PSY 400: Perception

Perceiving Objects and Scenes

Chapter Objectives
 05.01 Discuss why object perception is challenging for both humans and
computers.
 05.02 Explain Gestalt psychology and the laws of perceptual organization.
 05.03 Define figure–ground segregation and identify the properties that
determine which area is perceived as figure.
 05.04 Describe the recognition by components theory and how it accounts for
our ability to recognize objects from different viewpoints.
 05.05 Explain the role of past experience, inference, and prediction in
perception.
 05.06 Describe experiments that show how the brain responds to faces, bodies,
and scenes, and what is meant by “neural mind reading.”
 05.07 Analyze the evidence for and against the idea that faces are “special”.
 05.08 Discuss the development of face recognition in infants.
 Introduction to Object Perception

A genuinely unfamiliar object A complex scene

The Challenge of Object Perception
 The stimulus on the receptors is ambiguous
 Some of the challenges to object perception:
 Inverse projection problem: An image on the retina can be
caused by an infinite number of objects
The Challenge of Object Perception
 Occlusions are common in the environment
 Objects can be hidden or blurred
The Challenge of Object Perception
 Objects make different retinal images from different viewpoints
 Viewpoint invariance: the ability to recognize an object regardless
of the viewpoint
 Shadow: reasons for changes in lightness % darkness in the
environment can be unclear
Top-Down Processing and Bottom- Up Processing

 Bottom-up processing
 Physical stimuli influence perception
 Top-down processing
 Existing knowledge influences perception
 Recognition
 Matching presented item to item in memory
 Representation
 Translation of stimulus information into perceptual experience
Approaches to Object Perception: Structuralist
Approach

 Wundt (late 1800s)

 Perceptions are created by combining elements called
sensations (data-driven, bottom-up)
 A group of perceptual psychologists argued that many
perceptions are not directly derived form sensation
 Ex: Structuralism couldn’t explain apparent movement
 Stimulated the founding of Gestalt Psychology in the 1920s
 Perceptual Interpolation
 Illusory contours: perceptual edges that exist because of edge
completion but are not actually physically present

Kanisza An illusory Necker

triangles cube
 Perceptual Interpolation
 Edge completion: perception of a physically absent but inferred edge, allowing us to
complete the perception of a partially hidden object
Basic Assumptions of Gestalt
Psychology
 Perception not built from sensations, but is a
result of perceptual organization
 We impose structure form the top, down
 Perception is a psychological process–
what we perceive is not always the same
as what is “out there”
 Gestalt: German for “form” or “whole”; The
whole is greater than the sum of its parts
 Organisms respond to “segregated sensory
wholes”
 People naturally perceived things as a
whole rather than a bunch of parts
Gestalt Law of Perceptual
Organization
 The Law of Pragnanz: Out of many
possible ways to perceive of the
environment, the one that will prevail is
the simplest, most comprehensive, and
most stable
 Also called Law of Good Figure, the law
of simplicity
 Grouping
 Elements in a figure are brought
together into a common unit or object
 Segregation
 Distinguishing two objects as being
distinct or discrete
Perceptual Organization
(Gestalt Laws)
Perceptual Segregation
 Figure-Ground: We see objects (figure) as distinct
from their surroundings (ground)
 Words on a page
 Voice vs. Background noise
 Figure-ground segregation
 Properties of figure and ground
 Figure is more “thing like” and more
memorable than ground
 Figure is seen in front
 Ground is more uniform and extends behind
figure
What determines Figure or Ground?
 Faces or a vase?
What determines Figure or Ground?
 Figures are more likely to be perceived on the convex side of
borders
What determines Figure or Ground?
What determines Figure or Ground?
 Built-in principles can override experience
 Segregation of figure from ground
 Gibson and Peterson Experiment
 Figure-ground formation can be affected
by the meaningfulness of a stimulus
 Meaningful shapes (a0 are more likely to
be perceived as a figure than less (b)
Gestalt Organizing Principles
 Theorists argued that our perceptual systems automatically
organized sensory input based on certain perceptual rules
 Proximity: Things that are near each other are grouped together
 Similarity: Similar things are grouped together
 Good Continuation: Connected points resulting in a straight or
smooth curves belong together; Lines are seen as following the
smoothest path
 Common Fate: Things moving in the same region tend to be
grouped together
 Symmetry: Elements that are symmetrical to each other tend to
be perceived as a unified group
 Uniformed Connectedness: Connected region of visual
properties are perceived as single unit
The Law of Proximity
 Proximity: Things that are near each other are grouped
together
The Law of Similarity
 Similarity: Similar things are grouped together
The Law of Good Continuation
 Good Continuation: Connected points resulting in straight
or smooth curves belong together; Lines are seen as
following the smoothest path
The Law of Common Fate
 Common Fate: Things moving in the same region tend to
be grouped together
Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Grouping
The Law of Symmetry
 Law of Symmetry: elements that are symmetrical to each
other tend to be perceived as a unified group
The Law of Uniform Connectedness
 Uniformed Connectedness: Connected region of visual
properties are perceived as a single unit
Perceiving the Gist of a Scene
 A scene contains:
 Background elements.
 Objects organized in meaningful ways with each other and
the background
 Difference between objects and scenes:
 A scene is acted within.
 An object is acted open.
Research on perceiving the gist of scenes
 Fei-Fei used masking to show that the overall gist is
perceived first followed by details.
Relationship between Environment Regularities and
Perception

 Gestalt heuristics reflect natural regularities in environment

 Oblique Effect: People more sensitive to these orientations
than others
Relationship between Environment Regularities and
Perception

 Gestalt heuristics reflect natural regularities in environment

 Light-from-above-heuristic: Objects generally perceived
with the assumption of where the light source is coming
from
Perceptual Intelligence
 Theory of unconscious inference:
 Helmholtz explained why stimuli can
be interpreted in more than one way.
 Main principle-perceptions are result
of unconscious assumptions about the
way the world works
 Likelihood Principle: Objects are the
perceived based on what is most likely to
have caused that pattern
 Semantic relatedness: Characteristics
associated with the functions of the
scenes
The Neuroanatomy and
Physiology of Object Perception
Representation of shapes in
area V4
Both color vision and shape
perception
Object recognition in the
inferotemporal area
Receives input from the
ventral visual pathway
 Object identification
Objects in our Environment
How do brains process information about objects?

 Fusiform face area (FFA): responds only to faces.

 Amygdala (AG): activated by emotional aspects of faces.
 Superior temporal sulcus (STS): responds to where the person is
looking and to mouth movements
 Frontal cortex (FC): activated when evaluation facial attractiveness.
 Parahippocampal place area (PPA): Area within the inferotemporal
cortex that appears to have the specific function of scene
recognition
 Topographic agnosia: Deficit in recognizing spatial landscapes from
damage to the PPA
 Extrastriate body area: Area within the inferotemporal cortex;
Active when viewing bodies or body part but not faces
How do brains process information about objects?
Vision and Animacy: How Do We Tell
a Who from a What?
Results of Looser and Wheatley’s (2010) study of
animacy

Consider the middle two faces. Are they of a doll or

a person?
Vision and Animacy: How Do We Tell a Who from a
What?

 These data show participants’ perceptions of

whether the figures were animate or not. The
colored lines indicate the ratings for
attributes of animacy, such as animacy itself,
having a mind, the ability to plan, and the
ability to feel pain.
 The human brain “looks for” faces which is
why we often get false alarms
 Animate-looking eyes contribute to face
recognition
 The presence of mostly human-like features
but lacking:
 Emotional responses