Theories Of Perception

For many years, perception was an idea that had been viewed in a passive light, instead of in a complex manner. Many psychologists were focusing on how organisms behaved, and how that behavior related to higher level processes. While perception is included in higher level processes, it was not the primary focus. It began to surface when a scientist by the name of Cason discussed the idea of sensory conditioning. Then, in 1910, researcher Perky saw that subjects could be conditioned to see and hear things, and this idea continued to be studied by other researchers. Later, psychologists Rose and Haggard showed the world how reward and punishment could alter an individual’s perception. Scientists like Henle demonstrated that complex figures could

Psychologist Sherif did many experiments on social factors. The list of researchers who began to touch the topic of perception continues on and on, but none of those researchers looked at the behavioral factors that exist within perception. So psychologists Jerome Bruner and Cecil Goodman set out to change that. In total, Bruner and Goodman wanted to examine three separate hypotheses. The first claimed that the more emphasis society tends to place on an object, the more likely it would be organized by behavioral factors. The second hypothesis claimed that the more an individual needed one of these objects, the more likely this would show in a prominent manner in their behavior. The third and final hypothesis claimed that the many different ways that people perceive things affect their behavior, but only to the point where this ambiguity lessens the key characteristic factors seen without lessening the effect of behavioral factors. In simpler terms, Bruner and Goodman mainly wanted to see how perception was affected by other mental processes, and vice versa. Perception was a natural process that needed to be brought to light, just like behavior (Bruner & Goodman,

While this study is not emphasized often in basic psychology courses, it did stress the importance of recognizing perception as a key factor in psychology. This belief opened the doors for many future studies on perception. I enjoyed this reading and learned some things that I had yet to learn. However, there were times that the study seemed a bit repetitive. There were some large words used in the paper, and after looking them up in the dictionary, the words often had the same meaning as one another. It was as if Bruner and Goodman were trying to hit a word count requirement. This paper would have been even more enjoyable to read if it were slightly