The Perceptual Cycle and its Relevance to Neuromarketing

Matthew M Gerhold

The Expert Eye

Ever wonder why some people can look at an event, object or a person and are able to see things that others can’t: an art expert notices the intricate brushwork and textures on a canvas and is able to detect a fabrication versus an authentic masterpiece; an expert in human behaviour is able to detect dishonesty by observing a person’s behavioural responses; a scientists can look at a tissue sample under a microscope and is able to perceive microfine details that others simply can’t. All of these experiences are enabled by knowledge stored in the mind/brain and its effect on perception and eye-movement. Knowledge stored within the mind/brain guides our visual exploration of the world and in-turn, such exploration builds an understanding of the world. Depending on our knowledge (or more simply, our memories) our relative understanding and perceptions are constructed very differently.

When the scientist looks through his/her microscope or eye-balls a dataset, his/her stored knowledge will affect where and what he/she looks at, will suppress less relevant information in the visual fields through the brain’s inhibitory mechanisms, and enhance information that is task-relevant (related to the goal determined within his/her mind). The influence of knowledge (memory) on human eye-movement, and in turn specific information obtained from new eye-positions, will be assimilated into memory structures (schemata) that in-turn will further guide and drive the eye-movements to gain more specific information about the environment. This is known as the perceptual-cycle: incoming information delivered by the senses influences our memories structures and in turn our memories influences further exploration through top-down control over our eye movements, this all occurring in a repetitive cycle. The perceptual cycle has long been an important concept in the cognitive and neural sciences.

In the instance of an untrained eye, the scene through the lens of the microscope will appear less meaningful—a homogenous blur peppered with dark spots. As a result of undeveloped knowledge, the eye-movements follow a very different pattern and information is not meaningfully filtered. However, given adequate training and experience, schematic knowledge (semantic/conceptual memories) will develop, and the untrained eye, visual-cortex and associated brain regions will begin to meaningfully filter irrelevant information and guide the eyes in a co-ordinated search for task-relevant information. In this way, our perceptual processes are guided and controlled by an interaction of incoming sensory information and stored knowledge that in turn influences the muscles that control eye-movement. Much of this happens rapidly and automatically, outside conscious control and awareness; this is how expert knowledge can “effortlessly” extract meaningful information from the surrounding environment.

Memories, perceptual cycles and everyday life

Just as these scientific principles of mind are applicable to understanding the domains of expert knowledge, they also signify a generic process related to the interaction of memory and eye-movements in the exploration of the environments we inhabit. For example, let’s consider the first time we encounter an interesting movie. We may watch it once and we will inevitably develop a basic knowledge structure (a memory) that will contain the plot and perhaps the names of the leading characters, but perhaps not names of supporting roles or an appreciation of subtle sub-text. If one is compelled to watch the movie again, ones schematic knowledge from the previous experience will guide one to assimilate more knowledge about the movie: one notices short scenes that “weren’t there before”, one perceives subtle sub-text that wasn’t previously apparent, and one remembers the names of less prominent characters. On subsequent viewings, the existing memory of the movie guides perceptual exploration: memory influences our visual explorations (eye-movements), some information is even suppressed and some is enhanced, as a result we start to attend to previously unnoticed features. This all happens in a way that we are not consciously aware of or have conscious control over.

Consumers, television advertisements and perpetual cycles

As is true with movies, so is with television advertisements. For example, just like a movie, consumers do not encode all the details of an ad in one viewing, in many instance they won’t even successfully encode the branding or product information, even after 4-5 viewings! However, they may well remember the narrative and one or two qwerky features put there by the creatives. Given that advertisements may only be viewed a few times—generally amidst many other ads competing for attention—and that we don’t chose to view specific ads like we do with movies, the encoding and assimilation of information into memory is less effective as if one was engaging intentionally with audio-visual materials, like watching a movie that you have been dying to see.

In understanding the reception of television advertising by consumers and how to develop visually memorable content, one needs to consider the structure of the television advertisement and the nature of the perceptual cycle. Generally advertisements have a narrative and then have an all-important iconic moment: an event/scene that delivers or emphasises the key message that consumers should ultimately remember, this often occurs in close proximity to the branding, but not always. In effective TV advertisements, these moments will garner increased engagement with strong positive emotion, making them highly memorable. For the most part, the rest of the advertisement is a murky perceptual haze in the minds of the consumer, and in retrospect will perhaps, if you’re lucky, have a moment of clarity here and there, although this quickly fades with time if the content was not personally relevant to the consumer.

Consider a contrasting situation in terms of engaging with advertising materials: continual engagement, as in the advertising/marketing industry, enhances assimilatory processes far beyond the bounds of what an average consumer will experience. Such rich knowledge structures yield vastly different perceptions in comparison to an everyday consumer—an information rich schema develops within the mind of the person whose job it is to produce the advertisement, enabling finer perception of the subtle elements of the material that are ultimately not relevant to the average consumer’s perceptions. Thus, a large perceptual gap can exist in understanding between what a creative or client feels is relevant and what is relevant to the mind of the average consumer.

The role of the perceptual cycle in advertising testing

The role of neuromarketing is to make crystal clear what is perceptually relevant: what information consumers will absorb and focus-on, and what information will be filtered out by the mind/brain. This is done by drawing on scientific principles of mind, such as the mechanics of cyclical perceptual processing within the mind/brain as consumers interact with television advertisements. The neuroscience perspective offers enhanced understanding that has the potential to realign business objectives towards a more consumer-centred  paradigm for advertising development and testing.

