Constructive perception
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Constructive perception, is the theory of
perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
in which the perceiver uses sensory information and other sources of information to construct a cognitive understanding of a stimulus. In contrast to this top-down approach, there is the bottom-up approach of
direct perception Direct may refer to: Mathematics * Directed set, in order theory * Direct limit of (pre), sheaves * Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces Computing * Direct access (disambiguation), a ...
. Perception is more of a hypothesis, and the evidence to support this is that "Perception allows behaviour to be generally appropriate to non-sensed object characteristics," meaning that we react to obvious things that, for example, are like doors even though we only see a "long, narrow rectangle as the door is ajar." Also known as intelligent perception, constructive perception shows the relationship between
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
and perception. This comes from the importance of high-order thinking and learning in perception. During perception, hypotheses are formed and tested about
percept Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
s that are based on three things: sensory data, knowledge, and high-level cognitive processes. Visual sensations are usually correctly attributed because we unconsciously assimilate information from many sources and then unconsciously make judgments based on this information. The philosophy of
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
explains that our perception of the world is reciprocal; it both is affected by and affects our experience of the world.


Evidence of constructive perception

Context effects A context effect is an aspect of cognitive psychology that describes the influence of environmental factors on one's perception of a stimulus. The impact of context effects is considered to be part of top-down design. The concept is supported b ...
are not explained by bottom-up theories of accounting.
Irving Biederman Irving Biederman (1939 – August 17, 2022) was an American vision scientist specializing in the study of brain processes underlying humans' ability to quickly recognize and interpret what they see. While best known for his Recognition by Compon ...
performed experiments that demonstrated dramatic context effects. For example, Stephen Palmer carried out an experiment in which the participants were asked to identify objects after they were shown either a relevant or irrelevant context. They might be shown a scene of a baseball game, followed by images of a baseball, car, and a phone. The stimuli that was most relevant to the context, the baseball, was recognized quicker than those that were irrelevant, car and phone.
Perceptual constancy Subjective constancy or perceptual constancy is the perception of an object or quality as constant even though our sensation of the object changes. While the physical characteristics of an object may not change, in an attempt to deal with the extern ...
gives evidence that high-level constructive processes occur during perception. As lighting conditions change, the color of objects, such as bananas or cherries, appear to remain constant. Even when there is not enough light to even stimulate
cone cells Cone cells, or cones, are photoreceptor cells in the retinas of vertebrate eyes including the human eye. They respond differently to light of different wavelengths, and the combination of their responses is responsible for color vision. Cones ...
and give the sensation of color, bananas and cherries are still perceived as yellow and red, respectively. Configural-superiority effect is another compelling context effect. This effect is demonstrated by the decrease in response time by participants when identifying objects in complex configurations over objects in isolation. For example, four diagonal lines are shown and participants are asked the location of the odd line indicated by its different orientation. In another condition, an "L" shaped fixed context is added; this creates three triangles and another object made of three lines. Participants were able to discern the odd three line object from the set of triangles quicker than the single diagonal lines alone.


Examples

You are traveling down a road you have never been on before, up ahead you see an octagonal red sign with white letters near an intersection. The sign has a vine growing on it, and all you can read is "ST_P." These letters alone are meaningless, however taken in its context and using knowledge from past experiences you infer that it is a stop sign. This is example of constructive perception because it required intelligence and thought to combine sensory information, a red octagonal sign with "ST_P" in white letters at an intersection, and knowledge from past experiences, stop signs are red octagonal signs with "STOP" in white letters placed at an intersection, to perceive it as a stop sign.


Theories

A theory on how perception can be constructed in the nervous system is based on the cybernetic mechanisms of anapoiesis, which means re-creation. As a physiological mechanism, reconstructive perception has been proposed to be a function of
metabotropic receptors A metabotropic receptor, also referred to by the broader term G-protein-coupled receptor, is a type of membrane receptor that initiates a number of metabolic steps to modulate cell activity. The nervous system utilizes two types of receptors: met ...
and
G protein-gated ion channel G protein-gated ion channels are a family of transmembrane ion channels in neurons and atrial myocytes that are directly gated by G proteins. Overview of mechanisms and function Generally, G protein-gated ion channels are specific ion channels ...
s, which are hypothesised to temporality rewire neural networks.Nikolić, D. (2022). Where is the mind within the brain? Transient selection of subnetworks by metabotropic receptors and G protein-gated ion channels. arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.11249.


See also

*
Perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
*
Cognitive Psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
* Cognitive Science *
Practopoiesis An adaptive system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole that together are able to respond to environmental changes or changes in the interacting parts, in a way analogous to either conti ...


References

{{cite book , last = Sternberg , first = Robert J. , authorlink = Robert Sternberg , title = Cognitive Psychology, 4th ed. , publisher =
Thomson Wadsworth Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(Jun 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders 2 ...
, year = 2006 , location = Belmont , pages
143–145
, isbn = 0-534-51421-9 , url = https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780495006992/page/143 Perception Cognition