Rat Man Era

The aim of the current study was to study whether past experiences with other figures was to influence how you supposed each of the ambiguous figures of the perceptual set. It is based on an experiment conduct by Bugelski and Alampay (1961).

It was hypothesised that participants who observed each of the ambiguous set would be influenced by their prior experiences with the other figures.

Results show that most participants saw a face from the ambiguous figure after processing both the human and animal pictures.

The Hypothesis that your past experiences with other figures would contribute in how you responded to each of the ambiguous figures, was not supported by the recent study.

In close a person's past experiences, and their situation in which they view the figure could add in how they perceive an ambiguous figure, but could also be proven wrong most of the time.

People sometimes want to believe that what they see is what you actually see in front of them. Could it be that they are just seeing what they expect to or want to see.

There are many factors that influence visual perception. These are generally categorized into two groups called physiological and psychological factors. Physiological factors involve the ways in which the eyes, nervous system and brain process visual information. Psychological factors involve mental processes such as past experience which includes personal experiences throughout an individual's life, which is the setting or environment in which a perception is made, Motivation; which means point of view is narrowed down to want the individual is motivated by, meaning the person see's what they want to see, Emotional state; which means depending on the persons emotional state is how they will perceive the world for example if the person is sad they would see the world as being grey and lastly Cultural factors; which refers to the way of life in a particular community or group that differs it from other communities and groups.

All of these factors combined together create a different perceptual set for each individual.

The influence of the surroundings on visual perception was demonstrated in an experiment by American psychologists Jerome Bruner and Leigh Minturn (1955). In this experiment, one group of participants were assigned the roles of observers which was group A and were shown pictures of letters and group B were shown pictures of numbers(For a picture, please refer to appendix One). Both groups were shown an ambiguous figure. They then had to identify the last symbol which was the ambiguous figure and they were asked to draw it. Group A who had been shown letters, 92% of the time perceived the figure to be the letter B, were as 83% of the time, Group B who had been shown numbers perceived the symbol to be the number 13. It showed that a perceptual set had been made by the time the ambiguous figure was to be observed.

Past experience refers to personal experiences that have occurred throughout a person's life. These experiences influence the way a person responses, each response is interpreted in a personal way by different individuals. It is also evident that context and past experience work together on influencing a human's interpretation of a visual stimulus.

In 1961 a research on the effect of past experience on perceptual set was conducted by Hans Toch and Richard Schulte (1961). They hypothesised that past experiences influenced which illustration would be perceived more promptly when two illustrations were briefly presented to the participants.

This experiment involved the use of binocular rivary. Binocular rivary is when a different visual scene is briefly and at the same time shown to the human eye. Usually one stimulus or the other is seen. All participants were shown nine pairs of illustrations. In each pair, one of the pictures was a violent scene and the other one was of a non violent scene (For a picture, please refer to appendix Two). The illustrations were purposely drawn to be ambiguous to maximise the potential influence of the participants training on their perceptions. The participants were drawn from three different backgrounds. Group 1 had completed police-style training at the school of Police Administration and Public Safety at an American university. Group 2 had just started their police-style training at the same school, and Group 3 where university students comprised.

The results showed that Group1 participants perceived the violent pictures on 52%