How do we see?

Introduction to Psychology
HUL261, Semester II, 2023-2024
Lecture 8
February 1, 2024
 Outline for today
• Recap of last lecture
• The eye and visual pathways
• Computer vision vs. human vision
• Dorsal vs. ventral stream
• Gestalt principles and context effects
• Multimodal perception
• Conclusions

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 Recap of previous lecture
• Sensory receptor organs are specialized body parts that detect one type of
stimuli
• Taste perception begins when a tastant stimulates a taste receptor cell and
causes it to depolarize
• Olfaction begins when an odorant activates olfactory sensory neurons in the
olfactory epithelium
• Audition begins when sound waves vibrate the ear drum which in turn results in
firing of the auditory nerve
• Anatomically, the ear has three parts: outer, middle, and inner
• Somatosensory perception is the perception of all mechanical and some
chemical stimuli that affect the body
• Receptors that respond selectively to stimuli that can damage tissue are called
nociceptors

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 Anatomy of the eye
• Light enters the eye through the cornea, which is the outer
transparent tissue of the eye
• Light passes through a small opening called the pupil. The
size of the pupil is controlled by the iris, the coloured tissue
that surrounds it and makes the eye look blue, black, etc.
• Next, light is refracted through the lens, which focuses the
light on the tissue at the back of the eye known as the retina
• The retina contains receptors called photoreceptors – rods
(low light vision) and cones (colour vision)
• Cones are most densely packed in the small region of the
retina known as the fovea
• These photoreceptors capture light energy and through a
chemical process transduce it into a neural signal that is
transmitted by neurons through the optic nerve to the brain
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 Visual pathway
• Axons of neurons in the retina form the optic nerve
• The temporal (lateral) branch of the optic nerve continues to traverse
along the ipsilateral side. The nasal (medial) branch crosses over to
project to the contralateral side; this crossover place is called the optic
chiasma
• Beyond the optic chiasm the axons from nasal and temporal hemiretinas
carrying input from one hemifield join in the optic tract, which extends to
the thalamus
• The thalamic neurons then project to the back of the brain – the primary
visual cortex or V1
• From V1, information travels to numerous other areas (over 30 distinct
cortical visual areas have been identified)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaKio5l-5Pc
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 Interim summary
• The eye and visual pathways
• Retina contains rods and cones; retinal neurons project to V1
• Computer vision vs. human vision
• Dorsal vs. ventral pathway
• Gestalt principles and context effects
• Multimodal perception
• Conclusions

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 Captcha, captcha everywhere

Completely Automated Public Turing test: Designed to deny bots access to the site
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 Computer vision vs. human vision
• Computers have now become
remarkable at many things but
computer vision still falls short of
human vision
• For e.g., despite huge investments,
self-driving cars haven’t completely
taken over the road
• Deep learning algorithms still make
errors in perceptual judgement

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 Why is it so difficult to design a
perceiving machine?
• The retinal image is ambiguous:
• Our visual system has to create a 3D object from a 2D
image on the retina
• This is called the inverse projection problem, because it
involves starting with the retinal image and extending rays
out from the eye
• A retinal image can be created by many different objects in
the environment making it ambiguous
• Objects can be hidden or blurred
• This problem of hidden objects occurs anytime one object
obscures part of another object
• This occurs frequently in the environment, but we can easily
understand that the part of an object that is covered
continues to exist, and they are able to use their knowledge
of the environment to determine what is likely to be present

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 Why is it so difficult to design a
perceiving machine?
• Objects look different from different
viewpoints
• People’s ability to recognize an object even
when it is seen from different viewpoints is
called viewpoint invariance. This is a
laborious computational problem for
computer-vision systems to solve
• Scenes contain high-level information
• Besides numerous objects, scenes also have
a meaning which can be difficult for computer-
vision systems to compute

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 Human perception: What do you
perceive?

Google images

• Processing that begins with stimulation of the receptors is called

bottom-up processing
• Processing that begins with a person’s prior knowledge or
expectations is called top-down processing
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 Top-down processing is so effective
• Top-down processing involves generation of schemas by
higher cortical structures, which are then sent to lower-
level structures for comparison with the incoming stimulus
• Based on the context, we can interpret what an object is

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 Interim summary
• The eye and visual pathways
• Retina contains rods and cones; retinal neurons project to V1
• Computer vision vs. human vision
• Retinal image is ambiguous; Objects can be hidden, blurred, or
viewpoint dependent; Scenes contain high-level information
• Dorsal vs. ventral pathway
• Gestalt principles and context effects
• Multimodal perception
• Conclusions

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4odhSq46vtU&t=28s Till 0:30
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze8VVtBgK7A 0:32 to 1:57 41
 Perception-action model (Milner & Goodale)
• The visual system serves two basic roles:
• Guides how we see the world (perception)
• Guides how we interact with the world (action)
• Milner and Goodale suggested that the
pathway from the visual cortex to the
temporal lobe (ventral pathway) and the
pathway from the visual cortex to the parietal
lobe (dorsal pathway) have distinct functions
• The ventral pathway is specialized for
perception, while the dorsal pathway is
specialized for action
• This division is not absolute and there is
interaction between both pathways
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 Hierarchical organization in the ventral
pathway
Visual perception is thought to have a
hierarchical organization (complexity builds
up)
- LGN detects dots
- V1 detects orientation
- V2 detects shapes, colors
- V4 detects colors
- IT detects objects
But this hierarchy is not absolute and there is
feedback from higher to lower areas

