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Visual perception
Visual perception is one of the senses, consisting of the ability to detect light and interpret (see) it as the perception known as sight or naked eye vision. Vision has a specific sensory system, the visual system.
There is disagreement as to whether or not this constitutes one, two or even three distinct senses. Some people make a distinction between "black and white" vision and the perception of colour, and others point out that vision using rod cells uses different physical detectors on the retina from cone cells. Some argue that the perception of depth also constitutes a sense, but others argue that this is really cognition (that is, post-sensory) function derived from having stereoscopic vision (two eyes) and is not a sensory perception as such. Many people are also able to perceive the polarization of light.
The visual system
The eye is the light-sensitive organ that is the first component of the visual system. The eye's retina performs the first stages of visual perception processing, with the remaining stages of visual perception occurring in the optic nerve, the lateral geniculate nucleus, and the visual cortex of the brain.
Gestalt
Psychologists of the Gestalt school have raised a large part of the research questions that still preoccupy vision scientists today.
The so-called Gestalt Laws of Organisation have broadened the study of how people perceive objects to be organized patterns or wholes, instead of collections of many separate parts. Gestalt is a German word that translates to "configuration or pattern". According to this theory, there are four main factors that determine how we group things according to visual perception.
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