Cultural influences on perception

How is perception shaped by experience?

How do these experiences differ across
cultures?

Some early anecdotal reports

Robert Laws (1851-1934) working in Malawi

Formal tests of picture perception

Embedded objects

Masking

Grouping

Individuating

Failures have been observed in all of these tasks

Pictorial cues to depth

Different groups showed

Marked differences in the task

e.g. Bantu in South Africa saw

only a 2D depiction
Other groups saw 3D depending
On the number of depth cues

Relating picture perception to the

Observers environment:
Perception of geometric illusions

Seagall et al. 1963

The carpentered environment hypothesis:
Individuals living in structures with more rectangular
Layouts will be more likely to see perspective cues and
thus more susceptible to illusions

Seagall et al. 1963

The ecological hypothesis:
Individuals living in open terrain are more likely to see verticals
as extending in depth than those living in enclosed
environments, and thus more susceptible to illusions

Vertical-horizontal Illusion

Result
Magnitudes of perceived illusions were roughly
correlated with the observers environment

Perceptual Expertise
Individuals may be better at perceiving the
The stimuli they are accustomed to

Culture can influence perception by

affecting what the individual is exposed to

Perceptual Expertise
e.g. language
Babies can distinguish more speech sounds than adults
Learning a specific language causes them to
Distinguish the phonemes of that language,
But makes it hard to distinguish phonemes in
a different language

Facial expressions universal or relative?

6 universal expressions
sad

disgust

surprise

anger

happy

fear

Paul Ekmans
cross-cultural studies

Perception and Visual Art

The visual arts:

the creation of visual images

El Greco, Toledo

Visual perception:
the interpretation of visual images

Toledo

Why does art work?

How does it capture properties of the world?

Altamira Cave

Why does this map work?

X

Art as a representation

Picasso, Weeping Woman

Representing visual images

Luiz Melendez

Representing visual concepts

Picasso, Factory at Horta de Ebro

Visual art works because

Vision itself is a process of creating
representations

These representations are not

raw images but highly abstract
Interpretations of the world
Art can thus link to perceptual
Processes at many levels

In turn, the processes of perception

influence how art is depicted
To be interpretable art must conform to
the rules and constraints of our perception

e.g. how we perceive depth on a flat canvas

What do these images have in common?

e.g. how our attention is directed within

a scene

Ilye Repin, The Unexpected Return

We scan pictures in different ways depending on what we are trying to see

What were they doing before he entered?

How long was he away?

Many of these perceptual principles

remain outside our awareness,
and must be learned by artists

When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you

have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever,.
Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an
oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as
it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives
your own nave impression of the scene before you.
Monet

Some may require overcoming

visual processing

Others remain hidden from awareness

even by artists

e.g. eye placement in portraits

Artists know and exploit many

Principles in perception

eg. impossible figures

Figure and ground

What artists dont do.

Patrick Cavanagh
The artist as neuroscientist
Nature, 2005

Shadows are often physically incorrect

so are reflections