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Kanwisher (2017). DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1706-16.2016
 Dorsal pathway
• The dorsal pathway, or where pathway,
describes areas that support visually-guided
behaviors and localizing objects in space
• At least three different processing routes
have been postulated in the parietal lobe:
• One for reaching
• One for grasping
• One for saccades

Crawford et al., Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 2011. 34:309–31 doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-061010-113749

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 Interim summary
• The eye and visual pathways
• Retina contains rods and cones; retinal neurons project to V1
• Computer vision vs. human vision
• Retinal image is ambiguous; Objects can be hidden, blurred, or viewpoint
dependent; Scenes contain high-level information
• Dorsal vs. ventral pathway
• The ventral pathway is specialized for perception; the dorsal pathway is
specialized for action
• Gestalt principles and context effects
• Multimodal perception
• Conclusions

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48
 Is what we perceive a reality?
https://tse4.m m .bing.net/th?id=OIP.fyppgqXynsigN KdN kkHl1Q HaJ4& pid=A pi

• If our perceptual system decides that the

illumination is bright, then it will conclude that
the dress must be made of darker fabrics such
as blue and black
• If our perceptual system decides that the
illumination is dark, then it will reach the
conclusion that the dress is reflecting a lot of
the light and hence must be made of more
reflective fabrics light white and gold
• Thus, perception is subjective

See similar illusions: https://purveslab.net/see-for-yourself/

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 Human perception: Gestalt principles
• How do we see a face in such a simple
drawing?
• The Gestalt group of psychologists (Gestalt is
German for ‘shape’ or ‘form’) (1912) suggested
that we contribute our previous experience to
our perceptual input
• Hence, the perception of a whole object will be
something more than just the sum of its
component parts – our perception depends on
the context
• They suggested some principles that govern
our perception
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Principles of Gestalt psychology
• Why is it that we are able to see a face in this image?
• Principle of experience: Components are organized into whole
objects based on our prior experience - likely operating through
feedback from higher-order face processing areas
• Why is it that we are able to see a number in this image?
• Principle of similarity: Most similar elements tend to be grouped
together
• Why is it that we see combine these lines in a specific pattern?
• Principle of proximity: Visual components are combined based on
how close they are to each other in space
• Why are we grouping these lines in a particular way?
• Principles of symmetry: Lines that are symmetrical in nature are
combined to form a single percept
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 Principles of Gestalt psychology
• Why are we grouping these lines in a particular way?
• Principle of parallelism: Lines that undulate in a parallel or similar
fashion are perceived as going together
• Why do we perceive the Olympic sign as 5 circles instead of 9
shapes?
• Principle of good continuation: Points that, when connected, result in
straight or smoothly curving lines are seen as belonging together,
and the lines tend to be seen in such a way as to follow the
smoothest path (related to Principle of simplicity). Also, objects
that are overlapped by other objects are perceived as continuing
behind the overlapping object

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 Other demonstrations of context effects
• What do you see in these images?
• Figure-ground segmentation: The regions usually
perceived as the objects in those images are the
ones with higher denotivity - those that appear
more familiar and meaningful to the observer
• How do you have the ability to raed wdors in
steentnces evne wnhe smoe of the ltteers rea
mexid up?
• Jumbled word effect: Our expectations help to
determine what the words actually are

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 Other demonstrations of context effects
• Colour in context: Colour perception is not solely the
result of the patterns of light reflected from objects;
context and prior experience based on how objects
look under different lighting conditions create the final
percept.
• Distance perception: If two objects are perceived to
be at different distances but cast the same-sized
image on the retina, the perceptual system takes the
distance of the farther object into account, so it is
perceived as its true, larger size (called size
constancy)

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 Our perceptual system uses heuristics
• Gestalt psychologists called their principles laws of perceptual
organization, they fall short of being laws because they don’t
always accurately predict what is in the environment.
• Hence, they should be called heuristics — rules of thumb that
provide a best-guess solution to a problem
• Heuristics are usually faster than algorithms helps explain why
the perceptual system is designed to operate in a way that
sometimes produces errors (and we see illusions)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHeYxzJFVKM
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 Interim summary
• The eye and visual pathways
• Retina contains rods and cones; retinal neurons project to V1
• Computer vision vs. human vision
• Retinal image is ambiguous; Objects can be hidden, blurred, or viewpoint dependent; Scenes
contain high-level information
• Dorsal vs. ventral pathway
• The ventral pathway is specialized for perception; the dorsal pathway is specialized for action
• Gestalt principles and context effects
• Perception of a whole object is more than the sum of its parts; perception is affected by the
context
• Multimodal perception
• Conclusions

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 Multimodal perception
• We are constantly getting different types of percepts – visual, auditory,
olfactory etc.
• Though much of it fades into the background so that you consciously
perceive only the most important and goal-relevant information
• One type of percept can influence another. For e.g., adding food
colours make food palatable (Hoegg and Alba, 2007), enhancing crispy
sound in potato chips changes taste perception (Zampini and Spence,
2004)
• During speech perception, we do lip-reading as well as hear sounds
• When these information streams are incongruent, one modality
dominates
• McGurk effect is an example of how visual input can change auditory
perception, such that the resulting percept is something that was never
actually presented
https://twitter.com/DrGBuckingham/status/1402366748838539264?t=HXkwrl-O9-_9CR0jkTQrHA&s=08 63
 Conclusion
• Retina contains photoreceptors which send signals to the cortex
• The dorsal stream is relatively specialized for actions and the ventral
stream is relatively specialized for perception
• Processing that begins with stimulation of the receptors is called bottom-up
processing while processing that begins with a person’s prior knowledge
or expectations is called top-down processing
• The perception of a whole object will be something more than just the sum
of its component parts – our perception depends on the context
• One type of percept can influence another

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