Figure Ground Perception example essay topic

Visual perception and visual sensation are both interactive processes, although there is a significant difference between the two processes. Sensation is defined as the stimulation of sense organs Visual sensation is a physiological process which means that it is the same for everyone. We absorb energy such as electro magnetic energy (light) or sound waves by sensory organs such as eyes. This energy is then transducer into electro chemical energy by the cones and rods (receptor cells) in the retina. There are four main stages of sensation. Sensation involves detection of stimuli incoming from the surrounding world, registering of the stimulus by the receptor cells, transduction or changing of the stimulus energy to an electric nerve impulse, and then finally the transmission of that electrical impulse into the brain.

Our brain then perceives what the information is. Hence perception is defined as the selection, organisation and interpretation of that sensory input. Perception is defined as the process of organizing, interpreting, and selectively extracting sensory information. Visual perception is left to the individual person to make up their own mind. Perceptual organisation occurs when one groups the basic elements of the sensory world into the coherent objects that one perceives.

Perception is therefore a process through which the brain makes sense of incoming stimuli. The process of perception is an interactive yet separate process from sensation, however, it is sometimes difficult to separate the two processes. The main difference is that sensation is where our sense organs first encounter raw stimuli. Perception is the process by which the stimuli are interpreted, analysed, and integrated with other sensory information.

An experience from everyday life that helps to work out perception and sensation is a football game. A ball could be kicked towards the goals. Two people will see the same ball going in the same direction at the same time yet one could say that the ball was a goal and the other could say that the ball went in through the goals for a point. There are many different Visual Perception principles in perception. The main principles are Gestalt.

Gestalt is a German word meaning 'form' or 'shape'. Gestalt psychologists formulated a series of principles that describe how the visual system organisms a scene into discrete forms. Three of the Gestalt principles are closure, similarity, and figure-ground. Figure-ground involves the target stimulus being called the figure, while everything that surrounds this figure is called the ground, or background. The differentiation between these is called figure-ground perception. In perception we give most of our attention on the figure.

Studies of the way people view pictures have shown that most attention is given to the figure and little is reserved for the ground. This difference was recorded when the recording of eye movement patterns of individuals while they looked at pictures took place. Some important factors that influence the way people determine the figure from the ground included size: the smaller the area were more likely to be seen as a figure than larger areas. Familiarity is also important, meaning that familiar shapes and forms are more often perceived as figures. Also objects that are symmetrical are more often seen as figures. Advertisers use this deliberately to make customers think of their product and remember it.

The figure-ground tendency is exploited in reversible figure-ground figures. It is a coarse rendition of the vase / two faces figure. The drawing can either be seen as a central white vase, or two black faces looking at each other. Generally when you see one of the perceptions, the other regions forms a background and is not seen. So to see both perceptions requires switching to one from the other.

Another principle involved in visual perception is called closure. Closure refers to the tendency to fill information that is missing from the perceptual array by closing in gaps. For example, if one was given a picture of a triangle that was half completed and someone was asked to explain what they saw, the normal tendency would be to say that it was a triangle. Even though the triangle was half complete it could still be viewed as a triangle.

This tendency is referred to as closure. The third visual perception tendency in perception is similarity. In similarity size, shape, color, or form tend to be grouped together. For example if two bands are walking down the street side by side and their uniforms are different colours, the bands will be seen as two separate groups, and not as one large group. Some of the factors that can effect visual perception are what our expectations might be, the psychological state of consciousness that you are in, and also what your past experiences might have been in past perceptions. These factors allow us to perceive the world in a different way.

Attention is defined as a cluster of integrated events and processes that determine which stimuli receive further processing. Focusing ones attention on a particular object or even at is fairly easy. This is not so for every sense. Consider a game of women's volleyball. Hardly any of the male spectators care about the game as where all of their attention is on the women who play it. Perceptual set is another factor that can effect visual perception.

Perceptual set is a predisposition to perceive stimuli in a specific way; that is ignoring some stimuli and attending closely to others. Visual perception uses perceptual set to its advantage. We usually tend to see what we want to see. An example of perceptual set was a television advertisement that I saw while overseas. It was an advertisement showing men hardworking while explaining the nice cold refreshing taste of a drink. Of course after seeing this and hearing this the immediate thing that came to my head was an ice cold beer but the advertisement was selling bottled water.

By using perceptual set they were actually selling off their product. Very deceiving. Sometimes perceptions may be fixed on an inappropriate assumption and optical illusions are the result. One very famous illusion is the impossible trident.

At one end there are three prongs, but at the other end there are only two. Such a figure is an impossible figure. It is possible, because, the depth cues and shape cues of one part of the figure do not have to be consistent with the depth and shape cues of another part of the same figure. There are six diagonal lines. At one end there are circles on them giving the impression of three circular prongs.

At the other end the same size lines have cross connecting lines consistent with two square prongs. These perceptions can violate our expectations for what is possible often to a delightful effect. Our psychology class did an Empirical Research Assessment on perceptual set. The ERA consisted of showing people pictures of faces and then showing a picture of a face / rat. The same was then done to a different group of people using pictures of different animals and then the face / rat picture. The picture of the man / rat could neither be decided if it was a rat or a man.

This experiment showed the deception of showing a person previous pictures influenced the decision on which the subject would make. Visual perception plays a big part on how we perceive life. If we didn't have perception I don't know where we would be now.