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Perception | Definition, Process, Examples, Differences, & Facts | Britannica

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What is Perception? – General Psychology

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Contents

About This CourseCourse Contents at a GlanceCourse Learning Outcomes Faculty ResourcesFaculty Resources OverviewPacingPDFPowerPointsAssignmentsQuestion BanksAdditional ResourcesI Need HelpResources: Course AssignmentsAssignment: Foundations of PsychologyAssignment: Research in PsychologyAssignment: BiopsychologyAssignment: Sleep and Dream JournalAssignment: Perception and FoodAssignment: Perception and IllusionsAssignment: Thinking and IntelligenceAssignment: Thinking and Intelligence—The Paradox of ChoiceAssignment: MemoryAssignment: LearningAssignment: Lifespan DevelopmentAssignment: Social PsychologyAssignment: PersonalityAssignment: Personality—BlirtatiousnessAssignment: Motivation and EmotionAssignment: Growth Mindsets and the Control ConditionAssignment: Industrial-Organizational PsychologyAssignment: Psychological DisordersAssignment: Therapy and TreatmentAssignment: Stress, Lifestyle, and HealthPsychological FoundationsWhy It Matters: Psychological FoundationsIntroduction to The History of PsychologyWhat is Psychology?Early Psychology—Structuralism and FunctionalismThe History of Psychology—Psychoanalytic Theory and Gestalt PsychologyThe History of Psychology—Behaviorism and HumanismThe History of Psychology—The Cognitive Revolution and Multicultural PsychologyIntroduction to Contemporary Fields in PsychologyThe Five Psychological DomainsThe Biological DomainThe Cognitive DomainThe Developmental DomainThe Social and Personality Psychology DomainThe Mental and Physical Health DomainOther Psychological SubfieldsIntroduction to Careers in PsychologyMerits of an Education in PsychologyCareers in PsychologyPutting It Together: Psychological FoundationsDiscussion: Foundations of PsychologyPsychological ResearchWhy It Matters: Psychological ResearchIntroduction to The Scientific MethodThe Scientific ProcessEthics in ResearchIntroduction to Approaches to ResearchDescriptive ResearchOther Types of Descriptive ResearchCorrelational ResearchExperimentsIntroduction to Statistical ThinkingThe Reliability and Validity of ResearchStatistical SignificanceDrawing Conclusions from StatisticsHow to Read ResearchPsych in Real Life: Brain Imaging and Messy SciencePutting It Together: Psychological ResearchDiscussion: Research in PsychologyBiopsychologyIntroduction to Neural CommunicationNeuronsHow Neurons CommunicateIntroduction to The Nervous System and the Endocrine SystemParts of the Nervous SystemThe Endocrine SystemIntroduction to the Parts of the BrainBrain HemispheresLobes of the BrainThe Limbic System and Other Brain AreasBrain ImagingIntroduction to Nature and NurtureThe Nature-Nurture QuestionHuman GeneticsGene-Environment InteractionsPutting It Together: BiopsychologyDiscussion: BiopsychologyStates of ConsciousnessWhy It Matters: States of ConsciousnessIntroduction to Consciousness and RhythmsConsciousness and Biological RhythmsPsych in Real Life: Consciousness and BlindsightWhen Biological Clocks Get DisruptedIntroduction to Sleep and DreamsSleep and Why We SleepStages of SleepDreams and DreamingSleep Problems and DisordersIntroduction to Drugs and Other States of ConsciousnessPsychoactive Drugs and AddictionAlcohol and Other DepressantsStimulantsOpioidsHallucinogensHypnosis and MeditationPutting It Together: States of ConsciousnessDiscussion: States of ConsciousnessSensation and PerceptionWhy It Matters: Sensation and PerceptionIntroduction to Sensation and PerceptionWhat is Sensation?What is Perception?Introduction to VisionHow We SeeColor and Depth PerceptionIntroduction to HearingHow We HearPitch Perception and Hearing LossIntroduction to Other SensesTaste and SmellTouch and PainThe Vestibular SenseIntroduction to PerceptionGestalt Principles of PerceptionMulti-Modal PerceptionIllusionsPsych in Real Life: IllusionsPutting It Together: Sensation and PerceptionDiscussion: Sensation and PerceptionThinking and IntelligenceWhy It Matters: Thinking and IntelligenceIntroduction to Thinking and Problem-SolvingWhat Is Cognition?Solving ProblemsPitfalls to Problem SolvingPsych in Real Life: Choice BlindnessIntroduction to LanguageLanguage and Language UseLanguage DevelopmentLanguage and ThinkingIntroduction to Intelligence and CreativityWhat Is Intelligence?CreativityMeasures of IntelligenceThe Source of IntelligencePutting It Together: Thinking and IntelligenceDiscussion: Thinking and IntelligenceMemoryWhy It Matters: MemoryIntroduction to How Memory FunctionsEncodingStorageRetrievalParts of the Brain Involved with MemoryIntroduction to Forgetting and Other Memory ProblemsAmnesiaForgettingEyewitness Testimony and Memory ConstructionIntroduction to Improving MemoryWays to Enhance MemoryPutting It Together: MemoryDiscussion: MemoryLearningWhy It Matters: LearningIntroduction to Classical ConditioningWhat Is Learning?Classical