Object Perception

Structure and Process

Bryan E. Shepp, Soledad Ballesteros

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134734092
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della psicologia

This collection of research on object perception focuses on holistic and featural properties of objects, the mechanisms that produce such properties, how people choose one type of property over another, and how such choices are improved during the course of child development. The contributions consider alternative perceptual characterizations, the way in which such properties are represented in the mind, how particular properties are more useful in some kinds of tasks that humans perform, and how the developing child learns to cope with different properties in choosing among alternatives to optimize task performance. These papers were written by specialists for specialists in experimental, cognitive, and developmental psychology.

1	OBJECT PERCEPTION AND PHENOMENOLOGY
	J. L. Fernández Trespalacios
	Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Madrid

INTRODUCTION

Research on perception is not, nor has it been, the kind of endeavor that leads either to a corpus of accumulated, firmly established knowledge or to a universally accepted theory and research methodology. On the contrary, there are several theoretical approaches and research methodologies that address the psychology of perception. Typically, the superiority of one approach or methodology over another does not seem to be based on well-established results but on the dominance of certain theories among the members of some groups of scientists.

I have previously documented this view by examining the variety of approaches used by contemporary investigators of visual information processing (Fernández Trespalacios, 1985, 1986), and, more recently, Cutting (1987) has made a similar argument about studies of perception and information.

In general terms, the main research trend currently focuses on the study of information provided in the structure of stimuli. This study is carried out by means of several approaches and methods. Some examples are the theory of structural information and what Cutting (1987) called group theory, according to which the amount of perceptual information provided depends on the number of members in a symmetry group. Other approaches deal with the information supplied by Fourier components in the analysis of spatial frequencies. There are even some attempts to work out an optic system that, by measuring visual angles, should permit a geometrical study of the amount of information supplied by visual stimuli.

Be that as it may, any study of perceptual information should consider the percept or perceptual result. And it is precisely at this stage that a study of the percept in itself seems impossible and seems feasible only by indirect means; that is, by observing reaction time or accuracy in performing a task that presumably defines the perceptual process.

At this point, a somewhat naive question may arise: Why, then, is it not possible to study the percept or perceptual result even if we have some experience about it? We could ask ourselves whether it may be valid (although in a different sense from that in Barry Loewer, 1987) to pass from information to intentionality. Therefore a study of intentionality has been the aim of phenomenology.

Phenomenology is said to be in fashion again. Indeed, philosophy has seen the resurgence of existentialist studies, and sociologists are working on the phenomenological perspectives of sociological analysis. As for psychology, Jennings (1986) wrote about the relationship between psychology and phenomenolgy.

However, the reason that I am dealing with object perception and phenomenology in this chapter is not this revival of phenomenology. I have chosen this topic because I believe that perhaps we could consider two previous steps concerning the scientific study of perception. In the first place, we should go back to the thing itself; we must focus on the percept we experience directly because the study of intentionality is to phenomenology what the study of information is to science. Secondly, we should bracket all our epistemological and scientific prejudices if a study of intentionality is to be made possible.

I should make it clear that my intention is neither to solve the scientific problem of perception, nor to replace a scientific approach by a phenomenological one in the study of perception. My only aim is to clarify the possible relation between a phenomenological and a scientific position in the study of perception. I will try, then, to solve two problems: the problem of mistaking other (cognitive) processes for the perceptual process, and the problem of defining the perceptual process in terms of the performance of a task that, in fact, is not just a perceptual task.

THE PROBLEM OF MISTAKING OTHER (COGNITIVE) PROCESSES FOR THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS

Modern science has stressed analysis and discrimination. A knowledge of complex things has never been reached through a study of complexity directly, but by analyzing and sifting out the smaller, more simple components. Analysis leads to discrimination, which keeps us from mistaking some things for others. Therefore, the best method of studying perception should be one that allows us to study such a perceptual process—or, if you like, such type of processing—by distinguishing it from other processes or types of processing.

