Constructive perception, is the theory of perception

Perception

Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...

 in which the perceiver uses sensory information and other sources of information to construct a cognitive understanding of a stimulus. In contrast to this top-down approach, there is the bottom-up approach of direct perception.

Also known as intelligent perception, constructive perception shows the relationship between intelligence

Intelligence

Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....

 and perception. This comes from the importance of high-order thinking and learning in perception. During perception, hypotheses are formed and tested about percepts that are based on three things: sensory data, knowledge, and high-level cognitive processes. Visual sensations are usually correctly attributed because we unconsciously assimilate information from many sources and then unconsciously make judgments based on this information. The philosophy of Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

 explains that our perception of the world is reciprocal; it both is affected and affects our experience of the world.

Evidence of constructive perception

Context effects

Context effects

Context effect is the aspect of cognitive psychology that describes the influence of environmental factors on one's perception of a stimulus. The concept is supported by the theoretical approach to perception known as constructive perception...

 are not explained by bottom-up theories of accounting. Irving Biederman

Irving Biederman

Irving Biederman is an American vision scientist specializing in the study of brain processes underlying humans' ability to quickly recognize and interpret what they see. He has a Ph.D...

 performed experiments that demonstrated dramatic context effects. For example, Stephen Palmer carried out an experiment in which the participants were asked to identify objects after they were shown either a relevant or irrelevant context. They might be shown a scene of a baseball game, followed by images of a baseball, car, and a phone. The stimuli that was most relevant to the context, the baseball, was recognized quicker than those that were irrelevant, car and phone.

Perceptual constancy gives evidence that high-level constructive processes occur during perception. As lighting conditions change, the color of objects, such as bananas or cherries, appear to remain constant. Even when there is not enough light to even stimulate cone cells and give the sensation of color, bananas and cherries are still perceived as yellow and red, respectively.

Configural-superiority effect is another compelling context effect. This effect is demonstrated by the decrease in response time by participants when identifying objects in complex configurations over objects in isolation. For example, four diagonal lines are shown and participants are asked the location of the odd line indicated by its different orientation. In another condition, an "L" shaped fixed context is added; this creates three triangles and another object made of three lines. Participants were able to discern the odd three line object from the set of triangles quicker than the single diagonal lines alone.

Examples

You are traveling down a road you never been on before, up ahead you see an octagonal red sign with white letters near an intersection. The sign has a vine growing on it, and all you can read is "ST_P." These letters alone are meaningless, however taken in its context and using knowledge from past experiences you infer that it is a stop sign. This is example of constructive perception because it required intelligence and thought to combine sensory information, a red octagonal sign with "ST_P" in white letters at an intersection, and knowledge from past experiences, stop signs are red octagonal signs with "STOP" in white letters placed at an intersection, to perceive it as a stop sign.