Perception

Sensory experience, discussed above, is received via perceptual mechanisms. These mechanisms are rather sophisticated, however, and provide structure that is not necessarily apparent in the raw perceptual input. In other words, what we perceive is not necessarily the same as what we experience directly. The perceptual mechanisms that facilitate our experience were formalised by the movement known as Gestalt psychology, which first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. Gestalt psychologists such as Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) were interested in the principles that allow unconscious perceptual mechanisms to construct wholes or ‘gestalts’ out of incomplete perceptual input. For instance, when a smaller object is located in front of a larger one, we perceive the protruding parts of the larger object as part of a larger whole, even though we cannot see the whole because the parts are discontinuous. The Gestalt principles therefore provide structure to, and indeed constrain, experience. We briefly survey some of the most important Gestalt principles below, focusing on examples from the domain of visual perception.

Perception: figure-ground segregation

Human perception appears to automatically segregate any given scene into figure-ground organisation. A figure is an entity that, among other things, possesses a dominant shape, perhaps due to a definite contour or prominent colouring. The figure stands out against the ground, the part of a scene that is relegated to ‘background’. In the scene depicted in Figure 3.1, the figure is the lighthouse and the ground is made up of the grey horizontal lines against which the figure stands out.

Perception: principle of proximity

This principle holds that elements in a scene that are closer together will be seen as belonging together in a group. This is illustrated in Figure 3.2. The consequence of the greater proximity of the dots on the vertical axis than on the horizontal axis means that we perceive the dots in this image as being organised into columns rather than rows.

 If the scene is altered so that the dots are closer together on the horizontal axis, then we perceive a series ofrows, as illustrated in Figure 3.3.

Perception: principle of similarity

This principle holds that entities in a scene that share visual characteristics such as size, shape or colour will be perceived as belonging together in a group. For instance, in Figure 3.4, we perceive columns of shapes (rather than rows). In fact, the shapes are equidistant on both the horizontal and vertical axes. It is due to the principle of similarity that similar shapes (squares or circles) are grouped together and perceived as columns.

Perception: principle of closure

 This principle holds that incomplete figures are often completed by the perceptual system, even when part of the perceptual information is missing. For instance, in Figure 3.5, we perceive a white triangle overlaid on three black circles, even though the image could simply represent three incomplete circles.

Perception: principle of continuity

 This principle holds that human perception has a preference for continuous figures. This is illustrated in Figure 3.6. Here, we perceive two unbroken rectangles, one passing behind another, even though this is not what we actually see. In fact, the shaded rectangle is obscured by the first, so we have no direct evidence that the shaded area represents one continuous rectangle rather than two separate ones.

Perception: principle of smallness Finally, we consider the principle of smallness. This states that smaller entities tend to be more readily perceived as figures than larger entities. This is illustrated in Figure 3.7. We are more likely to perceive a black cross than a white cross because the black shading occupies a smaller proportion of the image.

Taken together, the Gestalt principles entail that the world is not objectively given. Instead, what we perceive is in part constructed by our cognitive apparatus, and mental representations are thereby constrained by processes   fundamental to perceptual processing. As we will see below, these facts emerging from the domain of visual perception pattern together with universal constraints in the language of space.

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مواضيع ذات صلة

An illustration of mental space construction

Roles and values

The Access Principle

Counterparts and connectors

Mental space lattices

Properties and relations

Elements

Space builders

The architecture of mental space construction

Towards a cognitive theory of meaning construction

Meaning construction in cognitive semantics

Sentence meaning in formal semantics