Chapter 15

Chapter summary

Many experiments in perception have found significant inter-individual differences. Age-related effects generally conform to a U-shaped function, with rapid improvements in perceptual functions during the first decade of life, followed by gradual decline after the fifth decade. These changes can be attributed to changes in the efficiency of the peripheral sense organs, and of signal transmission within the cortex.

Sex differences in perception are frequently reported in all sensory modalities, with female subjects generally outperforming male subjects in most tasks, though the differences are small relative to the variability of scores within each sex. Physical differences between male and female brains may be responsible for some of the differences.

Claims for differences in perception due to culture, particularly between subjects from non-industrialised and industrialised cultures often do not stand up to close scrutiny, and are subject to alternative interpretations.

Expertise due to musical or artistic training is associated with some individual differences in perception. Practice at simple visual discriminations typically improves performance by more than 10%, but effects do not transfer between tasks. Neuroimaging studies have found physical differences between experts and non-experts, indicating that cortical plasticity may be responsible for differences in performance.