Constancy of perception: definition of the term, functions and meaning, examples

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

Perception helps a person to know the objective reality. Constancy, which is one of its main properties, is expressed in the constancy of the color, shape and size of objects, and also provides the individual with knowledge of the surrounding world.

Perception and its properties

Perception in its essence refers to a complex mental process, which consists in a holistic reflection of phenomena and objects acting at a certain time on the senses. Conventionally, perception is represented as a combination of thinking, memory and sensations. Specialists distinguish the following properties of perception:

• objectivity;
• integrity;
• constancy;
• generalization;
• selectivity;
• structural;
• meaningfulness.

We propose to consider each of the above properties in more detail.

Objectivity

With the help of objectivity and constancy of perception, a person is not able to perceivesurrounding reality in the form of a set of different sensations. Instead, he sees and distinguishes objects that are separate from each other, which have certain properties that cause these sensations. After a long study and various experiments, scientists came to the conclusion that the lack of objectivity of perception can cause disorientation in space, impaired perception of color, shape and movement, as well as hallucinations and other mental abnormalities.

One of these similar experiments was as follows: the subject was placed in a bath of saline at a comfortable temperature for him, where his perception was limited. He only saw a faint white light and heard monotonous distant sounds, and the coverings on his hands made it difficult to get tactile sensations. After a few hours of being in this state, the person developed an anxious state, after which he asked to stop the experiment. During the experiment, the subjects noted deviations in the perception of time and hallucinations.

Integrity

It is worth noting that the integrity and constancy of perception are interconnected. This property of perception allows you to create a holistic image of the object, using the generalized information received about the individual qualities and features of the object. Thanks to integrity, we are able to perceive reality organized in a certain way, and not a chaotic accumulation of touches, individual sounds and color spots. For example, when listening to music, our perception is subject to hearing not individual sounds (frequency fluctuations), butmelody as a whole. So it is with everything that happens - we see, hear and feel the whole picture, and not separate parts of what is happening.

Meaningfulness

The essence of this property is to give the perceived phenomenon or object a certain meaning, to designate it with a word, and also to attribute it to a certain language group, based on the knowledge of the subject and his past experience. One of the simplest forms of understanding phenomena and objects is recognition.

Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach found that even random ink spots are perceived by a person as something meaningful (lake, cloud, flowers, etc.), and only people with mental disabilities tend to perceive them simply as abstract spots. From this it follows that the perception of meaningfulness proceeds as a process of searching for answers to the question: "What is it?".

Structuredness

This property helps a person to combine influencing stimuli into relatively simple and holistic structures. Thanks to the stable features of objects, a person is able to recognize and distinguish them. Outwardly different, but essentially the same objects are identified as such by reflecting their structural organization.

Generalization

A certain generalization can be traced in every process of perception, and the degree of generalization is directly related to the level and volume of knowledge. For example, a white flower with thorns is perceived by a person as a rose, or as a representative of the multi-colored family. In generalization, the main role is played by the word, andcalling a synonym for a certain subject helps to increase the level of generalization of perception.

Selectivity

remain only in the background. The constancy of perception, meaningfulness, selectivity and its other properties are of great biological importance. Otherwise, the existence and adaptation of a person would be impossible in the surrounding world, if perception did not reflect its permanent and stable properties.

Consistency

Integrity of perception has a close relationship with constancy, which should be understood as the relative independence of certain properties of objects from their reflections on receptor surfaces. With the help of constancy, we are able to perceive phenomena and objects as relatively constant in position, size, color and shape.

In psychology, the constancy of perception is the stability of accepting various properties of phenomena or objects that persist with different physical changes in stimulation: the intensity of speed, distance, light, and much more.

Significance of constancy

Oa helps the individual to distinguish the size of certain objects, its objective shape, color and angle of view of perceived objects. As an examplethe constancy of perception can be given as follows: just imagine, if our perception did not have such a property, then with each movement any object would lose its properties.

