Page 132 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

136 Philip G. Zimbardo and Richard J. Gerrig

same event. When someone was singing, he might see a mouth move and
hear a song, but it was as if the sound had been dubbed with the wrong
tape in a foreign movie.
To see the parts of an event as a whole, Dr. Richard needed some com-
mon factor to serve as ‘‘glue.’’ For example, if the fragmented person
moved, so that all parts went in the same direction, Dr. Richard would
then perceive the parts reunited into a complete person. Even then, the
perceptual ‘‘glue’’ would sometimes result in absurd configurations. Dr.
Richard would frequently see objects of the same color, such as a banana,
a lemon, and a canary, going together even if they were separated in
space. People in crowds would seem to merge if they were wearing the
same colored clothing. Dr. Richard’s experiences of his environment were
disjointed, fragmented, and bizarre—quite unlike what he had been used
to before his problems began (Marcel, 1983).
There was nothing wrong with Dr. Richard’s eyes or with his ability to analyze
the properties of stimulus objects—he saw the parts and qualities of objects
accurately. Rather, his problem lay in synthesis—putting the bits and pieces of
sensory information together properly to form a unified, coherent perception of
a single event in the visual scene. His case makes salient the distinction be-
tween sensory and perceptual processes. It also serves to remind you that both
sensory analysis and perceptual organization must be going on all the time
even though youare unawareofthe waytheyare workingoreven that they
are happening.
Identification and recognition, the third stage in this sequence, assigns meaning
to percepts. Circular objects ‘‘become’’ baseballs, coins, clocks, oranges, and
moons; people may be identified as male or female, friend or foe, movie star or
rock star. At this stage, the perceptual question ‘‘What does the object look
like?’’ changes to a question of identification—‘‘What is this object?’’—and to
a question of recognition—‘‘What is the object’s function?’’ To identify and
recognize what something is, what it is called, and how best to respond to it
involves higher level cognitive processes, which include your theories, memo-
ries, values, beliefs, and attitudes concerning the object.
We have now given you a brief introduction to the stages of processing that
enable you to arrive at a meaningful understanding of the perceptual world
around you. We will devote the bulk of our attention here to aspects of per-
ception beyond the initial transduction of physical energy. In everyday life,
perception seems to be entirely effortless. We will try, beginning in the next
section, to convince you that you actually do quite a bit of sophisticated pro-
cessing, a lot of mental work, to arrive at this ‘‘illusion of ease.’’

The Proximal and Distal Stimulus
Imagine you are the person in figure 7.2, surveying a room from an easy chair.
Some of the light reflected from the objects in the room enters your eyes and
forms images on your retinas. Figure 7.2 shows what would appear to your left
eye as you sat in the room. (The bump on the right is your nose, and the hand
and knee at the bottom are your own.) How does this retinal image compare
with the environment that produced it?