Whilst studying cognitive psychology, I have recently been incredibly interested in the topic of perception. Perception is described as ‘the subjective experience of sensory information after having been subjected to cognitive processing’ (p.25 – An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology, David Groome). My interest in the topic of perception initially arose when we were discussing in our lecture about how two individuals can be looking at the same image or colour but based on the individual perception, the image will be seen differently. For example, two people can be looking at the same image yet be focusing on different things. They can perceive what the image is portraying differently depending on personal beliefs or mood. The main study that interested me in this field is the Gestalt Approach. This approach delves into the use of reversible imagery to asses people’s perception with something so simple as using a reversible image that includes usually two images. Depending on where the light falls on the retina in our eyes, we see a certain image before another and one usually tends to be clearer than the other. Using these images allows us to investigate how the same stimuli can be seen in more than one way and together rather than separately and individually. This then allowed Gestalt psychologists to come up with laws of perceptual organisation in order to guide their work. This simple yet effective method of understanding perception is what has drawn my interest in this study the most.

Cognitive psychology as a module offers an in-depth and intriguing look into the human brain, how it ticks and how the makeup of the human brain allows us to live our lives as well as how, if there is a problem with a certain section of our brains, it can affect our mental health and negatively impact our lives. Although I’ve so far been thoroughly enjoying every aspect of this module, my favourite topic so far has been the topic of perception. I am fascinated by the idea that different people can view the same image and see something completely different from the others. It interests me to think that, for example, one individual’s perception of the colour blue could look different to someone else’s yet, despite this difference, we still know that what we see is what we’ve been taught is the colour blue. Similarly, the Gestalt approach in which psychologists showed people a picture containing a reversable figure in which two images come together to make one and can be used to test people’s perception. Due to the way the light falls, depends on which image you see first and therefore determines our perception of images.

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