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Perception
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== Theories == === Perception as direct perception (Gibson) === [[Cognitivism (psychology)|Cognitive theories]] of perception assume there is a [[poverty of the stimulus]]. This is the claim that [[wikt:sensation|sensations]], by themselves, are unable to provide a unique description of the world.<ref>Stone, James V. (2012): "[https://books.google.com/books?id=HZf6AQAAQBAJ Vision and Brain: How we perceive the world]", Cambridge, MIT Press, pp. 155β178.</ref> Sensations require 'enriching', which is the role of the [[mental model]]. The [[Ecological psychology|perceptual ecology]] approach was introduced by professor [[James J. Gibson]], who rejected the assumption of a [[poverty of stimulus]] and the idea that perception is based upon sensations. Instead, Gibson investigated what information is actually presented to the perceptual systems. His theory "assumes the existence of stable, unbounded, and permanent stimulus-information in the [[ambient optic array]]. And it supposes that the visual system can explore and detect this information. The theory is information-based, not sensation-based."<ref>Gibson, James J. (2002): "[https://web.archive.org/web/20181106171520/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f594/23f1a766380ff945fc401b976618a2b2a92a.pdf A Theory of Direct Visual Perception]". In: Alva NoΓ«/Evan Thompson (Eds.), ''Vision and Mind. Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception'', Cambridge, MIT Press, pp. 77β89.</ref> He and the psychologists who work within this [[paradigm]] detailed how the world could be specified to a mobile, exploring organism via the lawful projection of information about the world into energy arrays.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NIEJt5afhwgC|title=Phenomenology of the Human Person|last=Sokolowski|first=Robert|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0-521-71766-3|location=New York|pages=199β200|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925011659/https://books.google.com/books?id=NIEJt5afhwgC&printsec=frontcover|archive-date=25 September 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> "Specification" would be a 1:1 mapping of some aspect of the world into a perceptual array. Given such a mapping, no enrichment is required and perception is [[direct perception|direct]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Richards|first=Robert J.|date=December 1976|title=James Gibson's Passive Theory of Perception: A Rejection of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies|url=http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/richards/James%20Gibson's%20Passive%20Theory%20of%20Perception.pdf|url-status=live|journal=Philosophy and Phenomenological Research|volume=37|issue=2|pages=218β233|doi=10.2307/2107193|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130613180128/http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/richards/James%20Gibson's%20Passive%20Theory%20of%20Perception.pdf|archive-date=13 June 2013|jstor=2107193}}</ref> === Perception-in-action === From Gibson's early work derived an ecological understanding of perception known as ''perception-in-action,'' which argues that perception is a requisite property of animate action. It posits that, without perception, action would be unguided, and without action, perception would serve no purpose. Animate actions require both perception and motion, which can be described as "two sides of the same coin, the coin is action." Gibson works from the assumption that singular entities, which he calls ''invariants,'' already exist in the real world and that all that the perception process does is home in upon them. The [[Constructive perception|constructivist view]], held by such philosophers as [[Ernst von Glasersfeld]], regards the continual adjustment of perception and action to the external input as precisely what constitutes the "entity," which is therefore far from being invariant.<ref>Consciousness in Action, S. L. Hurley, illustrated, [[Harvard University Press]], 2002, 0674007964, pp. 430β432.</ref> Glasersfeld considers an ''invariant'' as a target to be homed in upon, and a pragmatic necessity to allow an initial measure of understanding to be established prior to the updating that a statement aims to achieve. The invariant does not, and need not, represent an actuality. Glasersfeld describes it as extremely unlikely that what is desired or [[Fear processing in the brain|feared]] by an organism will never suffer change as time goes on. This [[social constructionist]] theory thus allows for a needful evolutionary adjustment.<ref>Glasersfeld, Ernst von (1995), ''Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning,'' London: RoutledgeFalmer; Poerksen, Bernhard (ed.) (2004), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=8-_EsHHxHYcC The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism],'' Exeter: Imprint Academic; Wright. Edmond (2005). ''Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith,'' Basingstoke: [[Palgrave Macmillan]].