ConditioningProcesses in Classical ConditioningIntroduction to Operant ConditioningOperant ConditioningReinforcement and PunishmentReinforcement SchedulesIntroduction to Other Types of LearningLatent LearningPsych in Real Life: Latent LearningObservational LearningPsych in Real Life: The Bobo Doll ExperimentPutting It Together: LearningDiscussion: LearningLifespan DevelopmentWhy It Matters: Introduction to Lifespan DevelopmentIntroduction to Theories of DevelopmentWhat Is Lifespan Development?Psychosexual and Psychosocial Theories of DevelopmentCognitive DevelopmentMoral DevelopmentPsych in Real Life: Moral ReasoningIntroduction to Stages of Development in ChildhoodPrenatal DevelopmentChildhood: Physical and Cognitive DevelopmentChildhood: Emotional and Social DevelopmentIntroduction to Development in Adolescence and AdulthoodAdolescenceAdulthoodDeath and DyingPutting It Together: Lifespan DevelopmentDiscussion: Lifespan DevelopmentSocial PsychologyWhy It Matters: Social PsychologyIntroduction to Social Psychology and Self-PresentationSocial Psychology and Influences on BehaviorSocial Norms and ScriptsIntroduction to Attitudes and PersuasionAttitudesPersuasionIntroduction to Group BehaviorConformity and ObedienceGroup BehaviorThe Bystander Effect and AltruismAttraction and LovePsych in Real Life: Love and PainIntroduction to Prejudice, Discrimination, and AggressionPrejudice and DiscriminationWhy do Prejudice and Discrimination Exist?AggressionPutting It Together: Social PsychologyDiscussion: Social PsychologyPersonalityWhy It Matters: PersonalityIntroduction to Psychodynamic Approaches to PersonalityWhat Is Personality?Freud and the Psychodynamic PerspectiveNeo-Freudians: Adler, Erikson, Jung, and HorneyIntroduction to Explaining PersonalityLearning ApproachesHumanistic ApproachesBiological ApproachesTrait TheoristsCultural Understandings of PersonalityIntroduction to Measuring PersonalityPersonality AssessmentPsych in Real Life: Blirtatiousness, Questionnaires, and ValidityResource: Personality TestsPutting It Together: PersonalityDiscussion: PersonalityEmotion and MotivationWhy It Matters: Emotion and MotivationIntroduction to MotivationMotivationTheories About MotivationMaslow’s Hierarchy of NeedsPsych in Real Life: Growth MindsetsIntroduction to Hunger and EatingHunger and EatingEating DisordersIntroduction to Sexual BehaviorSexual BehaviorSexual Orientation and Gender IdentityIntroduction to EmotionTheories of EmotionThe Biology of EmotionsSeeing EmotionPutting It Together: Motivation and EmotionDiscussion: Motivation and EmotionIndustrial-Organizational PsychologyWhy It Matters: Industrial-Organizational PsychologyIntroduction to Industrial-Organizational Psychology BasicsWhat Is Industrial and Organizational Psychology?Selecting EmployeesTraining and Evaluating EmployeesBias and Protections in HiringIntroduction to The Social Dimension of WorkJob SatisfactionLeadership and OrganizationHuman Factors Psychology and Workplace DesignPutting It Together: Industrial-Organizational PsychologyDiscussion: Industrial-Organizational PsychologyPsychological DisordersWhy It Matters: Psychological DisordersIntroduction to Psychological DisordersWhat are Psychological Disorders?Diagnosing and Classifying Psychological DisordersPerspectives on Psychological DisordersIntroduction to Anxiety Disorders, OCD, and PTSDPhobias and Social Anxiety DisorderPanic and Generalized Anxiety DisorderObsessive-Compulsive and Related DisordersPosttraumatic Stress DisorderIntroduction to Mood DisordersMajor Depressive DisorderBipolar DisorderThe Biological Basis of Mood DisordersSuicideIntroduction to Schizophrenia and Dissociative DisordersSchizophreniaDissociative DisordersIntroduction to Personality DisordersPersonality DisordersBorderline Personality DisorderAntisocial Personality DisorderIntroduction to Childhood DisordersADHDAutismReview: Classifying Psychological DisordersPutting It Together: Psychological DisordersDiscussion: Psychological DisordersTherapy and TreatmentWhy It Matters: Therapy and TreatmentIntroduction to Mental HealthMental Health Treatment in the PastMental Health Treatment TodayIntroduction to Types of TreatmentPsychoanalysisCognitive-Behavioral TherapyPsych in Real Life: Behavior TherapyHumanistic Therapy and Other TreatmentsEvaluating PsychotherapyBiomedical TherapiesPsych in Real Life: ReconsolidationIntroduction to Treatment ModalitiesIndividual TherapyGroup TherapiesCultural Factors and TherapyPutting It Together: Treatment and TherapyDiscussion: Therapy and TreatmentStress, Lifestyle, and HealthWhy It Matters: Stress, Lifestyle, and HealthIntroduction to Defining StressWhat Is Stress?Studying StressStress on the InsideStressorsIntroduction to Stress and IllnessStress and The Immune SystemStress and the Cardiovascular SystemIntroduction to Regulating Stress and Pursuing HappinessRegulating StressSocial Support and Stress ReductionThe Pursuit of HappinessPositive PsychologyPsych in Real Life: HabitsPutting It Together: Stress, Lifestyle, and HealthDiscussion: Stress, Lifestyle, and Health

