Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the process of attaining awar eness or understanding of the environment by organizing

and interpreting sensory information.[1][2] All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs.[3] For example, v ision involves light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by odor molecules and hearing involves pressure waves. Perception is not the passive re ceipt of these signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory and expectation.[4 ][5] Perception involves these "top-down" effects as well as the "bottom-up" pro cess of processing sensory input.[5] Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this proces sing happens outside conscious awareness.[3] Since the rise of experimental psychology in the late 19th Century, psychology's understanding of perception has progressed by combining a variety of techniques .[4] Psychophysics measures the effect on perception of varying the physical qua lities of the input. Sensory neuroscience studies the brain mechanisms underlyin g perception. Perceptual systems can also be studied computationally, in terms o f the information they process. Perceptual issues in philosophy include the exte nt to which sensory qualities such as sounds, smells or colors exist in objectiv e reality rather than the mind of the perceiver.[4] Although the senses were traditionally viewed as passive receptors, the study of illusions and ambiguous images has demonstrated that the brain's perceptual sys tems actively and pre-consciously attempt to make sense of their input.[4] There is still active debate about the extent to which perception is an active proces s of hypothesis testing, analogous to science, or whether realistic sensory info rmation is rich enough to make this process unnecessary.[4] The perceptual systems of the brain enable individuals to see the world around t hem as stable, even though the sensory information may be incomplete and rapidly varying. Human and animal brains are structured in a modular way, with differen t areas processing different kinds of sensory information. Some of these modules take the form of sensory maps, mapping some aspect of the world across part of the brain's surface. These different modules are interconnected and influence ea ch other. For instance, the taste is strongly influenced by its odor.[6] Contents 1 Process and terminology 2 Perception and reality 3 Features 3.1 Constancy 3.2 Grouping 3.3 Contrast effects 4 Effect of experience 5 Effect of motivation and expectation 6 Theories 6.1 Perception as hypothesis-testing 6.2 Perception-in-action 6.3 Evolutionary psychology and perception 6.4 Theories of visual perception 7 Physiology 8 Types 8.1 Of sound 8.1.1 Of speech 8.2 Touch 8.3 Taste 8.4 Of the social world 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References

12 Further reading 13 External links [edit] Process and terminologyThe process of perception begins with an object in the real world, termed the distal stimulus or distal object.[citation needed] B y means of light, sound or another physical process, the object stimulates the b ody's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neura l activity a process called transduction.[1][3] This raw pattern of neural activit y is called the proximal stimulus.[citation needed] These neural signals are tra nsmitted to the brain and processed.[3] The resulting mental recreation of the d istal stimulus is the percept. Perception is sometimes described as the process of constructing mental representations of distal stimuli using the information a vailable in proximal stimuli. An example would be a person looking at a shoe. The shoe itself is the distal st imulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates their reti na, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus.[7] The image of the shoe reconstr ucted by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example would be a tele phone ringing. The ringing of the telephone is the distal stimulus. The sound st imulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus, and the brain' s interpretation of this as the ringing of a telephone is the percept. The diffe rent kinds of sensation such as warmth, sound, and taste are called "sensory mod alities".[1][8] Stimuli are not necessarily translated into a percept and rarely does a single s timulus translate into a percept. An ambiguous stimulus may be translated into m ultiple percepts, experienced randomly, one at a time, in what is called "multis table perception". And the same stimuli, or absence of them, may result in diffe rent percepts depending on subject s culture and previous experiences. Ambiguous f igures demonstrate that a single stimulus can result in more than one percept; f or example the Rubin vase which can be interpreted either as a vase or as two fa ces. The percept can bind sensations from multiple senses into a whole. A pictur e of a talking person on a television screen, for example, is bound to the sound of speech from speakers to form a percept of a talking person. "Percept" is als o a term used by Leibniz,[9] Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari[10] to define percept ion independent from perceivers. [edit] Perception and realityIn the case of visual perception, some people can a ctually see the percept shift in their mind's eye.[11] Others, who are not pictu re thinkers, may not necessarily perceive the 'shape-shifting' as their world ch anges. The 'esemplastic' nature has been shown by experiment: an ambiguous image has multiple interpretations on the perceptual level. This confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies such a s camouflage, and also in biological mimicry, for example by European Peacock bu tterflies, whose wings bear eye markings that birds respond to as though they we re the eyes of a dangerous predator. There is also evidence that the brain in some ways operates on a slight "delay", to allow nerve impulses from distant parts of the body to be integrated into si multaneous signals.[12] Perception is one of the oldest fields in psychology. The oldest quantitative la w in psychology is the Weber-Fechner law, which quantifies the relationship betw een the intensity of physical stimuli and their perceptual effects (for example, testing how much darker a computer screen can get before the viewer actually no tices). The study of perception gave rise to the Gestalt school of psychology, w ith its emphasis on holistic approach.