European psychologists, who are phenomenologists or phenomenology-oriented, have always differentiated between perceptual configuration and perceptual categorization. Among the Gestaltists, Köhler tried, as early as 1929, (Köhler, 1929) to make such a distinction. The Belgian psychologist Michotte (1927) observed two stages in the process of apprehension: the presence of a form and the meaning conferring act. According to Michotte, an individual can perceive a form along with its inner structure or figural features without yet knowing what the object is. The French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty (1945) has written a whole book on this subject. The Italian philosopher Cornelio Fabro (1961), in addressing the phenomenology of perception, pointed out that reality is first seen then classified. Recently, Kanizsa (1985) once more emphasized the radical differences between seeing and thinking. To support his claims, he offered a series of demonstrations based on personal experience—a sort of experimental phenomenology. The demonstrations illustrated perceptions as opposed to learning, the perception of a figure before any categorization, and the different ways in which we complete, perceptually or conceptually, an incomplete object.

It is quite obvious that for all these European psychologists and phenomenologists, the perceptual process consists of the configuration of a visual object as a form distinct from the rest of the scene. Meaning is something conferred to what is previously configured. It is in this sense that these European researchers insist that we can perceive distinct and steady forms without perceptual ambiguity, but still be unable to classify them under any specific category. For example, seeing an object is phenomenologically, and hence originally, a process different from classifying, judging, or inferring.

As opposed to this phenomenological position, one version of traditional psychological empiricism has been to consider perception as an “unconscious inference”. To put it briefly, starting from proximal stimulation and with the help of past experiences and cognition, we could solve the problem of configuring the object we perceive with all its characteristic features. In terms of modern American psychology, perception (according to that traditional empiricist idea) must have “top-down” components, as Cutting (1987) recently pointed out. Generally speaking, I would argue that any author (e. g. Rock, 1983) who considers perception as categorization, hypothesis checking, or problem solving does not make a real distinction between a perceptual process and a logical or thought process.

The problem with such ideas on perception is that some rules or principles peculiar to logical or thought processes are also applied to the perceptual process (Brunner, 1957). But if the perceptual process is a “bottom-up” process without reasoning or thought components, and, if the perceptual process consists of the structural organization of sensorial wholes, we should not assume that logical or thought processes are perceptual processes. Such an assumption set would make it even more difficult to know the rules or principles of perceptual organization. As we see later on in this chapter, the aim of analysis and phenomenological description is precisely the discrimination of different processes so that we can study these processes, phenomenologically or scientifically, without any misunderstanding that could impede our understanding of such processes.

THE PROBLEM OF STUDYING PERCEPTION BY MEANS OF STUDYING TASK-PERFORMANCE

Garner’s (1981) approach to the study of perception, which has inspired much of the work in this book, is very different from that of the cognitive models I have mentioned so far. This approach, which I have called (following Cutting [1987]) “group theory”, also constitutes, as Garner himself points out, an analytic study of perception. This analytic approach does not deny the fact that what we perceive are “unitary wholes”, just that the way we perceive these “unitary wholes” can be analyzed. To put it briefly, the issue is to analyze perception—which is naturally holistic—in a scientific way.

Due to the stress placed on the analysis of perceptual stimuli, Garner’s approach to the study of perception differs widely from those cognitive ideas referred to in the previous section. However, the “group theory” maintains that it is not plausible, at least in daily life situations, that every explanation of perceptual phenomena is based on the stimulus. A certain degree of intervention from the subjects must be admitted. Perceptual information appears in many forms, and the perceiving subject must choose or combine these forms.

The evidence suggests, however, that the subject’s choice or combination is determined by the features of the stimulus. Integral stimuli, for example, are combined in one way, whereas separable stimuli are combined in another. Unfortunately, the usual way to determine whether stimulus dimensions are integral or separable is to study the performances in tasks that make particular demands such as selective or divided attention.

Garner’s approach has made considerable contributions to the study of perception, and I do not intend to criticize it. But I do want to consider the difficulties that, from a phenomenological perspective, the study of perception by means of a task-performance analysis may entail.

The epistemological position of phenomenology claims that a truly scientific study of perception should begin with observation of the object itself. The analytical approach to perception to which I am referring, however, maintains a thoroughly opposed epistemological position. It claims that a scientific study of perception requires that we study task performances rather than percepts. Percepts can be studied only by indirect means; we must infer the way percepts act or influence our behavior. This means that the behavior under study must be an indicator of the specific nonbehavioral phenomenon, and it is at this point that a serious problem arises. There is no biunique correspondence between a nonbehavioral phenomenon and a behavior, nor can behavior permit a study of all the characteristics belonging to the nonbehavioral phenomenon.

