Relationship between Perception and Cognition of the Oldest Pursuits in Psychology

Navon Experiment Lab Report
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Abstract
Understanding the relationship between the different parts and aspects of perception and cognition of the oldest pursuits in psychology. Because of the sheer importance of these two processes in individuals' learning and thinking processes, psychologists have utilized various experiments and studies to learn more about their secrets. Accordingly, this research utilizes the famous study regarding the relationship of these aspects, which is also known as the Navon Test. Using two global symbols ('O' and 'S'), which are both embedded with local symbols ('U' and 'H'), the researchers experimented with 261 university students (63 Male, 196 Female, 1 Non-binary, 1 NA) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The authors used the Dependent Variable of 'actual mean reaction time' and 'accuracy' and the Independent Variable, the subject or object, to determine whether there is a significant statistical difference between the two. After conducting the statistical test, this study found out that there are no significant differences between global-target (MRT = 738.94; MAC = 91.13) and local-target groups (MRT = 742.34; MAC = 92.76), which then strongly supported the Null Hypothesis (H0) that "pattern recognition is strongly influenced by the global context in which the pattern appears." Therefore, the results of the experiment supported the established knowledge that global-target perception strongly influences local-target perception.
Introduction
Understanding the relationship between perception and cognition is essential for any professional working in the psychological field. On the one hand, perception has been defined as "the consciousness of particular material things present to sense" CITATION Ang06 \l 1033 (Angell, 1906). On the other hand, cognition is primarily defined as "the symbolic (or conceptual) processing of information that is required for the central representation and organized of a response." Although recent studies show that these two aspects are independent of one another, some studies show that there is a significant relationship between them. For example, some believe that top-down cognitive processes assert that cognition significantly affects essential visual perception or that cognition can also influence even low-level perceptual processes of human beings CITATION Mic20 \l 1033 (Michel, 2020).
Recently, however, studies have been conducted regarding not only the presence of this relationship but even the very structures and processes that govern it. Additionally, this is further expanded by correlating how external and environmental factors could affect cognition and, ultimately, perception. In a 2017 study analyzed the relationship between perception and cognition by measuring activities in both the cortical and hippocampal structures of the brain. This study suggests that perception-related tests could determine possible impairments in the brain and even improve one's memory CITATION Ric17 \l 1033 (Richmond & Zacks, 2017).
In order to understand the relationship and influence of cognition to perception, it would be necessary to determine the importance of perception initially. Perceptual information is generally defined as the human brain identifying and interpreting given stimuli. For example, this could be seen in the presence of a recognizable symbol (i.e., the color of traffic lights) that would associate its presence to the related context (i.e., intersections) and process it according to its previous interaction with the same CITATION Rho08 \l 1033 (Rhodes & Castel, 2008). In line with the previous relationship between perception and cognition, it could be seen that cognition plays an essential role in analyzing the relationship between stimuli with their context or meaning. Going back to the example of specific colors in a traffic light as stated earlier, this shows that while our visual perception is primarily essential in the actual and temporary representation of such stimuli, cognition is crucial in the latter stages when a stimulus is connected and compared with an individual's knowledge and experience CITATION Per07 \l 1033 (Perlovsky, 2007).
In line with all of this, one of the objects of discussion is whether the processing of visual stimulus, in its early stages (compared to previous stages), is primarily affected by previous knowledge and experience. One of the most common kinds of studies oriented towards answering these questions is those comparing global-target and local-target conditions. On the one hand, global-target conditions (or Global processing) are those stimuli, which could be "decomposed further into embedded elements" CITATION Mot13 \l 1033 (L. & I., 2013).
In line with these relationships, the aim of the research conducted was to show that the visual processing (perception) of the mind starts with a holistic perception of an object (global) and proceeds with a piece-meal analysis of its component elements as the time allotted to perception increases. In other words, the Null Hypothesis (H0) of this research is that "pattern recognition is strongly influenced by the global context in which the pattern appears."
Methods
The study employed 261 university students (63 Male, 196 Females, 1 Non-binary, 1 NA) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The sampling method used is random sampling, ...