[edit] Features[edit] ConstancyMain article: Subjective constancy Perceptual constancy is the ability of perceptual systems to recognise the same object from widely varying sensory inputs.[5][13] For example, individual people can be recognised from views, such as frontal and profile, which form very diff erent shapes on the retina. A coin looked at face-on makes a circular image on t he retina, but when held at angle it makes an elliptical image.[14] In normal pe rception these are recognised as a single three-dimensional object. Without this correction process, an animal approaching from the distance would appear to gai n in size.[15][16] One kind of perceptual constancy is color constancy: for exam ple, a white piece of paper can be recognised as such under different colors and intensities of light.[16] Another example is roughness constancy: when a hand i s drawn quickly across a surface, the touch nerves are stimulated more intensely . The brain compensates for this, so the speed of contact does not affect the pe rceived roughness.[16] Other constancies include melody, odor, brightness and wo rds.[17] These constancies are not always total, but the variation in the percep t is much less than the variation in the physical stimulus.[16] The perceptual s ystems of the brain achieve perceptual constancy in a variety of ways, each spec ialized for the kind of information being processed.[18] [edit] GroupingMain article: Principles of grouping Law of ClosureThe principles of grouping (or Gestalt laws of grouping) are a set of principles in psychology, first proposed by Gestalt psychologists to explain how humans naturally perceive objects as organized patterns and objects. Gestal t psychologists argued that these principles exist because the mind has an innat e disposition to perceive patterns in the stimulus based on certain rules. These principles are organized into five categories. The principle of proximity state s that, all else being equal, perception tends to group stimuli that are close t ogether as part of the same object, and stimuli that are far apart as two separa te objects. The principle of similarity states that, all else being equal, perce ption lends itself to seeing stimuli that physically resemble each other as part of the same object, and stimuli that are different as part of a different objec t. This allows for people to distinguish between adjacent and overlapping object s based on their visual texture and resemblance. The principle of closure refers to the mind s tendency to see complete figures or forms even if a picture is inco mplete, partially hidden by other objects, or if part of the information needed to make a complete picture in our minds is missing. For example, if part of a sh ape s border is missing people still tend to see the shape as completely enclosed by the border and ignore the gaps. The principle of good continuation makes sens e of stimuli that overlap: when there is an intersection between two or more obj ects, people tend to perceive each as a single uninterrupted object. The princip le of common fate groups stimuli together on the basis of their movement. When v isual elements are seen moving in the same direction at the same rate, perceptio n associates the movement as part of the same stimulus. This allows people to ma ke out moving objects even when other details, such as color or outline, are obs cured. The principle of good form refers to the tendency to group together forms of similar shape, pattern, color, etc.[19][20][21][22] Later research has ident ified additional grouping principles.[23] [edit] Contrast effectsMain article: Contrast effect Two physically identical orange squares are perceived as different subjective co lors, because each has a different surrounding color.[24]A common finding across many different kinds of perception is that the perceived qualities of an object can be affected by the qualities of context. If one object is extreme on some d imension, then neighboring objects are perceived as further away from that extre me. "Simultaneous contrast effect" is the term used when stimuli are presented a t the same time, whereas "successive contrast" applies when stimuli are presente d one after another.[25]

The contrast effect was noted by the 17th Century philosopher John Locke, who ob served that lukewarm water can feel hot or cold, depending on whether the hand t ouching it was previously in hot or cold water.[26] In the early 20th Century, W ilhelm Wundt identified contrast as a fundamental principle of perception, and s ince then the effect has been confirmed in many different areas.[26] These effec ts shape not only visual qualities like color and brightness, but other kinds of perception, including how heavy an object feels.[27] One experiment found that thinking of the name "Hitler" led to subjects rating a person as more hostile.[2 8] Whether a piece of music is perceived as good or bad can depend on whether th e music heard before it was unpleasant or pleasant.[29] For the effect to work, the objects being compared need to be similar to each other: a television report er can seem smaller when interviewing a tall basketball player, but not when sta nding next to a tall building.