</ref> A mathematical theory of perception-in-action has been devised and investigated in many forms of controlled movement, and has been described in many different species of organism using the [[General Tau Theory]]. According to this theory, "tau information", or time-to-goal information is the fundamental ''percept'' in perception. === Evolutionary psychology === Many philosophers, such as [[Jerry Fodor]], write that the purpose of perception is knowledge. However, [[Evolutionary psychology|evolutionary psychologists]] hold that the primary purpose of perception is to guide action.<ref name="Gaulin 4">Gaulin, Steven J. C. and Donald H. McBurney. Evolutionary Psychology. [[Prentice Hall]]. 2003. {{ISBN|978-0-13-111529-3}}, Chapter 4, pp. 81β101.</ref> They give the example of [[depth perception]], which seems to have evolved not to aid in knowing the distances to other objects but rather to aid movement.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Evolutionary psychologists argue that animals ranging from [[fiddler crab]]s to humans use eyesight for [[Collision avoidance in transportation|collision avoidance]], suggesting that vision is basically for directing action, not providing knowledge.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> [[Neuropsychology|Neuropsychologists]] showed that perception systems evolved along the specifics of animals' activities. This explains why bats and worms can perceive different frequency of auditory and visual systems than, for example, humans. Building and maintaining sense organs is [[metabolically]] expensive. More than half the brain is devoted to processing sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's metabolic resources. Thus, such organs evolve only when they provide exceptional benefits to an organism's fitness.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Scientists who study perception and sensation have long understood the human senses as adaptations.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Depth perception consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of which is based on a regularity of the physical world.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Sound waves provide useful information about the sources of and distances to objects, with larger animals making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making and hearing higher-frequency sounds.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the environment that were significant for fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> The sense of touch is actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organism becomes temporarily more or less sensitive to sensation.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim or bright ambient light.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Sensory abilities of different organisms often co-evolve, as is the case with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the sounds that the bats make.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Evolutionary psychologists claim that perception demonstrates the principle of modularity, with specialized mechanisms handling particular perception tasks.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> For example, people with damage to a particular part of the brain are not able to recognize faces (''[[prosopagnosia]]'').<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> Evolutionary psychology suggests that this indicates a so-called face-reading module.<ref name="Gaulin 4" /> === Closed-loop perception === The theory of [[closed-loop transfer function|closed-loop perception]] proposes dynamic motor-sensory closed-loop process in which information flows through the environment and the brain in continuous loops.<ref name="Dewey1">{{cite journal |author=Dewey J |year=1896 |title=The reflex arc concept in psychology |url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a7ab/dafa9cca3547d8f441ee9dc3b5ad19ee7f59.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=[[Psychological Review]] |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=359β370 |doi=10.1037/h0070405 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106132335/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a7ab/dafa9cca3547d8f441ee9dc3b5ad19ee7f59.pdf |archive-date=2018-11-06 |s2cid=14028152}}</ref><ref name="Friston1">Friston, K. (2010) [http://bdl.kaist.ac.kr/lecture/2011springbis525/10%20(2010)%20The%20free-energy%20principle-%20a%20unified%20brain%20theory.pdf The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170808232006/http://bdl.kaist.ac.kr/lecture/2011springbis525/10%20(2010)%20The%20free-energy%20principle-%20a%20unified%20brain%20theory.pdf |date=8 August 2017 }} nature reviews neuroscience 11:127-38</ref><ref name="Tishby1">Tishby, N. and D. Polani, [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.259.8031&rep=rep1&type=pdf Information theory of decisions and actions], in Perception-Action Cycle. 2011, Springer. p. 601β636.