General Psychology

Sensation and Perception

What is Perception?

Learning Objectives

Discuss the roles attention, motivation, and sensory adaptation play in perception

While our sensory receptors are constantly collecting information from the environment, it is ultimately how we interpret that information that affects how we interact with the world. Perception refers to the way sensory information is organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced. Perception involves both bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing refers to the fact that perceptions are built from sensory input. On the other hand, how we interpret those sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our experiences, and our thoughts. This is called top-down processing.

Look at the shape in Figure 1 below. Seen alone, your brain engages in bottom-up processing. There are two thick vertical lines and three thin horizontal lines. There is no context to give it a specific meaning, so there is no top-down processing involved.

Figure 1. What is this image? Without any context, you must use bottom-up processing.

Now, look at the same shape in two different contexts. Surrounded by sequential letters, your brain expects the shape to be a letter and to complete the sequence. In that context, you perceive the lines to form the shape of the letter “B.”

Figure 2. With top-down processing, you use context to give meaning to this image.

Surrounded by numbers, the same shape now looks like the number “13.”

Figure 3. With top-down processing, you use context to give meaning to this image.

When given a context, your perception is driven by your cognitive expectations. Now you are processing the shape in a top-down fashion.

One way to think of this concept is that sensation is a physical process, whereas perception is psychological. For example, upon walking into a kitchen and smelling the scent of baking cinnamon rolls, the sensation is the scent receptors detecting the odor of cinnamon, but the perception may be “Mmm, this smells like the bread Grandma used to bake when the family gathered for holidays.”

Although our perceptions are built from sensations, not all sensations result in perception. In fact, we often don’t perceive stimuli that remain relatively constant over prolonged periods of time. This is known as sensory adaptation. Imagine entering a classroom with an old analog clock. Upon first entering the room, you can hear the ticking of the clock; as you begin to engage in conversation with classmates or listen to your professor greet the class, you are no longer aware of the ticking. The clock is still ticking, and that information is still affecting sensory receptors of the auditory system. The fact that you no longer perceive the sound demonstrates sensory adaptation and shows that while closely associated, sensation and perception are different.

Attention and Perception

There is another factor that affects sensation and perception: attention. Attention plays a significant role in determining what is sensed versus what is perceived. Imagine you are at a party full of music, chatter, and laughter. You get involved in an interesting conversation with a friend, and you tune out all the background noise. If someone interrupted you to ask what song had just finished playing, you would probably be unable to answer that question.

Watch It

See for yourself how inattentional blindness works by watching this selective attention test from Simons and Chabris (1999):

You can view the transcript for “selective attention test” here (opens in new window).

One of the most interesting demonstrations of how important attention is in determining our perception of the environment occurred in a famous study conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999). In this study, participants watched a video of people dressed in black and white passing basketballs. Participants were asked to count the number of times the team in white passed the ball. During the video, a person dressed in a black gorilla costume walks among the two teams. You would think that someone would notice the gorilla, right? Nearly half of the people who watched the video didn’t notice the gorilla at all, despite the fact that he was clearly visible for nine seconds. Because participants were so focused on the number of times the white team was passing the ball, they completely tuned out other visual information. Failure to notice something that is completely visible because of a lack of attention is called inattentional blindness.

