Both consciously and unconsciously humans judge any and every
new scene and graphic using their assumptions, knowledge, past
experiences, physiological capabilities (optical abilities, etc),
habits, aesthetics, genetic biases and tendencies. A human has
a complex template or internal guide and set of rules
formed from the past to help perceive the present and future.
Recognizing, or seeming to recognize, something happens when
something in the visual data appears to match up with what is
in already your mind. You recognize dogs from having before seen
dogs. Even from a good distance you can identify a dog by the
shape and doggy movement. If you had no knowledge or concept
of dogs you wouldn't recognize that strange creature sniffing
your neighbor's bushes.
As this ingrained template or internal guide is in part formed
by your knowledge (including of dogs), experiences, biases and
even emotions, the template is particular to you. If you were
raised in a different place and time, had a different family
and college major, had a different natural temperament and aesthetic
taste, your template and resulting perceptions would differ.
Someone who learns about wolves solely from folklore has a different
perception of wolves than one who studies them in the wild. First
time ocean boaters, climbers, pilots and hikers can get into
mortal danger because of their misassumptions due to lack of
experience. Someone new to the jungle might pick up a deadly
poisonous frog because it "Looks so cute and colorful."
After spending the night in the hospital, his perception of fogs
will be different. He may develop a phobia to all frogs, including
known harmless frogs back home in Iowa. Even the Kermit the Frog
wallpaper in a baby's room may evoke bad feelings.
You identify triangular and square shapes from your elementary
education along with innate biases. You perceive the shapes of
lions and fish in clouds and manicured bushes from having seen
lions and fish before. The shape of a fish would signify nothing
to you, and might go unnoticed, if you had no knowledge of fish.
Looking in a glossy magazine, you have assumptions about a
pictured kitchen. From having been in many kitchens, you assume
the floor is reasonably flat and level and not a half mile long.
You assume the room is filled with air instead of water. You
assume it has four walls, even though the picture shows only
two or three.
Are your assumptions about the kitchen correct? It's possible.
Are these assumptions wrong and the room was a two foot high
model with three walls and no roof? It's possible. Is it a computer
generated image and no physical room existed? It's possible.
Before you enter the following, what assumptions do you have
about what it will look like? An art museum, drug store, restaurant
bathroom, college campus, library, mathematics classroom. Even
though you can't anticipate every exact detail, and you know
there will often be interesting surprises, there are things you
definitely don't expect in each of those places. A gymnastics
competition in the library and napping goats in the bathroom
would be unexpected. In the first day of the semester, if you
saw rows of sewing machines in the math classroom you likely
would wonder if you've entered the wrong room. "Yes, this
is Algebra 202," the professor might say. "There was
a flood in Home Ec two nights ago and they had to store stuff
here for a few days. The physics class next door is filled with
mannequins!"
While our personal templates or internal guides serve us well,
helping us to quickly judge each new scene, they are imperfect.
They often cause us to misinterpret scenes. The past does not
always reflect the future, and one's template always causes one
to view things from a narrow, personal, idiosyncratic point of
view. Despite claims otherwise, humans cannot and do not perceive
things objectively.
Which horizontal bar is longer?
The horizontal white bars are the same length. It is your
template, or mental bias concerning size and depth, that causes
you to perceive the top one as longer. In this case, your template
is different than reality.
Ames Room
The above is a photograph of twin sisters of same height standing
in a room. The photograph is straight and unaltered. The viewer
assumes he is looking at a standard rectangular room. However,
this is a special room designed by Dartmouth optics scientist
Adelbert Ames Jr. If you could see the room from above, you would
see that the left back corner is substantially further back than
the right. The right twin isn't bigger, but much closer. The
viewer's misassumption about the room's shape, based on his mental
template for rooms, leads to misperceptions about the things
in the room. The picture of the twins looks unreal. However,
the room is as real as any room in your home. It is your assumption
about the room that is unreal.
You may have to read the above sign a few times to notice
the error. This is because of the way you process words. When
you read a book or article, you don't read one word after the
other, but in groups of words, guided by your expectations and
knowledge of phrases, grammar, punctuation and standard sentence
structure. In the above, your read what met your expectations,
skipping over the unexpected second the. Your read what
you assumed it should say, rather than what it said.
Ambiguity
Does this photograph picture steps or flat ground? It's flat
tile, color patterned to look like steps.
Ambiguity is an essential concept to understanding humans
and human perception, as humans constantly make choices, must
make choices, in the face of ambiguous information.