In this case, instead of certain things, we would see only a constant flicker of continuously decreasing and increasing, shifting, stretching and flattening highlights and spots of unimaginable variegation. In this scenario, a person would not be able to perceive the world of stable objects and phenomena, which, accordingly, could not serve as a means of knowing objective reality.

Thus, the constancy of perception is the property of a perceptual image to remain relatively unchanged when the conditions of perception change, the absence of which would lead to complete chaos. That is why scientists pay special attention to this aspect.

Constancy of perception: types of constancy

Specialists distinguish quite a large number of species. This property of perception holds for almost any perceived characteristics of an object. Consider the most popular right now.

Stability of the visible world

One of the most important and fundamental types of constancy is the stability of the surrounding world. Experts also call this kind of visual direction constancy. Its essence is as follows: when the observer’s gaze or his own gaze moves, the person himself seems to be moving, and the objects surrounding him are perceived as motionless. It should be noted that the weight of the object is also constant and perceived by us. Regardless of whether we lift the load with the whole body, foot, one or two hands - the weight estimate of the object will be approximately the same.

Form constancy

Distortions in the perception of the shape of objects can be found when the orientation of objects or the subject itself changes. This type is one of the important properties of the visual system, since the correct recognition of the shape of objects is a necessary condition for adequate human interaction with the outside world. Robert Thouless was one of the first to reveal the role of the observer's knowledge and signs of remoteness in the constancy of form.

In 1931, a psychologist conducted an experiment, the essence of which was as follows: he invited the subjects to evaluate and draw or select from a certain set of squares or circles that would be similar in shape to the proposed objects lying on a horizontal surface on different distances from the observer. As a result of the experiment, the subjects chose the form of the stimulus, which did not coincide with either the projection form or its real form, but lay between them.

Speed perception

It is believed that the closer the trajectory of movement, the higher the speed of displacement of the retinal pattern of objects.

So two distant objects appear to be slower than in actual measurement. The perceived speed of nearby things depends on the phenomenal distance traveled per unit of time and, as a rule, does not change significantly.

Constancy of color andLight Sensing

Under the constancy of color is meant the ability of vision to correct the perception of the color of objects, for example, in natural light at any time of the day or when the spectrum of their illumination changes, for example, when they leave a dark room. Experts came to the conclusion that the mechanism of constancy of perception is acquired.

This is evidenced by a number of studies. In one experiment, scientists conducted a study on people living permanently in a dense forest. Their perception is of interest, since they have not previously encountered objects at a great distance. When the observers were shown objects that were at a great distance from them, these objects appeared to them not as distant, but as small.

Similar violations of constancy can be seen in plains dwellers when they look down on objects from above. In addition, from the top floor of a high-rise building, cars or people passing by seem tiny to us. It is worth noting that from the age of two, a child begins to form such types of constancy as sizes, shapes and colors. In addition, they tend to cultivate up to the age of fourteen.

Constant value

It is a well-known fact that the image of an object, as well as its image on the retina, decreases when the distance to it increases, and vice versa. But despite the fact that when the viewing distance varies, the size of objects on the retina changes,its perceived dimensions remain virtually unchanged. For example, look at the audience in the cinema: all faces will seem to us almost the same size, despite the fact that the images of faces that are far away are much smaller than those close to us.

In conclusion

The key source of constancy is the vigorous activity of the perceptual system. She manages to correct and correct various errors caused by the diversity of the surrounding world of objects, as well as create adequate images of perception. An example of this could be the following: if you put on glasses and go into an unfamiliar room, you can see how visual perception will distort images and objects, but after a while a person stops noticing the distortions caused by glasses, although they will be reflected on the retina.

Adequate correlation between the objects of the surrounding world reflected in the perception and the perception itself is the main ratio, as a result of which all relationships between the states of consciousness, stimuli and stimuli are regulated. Thus, it should be concluded that the constancy of perception, which is formed in the process of objective activity, can be considered a necessary condition for human life and activity. Without this property of perception, it would be difficult for any person to navigate in a changeable and infinitely diverse world.