In a similar experiment, researchers tested inattentional blindness by asking participants to observe images moving across a computer screen. They were instructed to focus on either white or black objects, disregarding the other color. When a red cross passed across the screen, about one third of subjects did not notice it (Figure 4) (Most, Simons, Scholl, & Chabris, 2000).

Link to Learning

Read more on inattentional blindness at the Noba Project website.

Figure 4. Nearly one third of participants in a study did not notice that a red cross passed on the screen because their attention was focused on the black or white figures. (credit: Cory Zanker)

Motivations, Expectations, and Perception

Motivation can also affect perception. Have you ever been expecting a really important phone call and, while taking a shower, you think you hear the phone ringing, only to discover that it is not? If so, then you have experienced how motivation to detect a meaningful stimulus can shift our ability to discriminate between a true sensory stimulus and background noise. The ability to identify a stimulus when it is embedded in a distracting background is called signal detection theory. This might also explain why a mother is awakened by a quiet murmur from her baby but not by other sounds that occur while she is asleep. Signal detection theory has practical applications, such as increasing air traffic controller accuracy. Controllers need to be able to detect planes among many signals (blips) that appear on the radar screen and follow those planes as they move through the sky. In fact, the original work of the researcher who developed signal detection theory was focused on improving the sensitivity of air traffic controllers to plane blips (Swets, 1964).

Our perceptions can also be affected by our beliefs, values, prejudices, expectations, and life experiences. As you will see later in this module, individuals who are deprived of the experience of binocular vision during critical periods of development have trouble perceiving depth (Fawcett, Wang, & Birch, 2005). The shared experiences of people within a given cultural context can have pronounced effects on perception. For example, Marshall Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits (1963) published the results of a multinational study in which they demonstrated that individuals from Western cultures were more prone to experience certain types of visual illusions than individuals from non-Western cultures, and vice versa. One such illusion that Westerners were more likely to experience was the Müller-Lyer illusion (Figure 5): The lines appear to be different lengths, but they are actually the same length.

Figure 5. In the Müller-Lyer illusion, lines appear to be different lengths although they are identical. (a) Arrows at the ends of lines may make the line on the right appear longer, although the lines are the same length. (b) When applied to a three-dimensional image, the line on the right again may appear longer although both black lines are the same length.

These perceptual differences were consistent with differences in the types of environmental features experienced on a regular basis by people in a given cultural context. People in Western cultures, for example, have a perceptual context of buildings with straight lines, what Segall’s study called a carpentered world (Segall et al., 1966). In contrast, people from certain non-Western cultures with an uncarpentered view, such as the Zulu of South Africa, whose villages are made up of round huts arranged in circles, are less susceptible to this illusion (Segall et al., 1999). It is not just vision that is affected by cultural factors. Indeed, research has demonstrated that the ability to identify an odor, and rate its pleasantness and its intensity, varies cross-culturally (Ayabe-Kanamura, Saito, Distel, Martínez-Gómez, & Hudson, 1998).

Children described as thrill seekers are more likely to show taste preferences for intense sour flavors (Liem, Westerbeek, Wolterink, Kok, & de Graaf, 2004), which suggests that basic aspects of personality might affect perception. Furthermore, individuals who hold positive attitudes toward reduced-fat foods are more likely to rate foods labeled as reduced fat as tasting better than people who have less positive attitudes about these products (Aaron, Mela, & Evans, 1994).

Watch It

Review the differences between sensation and perception in this CrashCourse Psychology video:

You can view the transcript for “Sensation and Perception: Crash Course Psychology #5” here (opens in new window).

Think It Over

Think about a time when you failed to notice something around you because your attention was focused elsewhere. If someone pointed it out, were you surprised that you hadn’t noticed it right away?

Licenses and Attributions (Click to expand)

CC licensed content, Original

Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution

CC licensed content, Shared previously

Sensation and Perception. Authored by: OpenStax College. Located at: https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/5-1-sensation-versus-perception. License: CC BY: Attribution. License Terms: Download for free at https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

Section on bottom-up versus top-down processing. Authored by: Dr. Scott Roberts, Dr. Ryan Curtis, Samantha Levy, and Dr. Dylan Selterman. Provided by: OpenPsyc. Located at: http://openpsyc.blogspot.com/2014/06/bottom-up-vs-top-down-processing.html. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Sensation & Perception – Crash Course Psychology #5. Provided by: CrashCourse. Located at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unWnZvXJH2o. License: Other. License Terms: Standard YouTube License

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PERCEPTION | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

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English (UK)

English

Meaning of perception in English

perceptionnoun uk

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/pəˈsep.ʃən/ us

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/pɚ-/

perception noun

(BELIEF)

Add to word list

C2 [ C ] a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how things seem: We have to change the public's perception that money is being wasted. These photographs will affect people's perceptions of war.

