Spatial perception

“Spatial perception” - the ability to be aware of your relationships with the environment around you (exteroceptive processes) and with yourself (interoceptive processes) (Cognifit, 2022).

“Space perception” - process through which humans and other organisms become aware of the relative positions of their own bodies and objects around them. Space perception provides cues, such as depth and distance, that are important for movement and orientation to the environment. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Introduction

This chapter will review 4 key aspects related to visual perception. This research will provide a basic understanding of different ways to manipulate the mind and assists in making decisions related to the proposed distortion.

Perception of contrast

Visual information processing starts at the retaina by the detection of light. The retina processes the input of light focussing on contrast instead of light intensity. Results of a study performed in 1973 show that perceived contrast is not determined solely by luminance nor lightness (Guth, 1973). Instead they suggest that luminance and lightness, and contrast share common underlying mechanisms but can be assessed independently at least to some extent, „It is possible that in complex scenes perceived contrast is determined at a later stage and in a higher cortical area in the hierarchy of the visual system, after lightness is computed based on global information“ (Pamir, Z. Boyaci, H. 2016).

Pattern perception

Secondly, according to a group of researchers from the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., visual perception involves the grouping of individual elements into coherent patterns that reduce the descriptive complexity of a visual scene.

A measurement session of certain parts of the brain relating to vision indicates that activity in early visual areas is reduced as a result of grouping processes performed in higher areas. This indicates that, first of all, our brain is susceptive to pattern recognition (Murray et al., 2002).

Perception of symmetry

Thirdly, symmetry (from Ancient Greek: symmetria “agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement”) in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, “symmetry” has a more precise definition, and is usually used to refer to an object that is invariant under some transformations.

“Perception of visual symmetry is fast and efficient and relies on both early low-level and late mid- and highlevel neural mechanisms.“, “symmetry perception engages a relatively broad extrastriate network that is not fully constrained by low-level inputs once contrasts are set to high, suprathreshold levels, contextualizing the lack of V1/V2 contributions reported by previous neuroimaging work.” (J. Martinovic, B. J. Jennings, A. D. J. Makin, M. Bertamini, I. Angelescu., 2012)

Perception of similarity

Lastly, similarity as perceptual resemblance is a psychological construct in somewhat the same way that such sensory attributes such as hue, brightness, or pitch are constructs or intervening variables. Like such attributes, similarity depends heavily on the physical characteristics of stimulus objects, but this dependence is complex, and in the case of similarity the details of the physicalpsychological relationship are usually unknown. However, similarities may be specified independently of any physical measures of the stimuli involved; that is, one may determine the similarities among a group of objects from behavioural responses to the objects without specifying anything about them except which behavioural measures go with which object (Dr. R. G. Cook, 2001)