gestalt principle of organization One type of form perception (for example, figure-ground or grouping) One monocular or binocular depth perception cue One perceptual constancy (color, brightness, size, or shape) Define and exemplify it. What purpose does it serve? Evaluate how it might lead to faulty perceptions or illusions if overused. For example, we tend to utilize contextual cues and our knowledge of the typical size of objects to judge the size of objects. Changes in typical contexts can lead to distorted views of size as viewed in the "Ames room" (p. 253). http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/assets/images/Ames.jpg

Answer 1

Wertheimer, and his assistants Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, believed that perception involved more than simply combining sensory stimuli.

This belief led to a new movement within the field of psychology known as Gestalt psychology. The word GESTALT literally means form or pattern, but its use reflects the idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the brain creates a perception that is more than simply the sum of available sensory inputs, and it does so in predictable ways.

Gestalt psychologists translated these predictable ways into principles by which we organize sensory information.

One Gestalt principle is the figure-ground relationship. According to this principle, we tend to segment our visual world into figure and ground. Figure is the object or person that is the focus of the visual field, while the ground is the background.

Our perception can vary tremendously, depending on what is perceived as figure and what is perceived as ground. Presumably, our ability to interpret sensory information depends on what we label as figure and what we label as ground in any particular case.

Another principle is Principle of similarity. This principle asserts that things that are close to one another tend to be grouped together, For example, when watching a football game, we tend to group individuals based on the colors of their uniforms

Gestalt theorists have been incredibly influential in the areas of sensation and perception. Gestalt principles such as figure-ground relationship, grouping by proximity or similarity are all used to help explain how we organize sensory information. Our perceptions are not infallible, and they can be influenced by bias, prejudice, and other factors if over used or watched over continuously.

According to Gestalt theorists, pattern perception, or our ability to discriminate among different figures and shapes, occurs by following the principles described above. You probably feel fairly certain that your perception accurately matches the real world, but this is not always the case. Our perceptions are based on perceptual hypotheses: educated guesses that we make while interpreting sensory information. These hypotheses are informed by a number of factors, including our personalities, experiences, and expectations. We use these hypotheses to generate our perceptual set. For instance, research has demonstrated that those who are given verbal priming produce a biased interpretation of complex ambiguous figures.

To sum up: perception is a complex process. Built from sensations, but influenced by our own experiences, biases, prejudices, culture, perceptions can be very different from person to person. Research suggests that implicit racial prejudice and stereotypes affect perception. For instance, several studies have demonstrated that non-Black participants identify weapons faster and are more likely to identify non-weapons as weapons when the image of the weapon is paired with the image of a Black person Furthermore, White individuals’ decisions to shoot an armed target in a video game is made more quickly when the target is Black