A phenomenological position necessarily differs from the analytic approach to perception; not because the latter is analytic and phenomenology is not, but because the aim of phenomenology is a direct study of perception, whereas the aim of the analytic approach is a direct study of task performance—that is, of behaviors. The phenomenological method is, in its essence, analytical. To define an object phenomenologically requires analysis. This does not mean that phenomenological psychologists perform all the necessary analyses, but it cannot be said that phenomenological methods reject analysis. What phenomenology rejects is not analysis, but the position of natural scientists who consider as subjective every datum from experience that cannot be publicly observed, and who only admit nonbehavioral phenomena as an explanation to behavioral phenomena, but not considered in themselves.

Nevertheless, no one can deny the importance of the analysis of stimulus features that is obtained through an analytic approach. In my opinion, it has been most relevant to have positively defined configurational features as relations between component features. Thus, instead of defining the features of the stimulus in themselves, they are defined according to the type of processing or perception to which they lead. But this involves an evaluation of the role that the features of the stimulus play on the perceptual result. Such an evaluation is obtained by means of converging operations. The reason for this is not only the need to prove that different performances might be due to different features in the stimulus, but also that these differences in performance measure the degree to which such differences are the result of configurational features in the stimulus and not of component features; configurational features coexist with component ones.

In other words, it is difficult to prove that a certain type of processing or perception is the result of a certain configurational feature. It is with this aim that converging operations are used.

But the problem lies in the fact that such converging operations are obtained by means of performing very different tasks. If we are dealing with a perceptual phenomenon, the tasks must define the phenomenon, and they must belong to this phenomenon and it alone. Is this the case with classification tasks, same–different tasks, and other tasks commonly used in this line of research? Phenomenologists think it is not. Classification, for instance, involves a categorization not only specific to the perceptual process, but to cognitive processes as well. In short, according to phenomenology, this method of studying perception confounds what it is and what it is not. This is precisely what phenomenological analysis tries to avoid, and the reason that it points to two basic aims: to give a discrete definition of what perception is, and to study the process directly.

THE ECOLOGIC ALTERNATIVE

It is funny that in his autobiography, Gibson eventually compares himself with a phenomenologist. Gibson (1967) said that the Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte, a phenomenologist, had reached the same conclusions as himself: “We got the same results. That is what counts” (p. 143). I must confess that such a statement stirs my curiosity; how is it possible that Gibson reached the same conclusions as a phenomenologist?

I will not address the correctness or incorrectness of Gibson’s views. I will just try to make clear what Gibson meant by saying that he and Michotte have obtained the same results. Nor will I try to give a full explanation of it as if my intention was to prove a thesis. My only aim is to express what, in my opinion, Gibson meant.

To begin with, Gibson’s aforementioned statement cannot be understood in the sense that he is a phenomenologist. Phenomenology starts from the study of the phenomena of personal experience. But Gibson, as I see it, considers consciousness as something parallel, an epiphenomenon, and not able to determine our behavior. Hence, consciousness is not worthy of study. In this respect, Gibson’s position is closely related to behaviorism. According to Skinner (1985), if percep...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Object Perception and Phenomemology
• 2 Spatial Parallelism in the Processing of Lines, Letters, and Lexicality
• 3 Attention and Object Perception
• 4 Mental Models of the Structure of Visual Objects
• 5 Reference Frames in the Perception of Shape and Orientation
• 6 Gestalts and Their Components: Nature of Information Precedence
• 7 On Perceiving Objects: Holistic Versus Featural Properties
• 8 Some Determinants of Perceived Structure: Effects of Stimulus Tasks
• 9 Category Bounds and Stimulus Variability
• 10 Analytic and Holistic Processes in Categorization
• 11 Similarity, Identity, and Dimensions: Perceptual Classification in Children and Adults
• 12 The Nature and Occurrence of Holistic Processing
• 13 Analytic and Holistic Modes of Processing in Category Learning
• Author Index
• Subject Index