Chapter 2
Perception
Define perception
• “Perception may be defined as a process by which individuals organize and interpret
their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.” ...
• In simple words we can say that perception is the act of seeing what is there to be
seen.
• What are our major senses?
APA DEFINES PERCEPTION AS
• “The process of becoming aware of objects by means of senses which includes such
activities as recognizing, observing and discriminating”
Why is perception important
• Perception is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information.
• This process effects our communication because we respond to stimuli differently,
whether they are objects or persons, based on how we perceive them.
Relationship of sensation and perception
• Sensation refers to process by which the sense organs gathers information about the
environment, whereas perception is the process by which the brain organizes and
interprets sensation.
• Perception involves other cognitive process, such as memory, thinking and ability to
form meanings through the sense process.
• Perception is a complex cognitive process that is concerned with selection,
organization and interpretation of stimuli.
Stages of perception
• Stimulation
• Organization
• Interpretation
• Memory
• recall
stimulation
• When you’re stimulated, something comes to your attention. The five senses
stimulate people. They include smelling, seeing, hearing, tasting and touching.
• Your eyes are the most common receptors for stimulation, but tasting a delicious
meal or smelling a cinnamon pinecone can be just as stimulating.
• You have access to a variety of stimuli throughout the day, from the moment you
hear your alarm in the morning until the second you feel the pillow beneath your
head as you fall asleep each night.
organization
• Your body spreads large amounts of information throughout the body.
• Your brain recognizes familiar ideas and concepts and connects them with past
experiences.
• This allows your brain to understand what is happening.
• During this phase, receptors in your body construct mental representations of the
stimulation you experience. This is called a percept.
• They help us arrange ideas in our minds with the help of patterns. Patterns help us
group our ideas so that we can interpret them.
Interpretation
• When your body recognizes events and features, you apply your own experiences
and biases.
• You evaluate your own experience and relate it to your past, values and beliefs. This
helps you determine how to react to situations in front of you. When we interpret
information, we give it meaning.
• While our brains typically do a great job of organizing stimuli, it can cause some
perceptions to be misguided or misinterpreted. One way in which this happens is
through stereotypes.
memory
• When your body stores events and moments in your brain, they become part of your
memory. You will build associations between these moments and your personal
beliefs and experiences.
• Memories can relate to good or bad experiences. You may not even realize you have
a memory stored until another stimuli reminds you of something that happened.
• Your body stores not only the specific stimuli you experienced, but also your feelings
about them.
• For example, you might store a memory of walking with your father at the park as
a positive memory. You might store a memory of being lost and scared as a
negative memory.
recall
• After some time, the memory that are stored individuals want to recall certain
information.
• Recall stage reconstruct what individual heard in a way that are meaningful.
• Example: how you recall your early school or college days.
Factors in perception
• two types of factors in perception
• Objective factors
• Subjective factors
Objective factors
• In certain instances perception maybe determined primarily by the stimulus
involved.
• There are a number of characteristics of stimuli that influences our perception
1. Intensity
2. Size
3. Distinct (different) and striking
Cont.…
1. Movement
2. Novelty
3. Duration
4. Repetition
5. Apparent change
6. Other factors
Intensity
• The louder a sound, the more likely the person is to perceive it.
• The bigger the light, the more likely it is to be in the focus of perception.
Size
• A full page advertisement is more likely to be noticed than a
half column one.
• Distinct and striking
• Distinct and striking things are perceived sooner than dull
and unclear things.
movement
• Movement
• When things moves suddenly in still and motionless environment, it is quickly
perceived.
• For example
• Birds sitting quietly on the tree are not quickly perceived as compared to ones about
to fly.
novelty
• Novelty
• A new and a novel thing is perceived sooner than old and used things.
• Duration
• Television and radio advertisements of long duration are attended to more than of
those short duration.
repetition
• Repetition
• Repetition causes us to adapt to the repeated stimulus. When a mother calls her
child for breakfast, she usually calls her name several times.
• Abrupt change
• Any change in stimulus conditions such as increase in noise often attracts Attention
• example: someone suddenly shouting in a library may attract a great deal of
attention, while in a boiler factory same shout may pass unnoticed.
Subjective factors
• Sometimes perception is not determined by physical characteristics of stimuli but by
the characteristics of the perceiver.
• Motives or needs
• Interests and values
• Past experiences
• Age
• Preparatory set
• Social and cultural factors
Subjective factors
• Motives or needs
• When people are motivated, they tend to see and hear what they want to hear.
• Our motives or needs may also lead us to expect to perceive certain things.
• Example: a hotel will draw the attention of hungry person because he has a drive for
food.
Interests and values
• we attend to those aspects of our world that relate to our interests.
• Example (sportsmen interest in sports equipment shop)
• A botany professor and a zoologist in a park attend to quite different aspects of
stimuli involved.
• The botany professor is interested in plants in the park whereas the zoologist looks
around for the animals.
Past experience
• Much of our daily activity is dependent upon past experiences.
• We have learned to react to cues and symbols rather than to total original stimuli.
• Thus in most situations perception is largely a process of inference based on past
experiences.
• Example: on watching a moving outline in the sky, we infer it to be an aeroplane.
Actually we cannot see what it is.
age
• Age
• Age brings change in perception as well.
• There is a vast difference between perception of things between a newborn infant
and an elder person.
• A child perceives a moon in quite a different way as compared to a young person.
Preparatory set
• This refers to persons readiness to respond to one kind of sensory input, but not to
other kinds
• For example:
• a husband who is expecting an important telephone call may hear the telephone
ring in the night, but his wife may not. The wife on the other hand maybe more likely
to hear the baby crying than the telephone.
Social and cultural factors
• Several social factors influence man’s behavior. These are
• Social factors
• Cultural factors
Social/cultural factors
• The normal perceptual experience of a culture may lead its members to develop
perceptual biases.
• Example
• Malawi was an isolated tribe with the no exposure to the modern civilization
• They have no social experience of black and white photographs so when they were
shown photo of a dog their brain could not perceive what it was.
Cont.
• cultural influences have similar impact on our perception
• Example
• Different social taboos are perceived differently in different cultures.
• We are required to perceive objects in different manners as compared to their
position in the environment.
• We are also supposed to perceive form, figure, depth and distance of objects.
• These are
Types/kinds of perception
• Form perception
• Size perception/perceptual constancy
• Motion perception
• Depth perception
• Time perception