</ref><ref name="AhiAssa1">{{cite journal |author=Ahissar E., Assa E. |year=2016 |title=Perception as a closed-loop convergence process |journal=[[eLife]] |volume=5 |page=e12830 |doi=10.7554/eLife.12830 |pmc=4913359 |pmid=27159238 |doi-access=free}}{{Creative Commons text attribution notice|cc=by4|from this source=yes}}</ref> Closed-loop perception appears consistent with anatomy and with the fact that perception is typically an incremental process. Repeated encounters with an object, whether conscious or not, enable an animal to refine its impressions of that object. This can be achieved more easily with a circular closed-loop system than with a linear open-loop one. Closed-loop perception can explain many of the phenomena that open-loop perception struggles to account for. This is largely because closed-loop perception considers motion to be an integral part of perception, and not an interfering component that must be corrected for. Furthermore, an environment perceived via sensor motion, and not despite sensor motion, need not be further stabilized by internal processes.<ref name="AhiAssa1" /> === Feature integration theory === {{Main|Feature integration theory}} [[Anne Treisman]]'s feature integration theory (FIT) attempts to explain how characteristics of a stimulus such as physical location in space, motion, color, and shape are merged to form one percept despite each of these characteristics activating separate areas of the cortex. FIT explains this through a two part system of perception involving the preattentive and focused attention stages.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Goldstein |first=E. Bruce |title=Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience, 4th Edition |publisher=[[Cengage Learning]] |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-285-76388-0 |location=Stamford, CT |pages=109β112}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Treisman |first1=Anne |last2=Gelade |first2=Garry |date=1980 |title=A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention |url=http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy355/Gilden/treisman.pdf |journal=Cognitive Psychology |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=97β136 |doi=10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5 |pmid=7351125 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080905025042/http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy355/Gilden/treisman.pdf |archive-date=5 September 2008 |via=[[Science Direct]] |s2cid=353246}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Goldstein|first=E. Bruce|title=Sensation and Perception|publisher=Cengage Learning|year=2010|isbn=978-0-495-60149-4|location=Belmont, CA|pages=144β146|edition=8th}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last1=Treisman|first1=Anne|last2=Schmidt|first2=Hilary|date=1982|title=Illusory Conjunctions in the Perception of Objects|url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0010028582900068|journal=Cognitive Psychology|volume=14|issue=1|pages=107β141|doi=10.1016/0010-0285(82)90006-8|pmid=7053925|s2cid=11201516|via=Science Direct|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Treisman|first=Anne|date=1977|title=Focused Attention in The Perception and Retrieval of Multidimensional Stimuli|url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0010028582900068|journal=Cognitive Psychology|volume=14|issue=1|pages=107β141|doi=10.1016/0010-0285(82)90006-8|pmid=7053925|s2cid=11201516|via=Science Direct|url-access=subscription}}</ref> The preattentive stage of perception is largely unconscious, and analyzes an object by breaking it down into its basic features, such as the specific color, geometric shape, motion, depth, individual lines, and many others.<ref name=":0" /> Studies have shown that, when small groups of objects with different features (e.g., red triangle, blue circle) are briefly flashed in front of human participants, many individuals later report seeing shapes made up of the combined features of two different stimuli, thereby referred to as [[illusory conjunctions]].<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2" /> The unconnected features described in the preattentive stage are combined into the objects one normally sees during the focused attention stage.<ref name=":0" /> The focused attention stage is based heavily around the idea of attention in perception and 'binds' the features together onto specific objects at specific spatial locations (see the [[binding problem]]).<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3" /> === Shared Intentionality theory === {{Main|Shared intentionality}} A fundamentally different approach to understanding the perception of objects relies upon the essential role of [[Shared intentionality]].<ref>Tomasello, M. (1999). ''The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1999.</ref> Cognitive psychologist professor [[Michael Tomasello]] hypothesized that social bonds between children and caregivers would gradually increase through the essential motive force of shared intentionality beginning from birth.<ref>Tomasello, M. (2019). ''Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: [[Harvard University Press]].