Ambiguity means there are more than one possible explanation
to what the viewer is looking at, and the viewer isn't sure which
explanation is correct.
The ambiguity can be because there are multiple visible options
that are plausibly correct, and/or information is missing from
the view adding even further possibilities. An example of missing
information is having to guess what exists behind a closed closet
door. There are many possibilities as to what's behind the door
and you don't know which is the correct answer. Even when it's
your own closet, you might not remember everything you put in
there.
Normal perception, even its unconscious and physiological
aspects, means choosing between ambiguous options. The choice
you chose from the different possibilities is your perception.
Humans use their templates to make choices in ambiguous situations.
With ambiguous information, the viewer almost always chooses
the possibility that matches, or most closely matches, their
template. The template sometimes identifies the correct choice.
As visual illusions illustrate, the template often identifies
the wrong explanation.
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
....-- Yogi Berra
Though they don't know and can't know, most people automatically
perceive the above playing cards as physically whole and rectangular.
It is important to realize that the template and perception
involves both the conscious and unconscious, instantaneous perceptions
and carefully reasoned ("What are the odds this is a option
A and not option B?"). Much of our perception is formed
by optics, neurons and genetic biases beyond and even unknown
to our conscious minds.
Which of the above appear to be bumps and which appear
to be divots? If you look at the picture upside down, your
answer will change. You own eyes produce two answers to the question.
This happens because a circle with dark shading on bottom and
light on top is perceived a physical bump, as it mimics a real
bump. When the picture is upside down, and the light/dark shading
switches, the former divots appear to be bumps and the former
bumps to appear to be divots.
The above shows two perfect circles. However, the visual information
does not match up with your brain's view of what are circles,
and you perceive them as something else. If you cover the image
with your hand to view different isolated sections of the shapes,
you will see that they are indeed perfectly round. This example
shows that your visual perception is not just formed by conscious
decision making, but by the unconscious workings of your mind.
Even when you learn they're circles, your mind still percieves
them differently.
Learning, Playing the Odds and Safety Management in Perception
Will this dog bite me if I try and pet it?
Learning, gaining knowledge, getting new views. While
perceptions are instantaneous, they are often altered, changed
and corrected with time and new experience. A distant figure
may at first appear to be a turtle, but you walk up to it and
see it is a stone. You often pick up a stone or coin or vase
to learn more about it, see other sides. Perception followed
by correction is a standard part of how humans gain knowledge.
Humans aren't omniscient, but learn more with experience and
new views.
Playing the odds or perceived odds. Human perception
often involves playing the odds, or at least guessing the odds
of what is before them. Humans are not omniscient and must make
guesses. Past experience helps your guessing. Playing the odds
means you are correct sometimes, incorrect sometimes.
Safety management. It is also important to realize
that this playing the odds is often about management of potential
danger. In the jungle a long skinny object may appear to be either
a rope or a poisonous snake. Between the two choices, it would
be safest to assume it is a snake and not pick it up ... If a
car is rolling towards you, it is safest to overestimate its
speed. You purpose is to not get injured ... With safety management
the object is to minimize danger, not to try for 100% accuracy
in guessing. Sometimes likely wrong but likely safe is the good
choice ...
Examples of personal templates and resulting
perception
Perceived guilt or innocence based on political affiliations.
When a politician gets in trouble with the law or ethics rules,
it is common for members of his party to believe, or at least
express, his innocence and members of the other party believe,
or at least express, his guilt. This often is only the basic,
initial impression. When facts come in, lessening the ambiguity,
some opinions will change.
With sports fans, initial perception of guilt is often
based on team affiliation. Fans in San Francisco and in Cleveland
expressed decidedly different opinions about the steroid guilt
or innocence of San Francisco Giant baseball player Barry Bonds.
It's probable that if Bonds played in Cleveland, the opinions
would be reversed.
Aspects of our templates for perceiving can be revealed when
we look at unrelated information, for example seeing a 'horse'
in a random pattern of stones. The horse exists in your mind,
not in the stones. The stones have almost nothing to do with
horses. When you think about it, saying you see a horse in stone
is rather bizarre, illogical behavior. You will find many similar
instances where your template reveals itself.
Humans were designed to be able to make instantanious judgments,
in the face of ambiguous information. We couldn't have survived
in the wild without being able to make snap judgments in the
face of falling trees and moving night shadows. This unconscious
ability to guess is the cause of many of our visual illusions.
With visual illusions, our minds make snap judgments that happen
to be incorrect.
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