Stimulus intensity, location, size, form, number, and duration {amodal feature} do not depend on sense, can transfer among senses, and allow equivalence judgments among sense modes {amodal perception}|. Perhaps, they allow desire, expectation, or pain judgments.
At space locations, mind can average sense qualities with neighbors {blur}|. Sampling error, background noise, and sense organ imperfections, such as imperfect lenses, retina veins, and dust, cause blur.
People perceive continuously varying intensity or frequency as discrete ranges {categorical perception}. Sense processing divides continuous range into intervals and so discrete categories [Damper and Harnad, 2000] [Harnad, 1987]. For example, people perceive pitch as tones and half tones. People perceive tone durations as eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes.
Categorical perception detects musical intervals, animals, faces, and face expressions. People identify and label perceptual features and feature combinations with sharp boundaries, using many dimensions. Labeling/identifying and discrimination are two aspects of one mechanism.
Smell perception diminishes during continuous exposure {cognitive habituation}, though receptor and neuron sensitivity do not change.
People can correlate intensities in two different senses {cross-modality matching}. For example, mind can match taste intensity with pain intensity. The cross-modality matching technique can test sensitivity to stimuli.
Stimuli {cue, perception}| before other stimuli can indicate second-stimulus types, times, or locations. Cues have maximum effectiveness 150 ms before second stimulus. Cues can provide correct information {valid cue}, incorrect information {invalid cue}, or no useful information {neutral cue}.
People can have feeling that they have seen or heard something before {déja vu}|. For déja vu, people typically have fatigue, have experienced component features before, are young, and have heightened sensitivity.
Different contexts can make the same object or event signal differ, because context expands or contracts at varying rates {domain warping}. Transforming space and structure representations can find geometric analogies and trajectories.
People can have false recognition {fause reconnaissance}.
Mind places new features at locations that have easily described relationships to already represented features {frontier effect}.
Objects have properties, and features have properties. In most perception, object properties override feature properties {global superiority effect}.
Novel unrelated stimuli can aid pattern, poetry, idea, and hypothesis recognition {lateral thinking}. Random words are examples.
Experience thresholds {limen} are not constant.
Observer can assign or choose natural number to estimate stimulus intensity magnitude {magnitude estimation, observer}, such as 1 to 10 for minimum to maximum.
Mind can perceive two different stimuli {metamer} as the same. For example, two different wavelength and intensity combinations can result in same color. Objects with different surface reflectances can cause same color perceptions.
Perception can distinguish event order {order discrimination}, though events seem to be simultaneous in sensations.
Perhaps, perception is continual every 20 to 200 milliseconds {perceptual moment} {frame, perception} {snapshot, perception}. Perception is not continuous [Burle and Bonnet, 1997] [Burle and Bonnet, 1999] [Colquhoun, 1971] [Dehaene, 1993] [Efron, 1970] [Fries et al., 2001] [Geissler et al., 1999] [Gho and Varela, 1988] [Harter, 1967] [Hirsch and Sherrick, 1961] [Kristofferson, 1967] [Lichtenstein, 1961] [Makeig et al., 2002] [Pöppel, 1978] [Pöppel and Logothetis, 1986] [Purves et al., 1996] [Quastler, 1956] [Rizzuto et al., 2003] [Rock, 1983] [Sanford, 1971] [Stroud, 1956] [VanRullen and Koch, 2003] [Varela et al., 2001] [Venables, 1960] [Wertheimer, 1912] [White, 1963] [White and Harter, 1969].
Perception can alternate between two interpretations {rivalry, perception}|, though stimulus pattern stays the same.
Stimulus can have higher intensity than neighboring stimuli {saliency, perception}|. Saliency originates in dorsomedial pulvinar, lateral-intraparietal lobe, and frontal lobe. Saliency can affect thalamus or sensory cortex [Blaser et al., 1999] [Braun and Julesz, 1998] [Braun and Sagi, 1990] [Braun et al., 2001] [Itti et al., 1998] [Itti and Koch, 2000] [Itti and Koch, 2001] [Jovicich et al., 2001] [Koch and Ullman, 1985] [Nakayama and Mackeben, 1989] [Parasuraman, 1998] [Pashler, 1998] [Treisman, 1988] [Treisman and Gelade, 1980] [Walther et al., 2002] [Wolfe, 1994] [Wolfe, 1999].
Animals can become ready for specific stimuli or general stimulation {sensitization, perception}. In harsh environments, animals sensitize to all stimuli. In favorable environments, animals become responsive to stimuli about desirable goals. Rearing animals in restricted environments, in which they see only vertical stripes, results in cortical neurons more sensitive to vertical orientations.
External stimuli of which people are unaware, just below conscious {subliminal perception}|, can affect perception and memory. All sensory modes have subliminal range [Dixon, 1971] [Merikle and Daneman, 1998]. Subliminal stimulus in "blind" eye transfers perception to that side.
Sense-organ stimuli can cause different sense qualities {synesthesia, perception}|.
colors
White numeral symbol can have color. However, Roman numeral can have no color when the Arabic numeral of same number has color, indicating that synesthesia is for perception, not abstract concept.
Perhaps, connections between brain areas V4 and area in V8 {number-grapheme area}, which are adjacent in fusiform gyrus, cause color-numeral synesthesia.
Months and weekdays can have colors. Perhaps, connections between TPO and angular gyrus areas cause day-month and numeral synesthesia.
tastes
Shapes can have associated tastes. Insula is for tastes and is close to sensory hand area.
sounds
Shapes can have associated sounds. Low sounds can associate with dark colors, and high sounds with light colors [Cytowic, 1989] [Cytowic, 1993] [Cytowic, 2002] [Galton, 1997] [Grossenbacher and Lovelace, 2001] [Nunn et al., 2002] [Paulesu et al., 1995] [Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001] [Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2003] [Ramachandran, 2004] [Stein and Meredith, 1993] [Stein et al., 2001].
factors: age
Infants have cortex and thalamus auditory-visual brain connections.
factors: brain
Brain regions can activate each other through atypical stimulation pathways or through inhibition pathway loss.
factors: drugs
Drugs can cause stimuli in sense organs to result in another sense's sense qualities.
properties: occurrence
Less than 0.5% of people have synesthesia, usually as just black and white colors. Such synesthesia is involuntary, starts early in life, and lasts a lifetime. It is hereditary. It happens more in lefthandedness, more in females, more with better memory, more with bad math and spatial ability, and more in creative people [Baron-Cohen and Harrison, 1997].
properties: unconscious
Synesthesia is not under conscious control.
Mind stores sensory signals and features temporarily {temporal buffering} while receiving signal remainder. Natural stimuli are not stationary, do not move regularly, and require time interval.
If vision analyzes spatial relations differently than hearing or kinesthesia, vision overrides hearing or kinesthesia {visual dominance}. For example, sound direction depends on direction of visual object associated with sound [Ingle et al., 1982]. If kinesthesia or touch analyzes spatial relations differently than hearing, kinesthesia or touch overrides hearing. Taste and smell have little effect on spatial relations.
Sense qualities have physical measurements {primary property} about space and time, such as object size, shape, motion, number, solidity, hardness, mass, and extension.
Sense qualities have mental measurements {secondary property}, such as color, touch, aroma, taste, timbre, and sound. Secondary qualities do not derive from primary qualities but come from stored knowledge and assumptions. They affect even simplest perceptions.
6-Psychology-Cognition-Perception
Outline of Knowledge Database Home Page
Description of Outline of Knowledge Database
Date Modified: 2022.0225