Categorical Perception
Categorical perception is the experience of percept invariances in sensory phenomena that can be varied along a continuum. Multiple views of a face, for example, are mapped onto a common identity, visually distinct objects such as cars are mapped into the same category and distinct speech tokens are identified as belonging to the same phonetic distinct and separate percept. Within a particular part of the continuum, the percepts are perceived as the same, with a sharp change of perception at the position of the continuum where there is identity change. Categorical perception is opposed to continuous perception, the perception of different sensory phenomena as being located on a smooth continuum.
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Famous quotes containing the words categorical and/or perception:
“We do the same thing to parents that we do to children. We insist that they are some kind of categorical abstraction because they produced a child. They were people before that, and they’re still people in all other areas of their lives. But when it comes to the state of parenthood they are abruptly heir to a whole collection of virtues and feelings that are assigned to them with a fine arbitrary disregard for individuality.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious—except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)