[27] [edit] Effect of experienceMain article: Perceptual learning With experience, organisms can learn to make finer perceptual distinctions, and learn new kinds of categorization. Wine-tasting, the reading of X-ray images and music appreciation are applications of this process in the human sphere. Resear ch has focused on the relation of this to other kinds of learning, and whether i t takes place in peripheral sensory systems or in the brain's processing of sens e information.[citation needed] [edit] Effect of motivation and expectationMain article: Set (psychology) A perceptual set, also called perceptual expectancy or just set is a predisposit ion to perceive things in a certain way.[30] It is an example of how perception can be shaped by "top-down" processes such as drives and expectations.[31] Perce ptual sets occur in all the different senses.[15] They can be long term, such as a special sensitivity to hearing one's own name in a crowded room, or short ter m, as in the ease with which hungry people notice the smell of food.[32] A simpl e demonstration of the effect involved very brief presentations of non-words suc h as "sael". Subjects who were told to expect words about animals read it as "se al", but others who were expecting boat-related words read it as "sail".[32] Sets can be created by motivation and so can result in people interpreting ambig uous figures so that they see what they want to see.[31] For instance, how someo ne perceives what unfolds during a sports game can be biased if they strongly su pport one of the teams.[33] In one experiment, students were allocated to pleasa nt or unpleasant tasks by a computer. They were told that either a number or a l etter would flash on the screen to say whether they were going to taste an orang e juice drink or an unpleasant-tasting health drink. In fact, an ambiguous figur e was flashed on screen, which could either be read as the letter B or the numbe r 13. When the letters were associated with the pleasant task, subjects were mor e likely to perceive a letter B, and when letters were associated with the unple asant task they tended to perceive a number 13.[30] Perceptual set has been demonstrated in many social contexts. People who are pri med to think of someone as "warm" are more likely to perceive a variety of posit ive characteristics in them, than if the word "warm" is replaced by "cold". When someone has a reputation for being funny, an audience are more likely to find t hem amusing.[32] Individual's perceptual sets reflect their own personality trai ts. For example, people with an aggressive personality are quicker to correctly identify aggressive words or situations.[32] One classic psychological experiment showed slower reaction times and less accur ate answers when a deck of playing cards reversed the color of the suit symbol f or some cards (e.g. red spades and black hearts).[34] Philosopher Andy Clark explains that perception, although it occurs quickly, is not simply a bottom-up process (where minute details are put together to form la rger wholes). Instead, our brains use what he calls Predictive coding. It starts

with very broad constraints and expectations for the state of the world, and as expectations are met, it makes more detailed predictions (errors lead to new pr edictions, or learning processes). Clark says this research has various implicat ions; not only can there be no completely "unbiased, unfiltered" perception, but this means that there is a great deal of feedback between perception and expect ation (perceptual experiences often shape our beliefs, but those perceptions wer e based on existing beliefs).[35] [edit] Theories[edit] Perception as hypothesis-testingCognitive theories of perc eption assume there is a poverty of stimulus. This (with reference to perception ) is the claim that sensations are, by themselves, unable to provide a unique de scription of the world. Sensations require 'enriching', which is the role of the mental model. A different type of theory is the perceptual ecology approach of James J. Gibson. Gibson rejected the assumption of a poverty of stimulus by reje cting the notion that perception is based in sensations instead, he investigated what information is actually presented to the perceptual systems. His theory "a ssumes the existence of stable, unbounded, and permanent stimulus-information in the ambient optic array. And it supposes that the visual system can explore and detect this information. The theory is information-based, not sensation-based." [36] He and the psychologists who work within this paradigm detailed how the wor ld could be specified to a mobile, exploring organism via the lawful projection of information about the world into energy arrays.[citation needed] Specificatio n is a 1:1 mapping of some aspect of the world into a perceptual array; given su ch a mapping, no enrichment is required and perception is direct perception.