Perceptions Summary Researchers Have Identified Three Important

Perceptions Summary

Researchers have identified three important areas which influence human perception. These are: artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and the Gestaldt Tradition (129). Human psychology has been researched, analyzed, and theorized. In recent years, psychological researchers have endeavored to apply psychological ideas to the concept of environment and also how the environment affects the psychology of the individual. J.J. Gibson founded the idea of the Gestaldt tradition and was the first individual credited with a new concept to psychology in many years. His specific insights had much to do with how the visual stimuli of the environment impacts and influences the psychology of the individual.

There is far more to stimulus than what is directly visible to the naked eye. When describing stimuli, there are both distal and proximal types of stimuli. Distal stimuli are those which are perhaps on the peripheries of vision or which are not immediately recognized to be influential (130). Gibson refers to the periphery iconography as "ambient optical array." This means that everything that is in the scope of vision can impact the environmental psychology of the viewer. However, it is not referring what is actually seen, but how the mental function understands what is seen; how the human understand and sees the world as if it is through a unique lens.

Within the ambient optical array, there are various degrees to which things are perceived and interpreted. Distinctions within the array are called "affordances" (131). Things that are nearer to the viewing person are more distinct and clear, thus the person is able to see and interpret more detail than objects which are further away from the person. Texture is the applicable quality to detail; the closer the object, the more texture differences can be recognized and defined.

Further theorists have also examined perception and environment. Albert Ames wrote that assumption is also heavily involved in perception (132-33). That is to say that when a viewer believes something to be occurring visually, then their assumptions can override what is truly seen and an optical illusion takes place. Only when the viewer is made aware about the truth of what they are seeing can they differentiate between their assumptions and actuality. Ames named this discrepancy the transactional school of perception, wherein the individual and his or her environment are in a dynamic relationship with each impacting the perception. Also impacting this is the concept of choice where the brain, either intentionally or unintentionally, decides between visual stimuli in order to interpret and analyze information. Attribution theory is a further theory which deals with how people perceive their environment and then interpret it.