Key concepts used in this article are:

perception:- the process of encoding, processing, and deriving meaning from the physical energy patterns that impinge upon our sensory receptors;

memory representation:- an internal representation within the mind/brain of an event, object, or concept (abstract or concrete);

schemata (plural):- internal structures within the mind/brain that represent an organisms knowledge/memory. These are generally long-term memory stores and can be of many different types: autobiographical, semantic (fact-based or abstract concepts). The term is characteristically used within the cognitive-science and artificial-intelligence communities. Schemata are dynamic, they change as a function of experience. This is enabled, within the mind/brain, by the process of long-term potentiation.

long-term potentiation (LTP):- a physiological process by which adjacent neurons (nerve cells) build electro-chemical connections with each other that enable efficient conduction of electrical currents;

accommodation:- the adaptation of a schema to incorporate new information about the world. This may mean a fundamental reorganisation of understanding within the mind and an accompanying fundamental change to networks of nerve cells that encode the concept within the brain;

assimilation:- when information encoded by sensory organs comes into contact with existing knowledge and forces and interpretation of that information, consequently gives rise of a conscious percept (a view or understanding of the world);

perceptual cycle:- incoming information delivered by the sensory receptors influences our memories structures and in turn our memory further influences exploration through top-down control of our eye movements, all occurring in a repetitive cycle.

© Matthew Gerhold 2017. This article is the property of Matthew M Gerhold and may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever for commercial purpose, verbatim or in derivative works, without the written consent of the author and copyright holder, Matthew M Gerhold. In the instance of teaching or non-commercial research purposes, cite the author and source of this article.

The Unconscious Processes that Produce Brand Recognition

The Physics Behind the Brand
Matthew M Gerhold

From a purely physical perspective one can reduce a brand to physical energy in the surrounding environment of the consumer: Physical energy is the fundamental building block of a brand. In visual communication strategies, the brand is primarily composed of light, electromagnetic radiation at varying visible wavelengths. In the instance of multimedia platforms, light may be accompanied by sound—traveling air pressure waves. In below-the-line communications, chemoreception becomes more important—chemical information encoded by the nervous system that we experience as taste and smell. Touch or somatosensory information will also play a major role. Thus, physical energy and its interactions with sensory mechanisms on the periphery of the human nervous system form the basis for brand perception and recognition. Understanding how basic sensory information is transformed by the brain is critically important for structuring a marketing campaign in today’s technologically embedded markets.
      This short article covers the fundamentals of brand recognition and perception from a neuroscience perspective. Running in parallel to the processes of perception and recognition discussed herein are the processes that generate the emotional and motivational aspects involved in interacting with a brand—these are the components of marketing and advertising interactions that drive and motivate the individual towards a purchase. I hope to provide an overview of motivational processes in the near future. For now, the focus will be on perception and recognition. Let us look at a basic example of communications in an above-the-line context. Let us think, for example, of a television advertisement.

Unconscious Processing in Above-the-line Communications 

The peripheral nervous system (PNS), specifically the eyes and the inner ear, encodes the physical attributes underpinning the brand, product, and creative content of the advertisement: light and sound. This information is delivered to the thalamus, a structure nestled deep within the brain that receives much of the sensory information encoded by the physical senses. 

Figure. An MR-image displaying a side on view of the central nervous system (CNS), sagittal perspective. The thalamus is encircled in red.

Through various anatomical way-stations, the encoded physical energy is directed from the thalamus to the auditory cortex, a region responsible to processing sound; as well as to the visual cortex, a region responsible for processing light. 

Figure. (Left) Side on view of the CNS, the auditory region is encircled in red. (Right) Side on view of the CNS, the visual region is encircled in red.

This low-level processing creates a primitive representation of the brand within the human brain—at this junction the processes and information being handled by the central nervous system (CNS) would still not have availed themselves to the conscious mind. Based on electrophysiological data, the timeframes for these processes occur within a window of 0-150 milliseconds after encountering the marketing material.

Feature Integration within the Brain
As the visual and auditory features of the brand, sitting within the visual and auditory regions, are situated some distance from each other, the brain has to integrate the separate pieces of information. Feature integration, known to neuroscientists as binding, is the process by which this is achieved. This process is mediated by fibres tracts within the brain—different length fibres connecting different regions within the brain.

Figure. Different regions of the brain integrate in order to provide a high-level representation of the brand.

Feature integration or binding will lead to a new more sophisticated representation of physically encoded attributes underlying the brand, product, and creative content. This new high-level representation, spanning across different regions of the brain will elicit memories, or cellular imprints, that have encoded/memorised previous encounters with the brand and product.

The Conscious Experience of the Brand
Through the process of brain regions sharing information and elicitation of previous experiences/memories, the encoded physical information activates, modulates, and influences the frontal lobes of our brains. The frontal regions are key to conscious experience. The recruitment of such areas into a dynamically evolving integrated system of distinct brain regions gives rise to conscious experience of brand and product.

Emotional and Motivational Processes 
Parallel to the perception and recognition of the brand are the emotional and motivational components. These aspects of brand interaction rely on deep brain structures driving and interacting with the rest of the body via neuro-electric and chemical systems. In my next article, I will provide a sketch of the processes involved in generate motivational states that are the key drivers of human behaviour within the market place.