[cit ation needed] [edit] Perception-in-actionAn ecological understanding of perception derived fro m Gibson's early work is that of "perception-in-action", the notion that percept ion is a requisite property of animate action; that without perception action wo uld be unguided, and without action perception would serve no purpose. Animate a ctions require both perception and motion, and perception and movement can be de scribed as "two sides of the same coin, the coin is action". Gibson works from t he assumption that singular entities, which he calls "invariants", already exist in the real world and that all that the perception process does is to home in u pon them. A view known as constructivism (held by such philosophers as Ernst von Glasersfeld) regards the continual adjustment of perception and action to the e xternal input as precisely what constitutes the "entity", which is therefore far from being invariant.[37] Glasersfeld considers an "invariant" as a target to be homed in upon, and a prag matic necessity to allow an initial measure of understanding to be established p rior to the updating that a statement aims to achieve. The invariant does not an d need not represent an actuality, and Glasersfeld describes it as extremely unl ikely that what is desired or feared by an organism will never suffer change as time goes on. This social constructionist theory thus allows for a needful evolu tionary adjustment.[38] A mathematical theory of perception-in-action has been devised and investigated in many forms of controlled movement, and has been described in many different s pecies of organism using the General Tau Theory. According to this theory, tau i nformation, or time-to-goal information is the fundamental 'percept' in percepti on. [edit] Evolutionary psychology and perceptionMany experts, such as Jerry Fodor, write that the purpose of perception is knowledge, but evolutionary psychologist s hold that its primary purpose is to guide action.[39] For example, they say, d epth perception seems to have evolved not to help us know the distances to other objects but rather to help us move around in space.[39] Evolutionary psychologi sts say that animals from fiddler crabs to humans use eyesight for collision avo idance, suggesting that vision is basically for directing action, not providing

knowledge.[39] Building and maintaining sense organs is metabolically expensive, so these organ s evolve only when they improve an organism's fitness.[39] More than half the br ain is devoted to processing sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's metabolic resources, so the senses must provide exce ptional benefits to fitness.[39] Perception accurately mirrors the world; animal s get useful, accurate information through their senses.[39] Scientists who study perception and sensation have long understood the human sen ses as adaptations.[39] Depth perception consists of processing over half a doze n visual cues, each of which is based on a regularity of the physical world.[39] Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects.[39] Sound waves provide usefu l information about the sources of and distances to objects, with larger animals making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making and hearin g higher-frequency sounds.[39] Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the envir onment that were significant for fitness in the EEA.[39] The sense of touch is a ctually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain.[39] Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive.[39] An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organism becomes temporarily more or less sensitive to se nsation.[39] For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim or bright ambie nt light.[39] Sensory abilities of different organisms often coevolve, as is the case with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evol ved to respond to the sounds that the bats make.[39] Evolutionary psychologists claim that perception demonstrates the principle of m odularity, with specialized mechanisms handling particular perception tasks.[39] For example, people with damage to a particular part of the brain suffer from t he specific defect of not being able to recognize faces (prospagnosia).[39] EP s uggests that this indicates a so-called face-reading module.[39] [edit] Theories of visual perceptionEmpirical theories of perception Anne Treisman's Feature Integration Theory Interactive Activation and Competition Irving Biederman's Recognition by Components Theory [edit] PhysiologyMain article: Sensory system A sensory system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sens ory information. A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways , and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception. Commonly recognized sen sory systems are those for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch), taste and olfaction (smell). In short, senses are transducers from the physical world to the realm of the mind. The receptive field is the specific part of the world to which a receptor organ and receptor cells respond. For instance, the part of the world an eye can see, is its receptive field; the light that each rod or cone can see, is its receptiv e field.[40] Receptive fields have been identified for the visual system, audito ry system and somatosensory system, so far. [edit] Types[edit] Of sound Anatomy of the human ear. (The length of the auditory canal is exaggerated in th is image)Main article: Hearing (sense) Hearing (or audition) is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations. Frequencies capable of being heard by humans are called audio or sonic. The rang e is typically considered to be between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz.[41] Frequencies hig her than audio are referred to as ultrasonic, while frequencies below audio are referred to as infrasonic. The auditory system includes the ears and inner struc tures which produce neural signals in response to the sound. The primary auditor y cortex, within the temporal lobe of the human brain, is where auditory informa

