Assignment Task:
Perception - Inherited or Learned?
Three important questions are raised in this module and chapter about perception and human nature:
1. How does biological inheritance contribute to the ways in which people perceive the world?
2. How does experience contribute?
3. How do biological and experiential factors interact?
4. Provide at least one concrete example from the textbook that exemplifies How our perceptual development is both inherited AND learned.
From textbook:
How does biological inheritance contribute to the ways in which people per-ceive the world? How does experience contribute? Above all, how do biological and experiential factors interact?
Empiricist philosophers such as John Locke (1632-1704) and George Berkeley (1685-1753) suggested that perceptual abilities are learned. Infants might at first experience the world in terms of isolated lines and angles. Gradually, they learn that these lines and angles constitute objects. Later still, they learn to infer properties of the objects, such as how far away they are, by noting the relation between how the objects look and how long it takes to crawl or walk to them. The impoverished initial endowment that these philosophers envisioned led the great early psychologist William James (1890) to hypothesize that infants experienced the world as a "great blooming, buzzing confusion."
Other theorists, such as J. J. Gibson (1904-1979) and Eleanor Gibson (1910-2002), hypothesized that perceptual abilities essential to survival are built into the infant. Like all animals, humans evolved in an environment of objects and events, and they need to perceive these objects and events accurately to survive. Further, survival requires that animals' actions be guided by their perceptions; therefore, perception and action must be closely linked . At the same time, learning the particulars of one's environment is also essential to survival. The Gibsons viewed perceptual development as a process of learning to detect information that is available in the environment. With experience, infants' abilities to detect and interpret such information improve. At the same time, as infants develop, their abilities for action also improve. In brief, the Gibsons' view of perceptual development recognizes both biological and experiential factors and emphasizes the connections between perception and action throughout development.
Subsequent research has revealed a picture much more like that posited by the Gibsons than like that proposed by the empiricists. Even in their first months, infants experience a world of objects and events that is similar in important ways to that experienced by adults (Kellman, 1988; Slater, Mattock, & Brown, 1990). All current theories recognize that people are biologically prepared to perceive the world in certain ways, and that many important perceptual capabilities are present at birth. All current theories also recognize that experience and learning contribute to the development of perceptual abilities.
Subsequent research also has supported the view that perception and action are closely connected from the beginning of life. For example, when infants see a ball rolling in front of them, they sometimes move their hands to intercept it. Remarkably, they reach not where the object is when they begin the reach, but where it will be by the time their hands arrive. The linkage between perception and action makes sense if one thinks about why we perceive the environment in the first place. Sensory systems such as vision and hearing help animals meet the basic needs of obtaining food and avoiding predators. Further, survival requires that animals' actions be guided by their perceptions. For example, chil-dren might need to perceive whether the terrain in front of them can be walked on (solid ground) or not (water or a cliff), so that they can choose an appropriate and safe action.We perceive the world through a number of sensory systems: vision, audition (hearing), gustation (taste), olfaction (smell), and a few others. Across all of the senses, the task of perception can be considered in terms of the need to accomplish three func-tions: attending, identifying, and locating. Attending involves determining what in a situation is worthy of detailed processing. ldentifying involves recognizing what we are perceiving. Locating involves specifying how far away the perceived object or event is and in what direction relative to the observer.All of these functions are performed with the goal of effectively guiding action. Imagine you are in a jungle and a tiger is charging. You need to orient your attention toward the tiger, to identify it as a tiger, and to locate how far away it is. A blur of motion in the periphery might stimulate your initial attention to the tiger. More careful and focused attending would presumably follow, allowing you to identify the moving object as a tiger. Yet more careful attention would follow, specifying the location of the tiger as nearby and rapidly approaching. You would use the information gained through attending, identifying, and locating to decide whether to climb a tree, hide, or pray. Thus, attending, identifying, and locating all serve the goal of guiding an appro-priate course of action. Although people perceive the world through a number of senses, we rely most heavily on vision and hearing.
KNOWLEDGE INFLUENCES PERCEPTION. Computer chess programs compete with and sometimes defeat the greatest human chess champions, but no computer vision system recognizes objects as well as a typical 1-year-old. The reason is that iden-tifying what you are seeing, even in relatively simple situations, requires a surprising amount of knowledge.Needham, Baillargeon, and Kaufman (1997) argued that at least three types of knowledge influence infants' (and older individuals') perception of objects. Configural knowledge, or knowledge of configurations of objects, enables us to know that Figure 8A probably depicts a single ball and box, rather than a ball and two separate shapes alongside the ball; the similar shapes on each side of the circle sug-gest that the circle is in front of a single object, rather than between two separate objects. Physical knowledge tells us that if the ball and box in Figure 8B depict real objects, the ball and box must be a single object; otherwise the ball could not stay suspended in midair. Experiential knowledge indicates that the ball and box in Figure 8C are probably two objects; we often encounter balls and boxes, but we rarely see balls attached to boxes. By 5 months of age, infants use both configural and experiential knowledge to determine what they are seeing, and by 8 months, they also use physical knowledge (Needham et al., 1997). For example, in one study, 4½-month-old infants viewed a sta-tionary display that consisted of a tall, blue box and a smaller, yellow cylinder. A hand then reached into the display and moved the cylinder to the side. Infants looked lon-ger when the blue box moved along with the cylinder than when it did not, suggesting that they viewed the display as two objects, and they were surprised when it moved as if it were a single object. In this case, the infants used configural knowledge to infer that the box was distinct from the cylinder.A more complex version of the box-and-cylinder display was too difficult for 4-½-month-old infants to interpret. However, brief experience with one of the objects enabled them to do so. After they viewed either the box alone or the cylinder alone for 5 seconds, infants correctly interpreted the box and cylinder as two objects (Needham & Baillargeon, 1998). Thus, knowledge gained through experience also plays a role in infants' perception of objects from a very early age.
SUMMARY. Infants' visual acuity and their abilities to see colors and to detect motion all contribute to their identification of objects and events. Infants' visual acuity improves con-siderably in their first six months and beyond. Even in the first month, infants see the out-lines of objects quite clearly, as well as some high-contrast interior detail. They also seem to see the same qualitatively distinct colors as adults do. Evidence suggests that infants are biologically predisposed to identify evolutionarily important stimuli, such as faces and human motion. Knowledge is also an essential contributor to infants' abilities to identify objects and to discriminate them from one another. Infants begin to utilize configural, experiential, and physical knowledge for these purposes in their first half-year of life