</ref> The notion of shared intentionality, introduced by Michael Tomasello, was developed by later researchers, who tended to explain this collaborative interaction from different perspectives, e.g., [[psychophysiology]],<ref>Val Danilov, I. & Mihailova, S. (2023). "Empirical Evidence of Shared Intentionality: Towards Bioengineering Systems Development." ''OBM Neurobiology'' 2023; 7(2): 167; doi:10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2302167. https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-02-167</ref><ref>McClung, J. S., PlacΓ¬, S., Bangerter, A., ClΓ©ment, F., & Bshary, R. (2017). "The language of cooperation: shared intentionality drives variation in helping as a function of group membership." ''Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,'' 284(1863), 20171682. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1682.</ref><ref>Shteynberg, G., & Galinsky, A. D. (2011). "Implicit coordination: Sharing goals with similar others intensifies goal pursuit." ''Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,'' 47(6), 1291-1294., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp. 2011.04.012.</ref> and neurobiology.<ref>Fishburn, F. A., Murty, V. P., Hlutkowsky, C. O., MacGillivray, C. E., Bemis, L. M., Murphy, M. E., ... & Perlman, S. B. (2018). "Putting our heads together: interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality." ''Social cognitive and affective neuroscience,'' 13(8), 841-849.</ref> The [[Shared intentionality]] approach considers perception occurrence at an earlier stage of organisms' development than other theories, even before the emergence of [[Intentionality]]. Because many theories build their knowledge about perception based on its main features of the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information to represent the holistic picture of the environment, [[Intentionality]] is the central issue in perception development. Nowadays, only one hypothesis attempts to explain [[Shared intentionality]] in all its integral complexity from the level of interpersonal dynamics to interaction at the neuronal level. Introduced by Latvian professor Igor Val Danilov, the hypothesis of neurobiological processes occurring during Shared intentionality<ref>{{cite journal |title=Theoretical Grounds of Shared Intentionality for Neuroscience in Developing Bioengineering Systems |first=Igor |last=Val Danilov |journal=OBM Neurobiology |url= https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-01-156 |date=2023-02-17 |volume=7 |issue=1 |page=156 |doi=10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2301156|doi-access=free }}</ref> highlights that, at the beginning of cognition, very young organisms cannot distinguish relevant sensory stimuli independently. Because the environment is the cacophony of stimuli (electromagnetic waves, chemical interactions, and pressure fluctuations), their sensation is too limited by the noise to solve the cue problem. The relevant stimulus cannot overcome the noise magnitude if it passes through the senses. Therefore, [[Intentionality]] is a difficult problem for them since it needs the representation of the environment already categorized into objects (see also [[binding problem]]). The perception of objects is also problematic since it cannot appear without Intentionality. From the perspective of this hypothesis, [[Shared intentionality]] is collaborative interactions in which participants share the essential sensory stimulus of the actual cognitive problem. This social bond enables ecological training of the young immature organism, starting at the reflexes stage of development, for processing the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in developing perception.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Val Danilov |first=Igor |date= 2023|title=Shared Intentionality Modulation at the Cell Level: Low-Frequency Oscillations for Temporal Coordination in Bioengineering Systems |url=https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-04-185 |journal=OBM Neurobiology |language=en |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=1β17 |doi=10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2304185|doi-access=free }}</ref> From this account perception emerges due to [[Shared intentionality]] in the embryonic stage of development, i.e., even before birth.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Val Danilov |first=Igor |date= 2023|title=Low-Frequency Oscillations for Nonlocal Neuronal Coupling in Shared Intentionality Before and After Birth: Toward the Origin of Perception |url=https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-04-192 |journal=OBM Neurobiology |language=en |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=1β17 |doi=10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2304192|doi-access=free }}</ref> === Other theories of perception === * [[Enactivism]] * [[Interactive activation and competition networks|The Interactive Activation and Competition Model]] * [[Recognition-by-components theory|Recognition-By-Components Theory]] ([[Irving Biederman]])
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