tion arrives in the cerebral cortex. Sound does not usually come from a single source: in real situations, sounds fro m multiple sources and directions are superimposed as they arrive at the ears. H earing involves the computationally complex task of separating out the sources o f interest, often estimating their distance and direction as well as identifying them.[14] [edit] Of speechMain article: Speech perception Though the phrase "I owe you" can be heard as three distinct words, a spectrogra m reveals no clear boundaries.Speech perception is the process by which the soun ds of language are heard, interpreted and understood. Research in speech percept ion seeks to understand how human listeners recognize speech sounds and use this information to understand spoken language. The sound of a word can vary widely according to words around it and the tempo of the speech, as well as the physica l characteristics, accent and mood of the speaker. Listeners manage to perceive words across this wide range of different conditions.[citation needed] Another v ariation is that reverberation can make a large difference in sound between a wo rd spoken from the far side of a room and the same word spoken up close. Experim ents have shown that people automatically compensate for this effect when hearin g speech.[14][42] The process of perceiving speech begins at the level of the sound signal and the process of audition. After processing the initial auditory signal, speech sound s are further processed to extract acoustic cues and phonetic information. This speech information can then be used for higher-level language processes, such as word recognition. Speech perception is not necessarily uni-directional. That is , higher-level language processes connected with morphology, syntax, or semantic s may interact with basic speech perception processes to aid in recognition of s peech sounds.[citation needed] It may be the case that it is not necessary and m aybe even not possible for a listener to recognize phonemes before recognizing h igher units, like words for example. In one experiment, Richard M. Warren replac ed one phoneme of a word with a cough-like sound. His subjects restored the miss ing speech sound perceptually without any difficulty and what is more, they were not able to identify accurately which phoneme had been disturbed.[43] [edit] TouchMain article: Haptic perception Haptic perception is the process of recognizing objects through touch. It involv es a combination of somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin surface (e. g., edges, curvature, and texture) and proprioception of hand position and confo rmation. People can rapidly and accurately identify three-dimensional objects by touch.[44] This involves exploratory procedures, such as moving the fingers ove r the outer surface of the object or holding the entire object in the hand.[45] Haptic perception relies on the forces experienced during touch.[46] Gibson defined the haptic system as "The sensibility of the individual to the wo rld adjacent to his body by use of his body".[47] Gibson and others emphasized t he close link between haptic perception and body movement: haptic perception is active exploration. The concept of haptic perception is related to the concept o f extended physiological proprioception according to which, when using a tool su ch as a stick, perceptual experience is transparently transferred to the end of the tool. [edit] TasteMain article: Taste Taste (or, the more formal term, gustation) is the ability to perceive the flavo r of substances including, but not limited to, food. Humans receive tastes throu gh sensory organs called taste buds, or gustatory calyculi, concentrated on the upper surface of the tongue.[48] The human tongue has 100 to 150 taste receptor cells on each of its roughly ten thousand taste buds.[49] There are five primary

tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and umami. Other tastes can be mimicked by combining these basic tastes.[49][50] The recognition and awaren ess of umami is a relatively recent development in Western cuisine.[51] The basi c tastes contribute only partially to the sensation and flavor of food in the mo uth other factors include smell, detected by the olfactory epithelium of the nos e;[6] texture, detected through a variety of mechanoreceptors, muscle nerves, et c.;[50][52] and temperature, detected by thermoreceptors.[50] All basic tastes a re classified as either appetitive or aversive, depending upon whether the thing s they sense are harmful or beneficial.[53] [edit] Of the social worldMain article: Social perception Social perception is the part of perception that allows people to understand the individuals and groups of their social world, and thus an element of social cog nition.[54] [edit] See also