Outline Of Today’s Discussion

1. Classical Theories of Perception

2. Structuralism

3. Gestaltism

4. Ecological Optics

5. Constructivism
 Part 1

Classical Theories
of
Perception
 What is Science?
Some Criteria That Guide Science

1. Falsifiability - Is the claim testable?

2. Replicability – Can a test be re-done ‘at will’?
3. Parsimony – Are there unnecessary or unnatural components?
 What is Science?
Some “Virtues” That Characterize Good Science.

1. Generalizability
2. Originality
3. Precision
What is Science?
Some Goals of Science.

1. Description
2. Prediction
3. Causation
4. Application
 Classical Theories of Perception

• We will spend much of this semester

answering Kurt Koffka’s Question…

Why do things look as they do?

• We could also ask why things sound, feel,

taste, smell as they do?
Classical Theories of Perception
 Part 2

Structuralism
Structuralism
Wilhelm Wundt
 Structuralism
• Structuralism’s one liner:
– The whole is equal to the sum of the parts.

• To structuralists, perceptual experiences are

made of “sensory atoms” – indivisible
elements in a sensory modality.
(sound like chemistry?)

– An individual pixel on a monitor.

• The sensory atoms are simply “concatenated” –

strung together, as if by overlaying a series of
transparencies.
 Structuralism
• Structuralists believed that stimulus-driven experiences in
one sensory modality aroused memories from other sensory
modalities.
– EX: The sight of a dog became “associated” with the
sound and smell of a dog.
– They had an early intuition similar to Hebb’s rule:
“what fires together wires together”.

• How is this related to the notion of associationism in other

branches of psychology? (Hint: Think back to intro psych)
 Structuralism
• The structuralists relied heavily on trained
introspection. What is that?

• Opinion Question: Do you believe that

introspection is an important tool in
perceptual research? Why and/or why not?
 Part 3

Gestaltism
 Gestaltism
Max Wertheimer
 Gestaltism
• If you had to briefly summarize the gestalt
approach, what would be a good ‘one liner’?

• Describe what the gestaltists meant by the

phrase “emergent properties”.

• Potential Pop Quiz Question: From our

“Consciousness” chapter, what was William James’
view on consciousness as an epiphenomenon?
Gestaltism

Would these stimuli

tend to favor
structuralism,
gestaltism, neither,
or both?

Explain your answer.

 Gestaltism

How is this picture related to the gestalt approach?

 Part 4

Ecological Optics
Ecological Optics
J.J. Gibson
 Ecological Optics
• One liner for the ecological approach to perception -
Perception is for ACTION!
• Eye’s are pricey, metabolically.
• Eye’s evolved to help organisms MOVE!!!
• “Get out of your (contrived) lab. Measure perception in the real world, where it
evolved!”

• A key concept in ecological optics

– ‘Information Pick-up’: By actively exploring / sampling the
environment, stimulation on the retina is sufficient to unambiguously
perceive the environment!
• “We don’t need “extra-retinal” information to explain visual perception.”
• “The dynamic optic array (changing retinal image) is especially informative.”
• “Why would we need to hold “representations” (UGH!) of the world in our head?”
• “We can pick up the information we need by moving through the environment.”
• “Ask not what’s inside the head. Ask what the head’s inside of!”
 Ecological Optics
• Gibson believed that retinal stimulation was sufficient to
solve the “inverse problem”…
– The problem of converting proximal stimuli to distal stimuli.
– How to get from 2-D retinal images to perceiving a 3D world.
– Some philosophers of science note “The Poverty of the Stimulus”:
• A given proximal stimulus is consistent with infinitely many distal stimuli.
• The proximal stimulus is too “impoverished” to unambiguously specify the world.
 Ecological Optics

Ecological theorists emphasize that

texture gradients (as shown here)
contain a wealth of information.
Ecological Optics

This figure emphasizes the

dynamic optic array
 Ecological Optics
• To explain perception biologically, the ecological approach
posited a ‘resonance metaphor’ for information pick-up.
– Information in the environment / stimuli cause corresponding neural
mechanisms to “vibrate” metaphorically…or “fire” more literally.
• Just as mechanical vibrations of a given frequency cause a tuning fork to vibrate.

• Biology was not a major concern for many in ecological

optics.
– Some researchers in ecological optics don’t make reference to the
central nervous system!
– Ecological optics has done much for robot vision / machine vision.
 Part 5

Constructivism
 Constructivism
Hermann Von Helmholz

Constructivism doesn’t fall neatly on this chart!

 Constructivism
• Helmholz believed that retinal information alone
was not sufficient to account for our perception of
the world.

• He posited the “unconscious inference” - An

assumption that one learns to make about the world;
a statistical best guess.

• The statistical best guess is combined with retinal

information to “CONSTRUCT” an inference about
the world…
 Constructivism
• The construction can be described using (relatively)
simple arithmetic, in an equation known as the
Bayesian likelihood principle.
– P(Si|E)  Probability of a Scene, given the sensory Evidence
– P(E|Si)  Probability of the sensory Evidence, given the Scene
– P(Si)  Probability of a Scene
– P(E)  Probability of the Sensory Evidence

• Bayesian “likelihood principle”.

P(E|Si) P(Si)
P(Si|E) = --------------------
P(E)
 Constructivism

In these scenes, the visual system draws

An inference about what is most probable.