More examplesFewer examplesThere is a general perception that exams are becoming easier to pass.It is my perception that his argument was fundamentally flawed.We need to change people's perception of the military.These perceptions reflect those of the general public.Popular perception of him is gradually changing.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Opinions, beliefs and points of view

Afrocentric

agnosticism

angle

anti-ideological

article of faith

ascription

bubble

creed

heretical

heretically

hot take

idea

outlook

pole

pretension

prism

redistributionist

relativism

relativistic

someone's idea of something idiom

See more results »

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Ideas, concepts and theories

perception noun

(SIGHT)

[ U ] the quality of being aware of things through the physical senses, especially sight: Drugs can alter your perception of reality.

[ U ] someone's ability to notice and understand things that are not obvious to other people: She has extraordinary powers of perception for one so young. He's not known for his perception.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Knowledge and awareness

acquaintance

alertness

as every schoolboy/schoolchild knows idiom

astuteness

at/in the back of your mind idiom

familiarity

firsthand

general knowledge

gnostic

grounding

lived experience

metacognition

nescience

nescient

off someone's radar idiom

sensibility

street smarts

theory of mind

visual literacy

witting

See more results »

(Definition of perception from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

perception | American Dictionary

perceptionnoun us

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/pərˈsep·ʃən/

perception noun

(BELIEF)

Add to word list

[ C ] a thought, belief, or opinion, often held by many people and based on appearances: Even though he had done nothing illegal, the public’s perception was that he had acted dishonestly, and he was forced to resign.

perception noun

(AWARENESS)

[ U ] an awareness of things through the physical senses, esp. sight

(Definition of perception from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

perception | Business English

perceptionnoun [ C or U ] uk

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/pəˈsepʃən/ us

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Add to word list

the way that someone thinks and feels about a company, product, service, etc.: Although our handling of complaints has improved greatly, it continues to be a significant problem in terms of public perception. A strong brand has a big impact on product perception. Sometimes the experience of going through the course changes people's perceptions about entrepreneurship.

(Definition of perception from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of perception

perception

That is, a person can describe both perceptions of the outside world and plans for action.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Problems, then, are raised about the ecological validity of this constraint and the role it might play in the perception of ordinary, everyday motion.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In this framework, conceptual representations are contiguous with the representational forms of perception and action.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Such a perception prompts people to ask whether something valuable is lost when non-market modes of interaction are replaced by market ones.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Memory complaints do reflect perceptions of past memory performance and are also an early manifestation of memory impairment.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Due recognition must also be given to changes in nuptial fertility and to apparently changing perceptions of the roles of marriage and the family.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Is there some concept, identifiable as 'perception', which affects or controls a human being's knowledge of the surrounding landscape?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

If the mirroring is too accurate, the perception itself can become a source of fear, and it loses its symbolic potential.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Developmentalists show that these schemas operate between language and perception, thereby facilitating semantic development.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It may be perceived as an area of concern if this is the perception of students accessing the course.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This process tends to be relevant to functions that are universal to all members of a species such as visual depth perception or language development.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In fact, he has always suffered this condition; what is new is his perception of it, and its internalization.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Once again, the stimulus will be sufficient to force the correct perception.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Like cooking, cleaning, shopping, and washing, men can do it too, but the societal perception is that these are women's tasks or feminine gendered activities.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Many tasks involve sensory information that is ambiguous, and other sources of information may be required for adequate perception.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with perception

perception

These are words often used in combination with perception.Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

aural perceptionThis enables the twins to replace discursive speech with a primordial yet arcane language that relies solely on aural perception.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

categorical perceptionFor a critic of categorical perception, it is encouraging to analyze this phenomenon in terms of shepard's law of generalization.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

conscious perceptionA number of the studies cited as demonstrations of direct perception are in fact demonstrations of direct conscious perception.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all collocations with perception

What is the pronunciation of perception?

Translations of perception

in Chinese (Traditional)

看法, 見解，觀念，看法, 視覺…

in Chinese (Simplified)

看法, 认识，观念，看法, 视觉…

in Spanish

idea, imagen, percepción…

in Portuguese

impressão, percepção, perspicácia…

in more languages

in Marathi

in Turkish

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in Dutch

in Hindi

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in Danish

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in Malay

in German

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in Ukrainian

in Russian

in Telugu

in Bengali

in Czech

in Indonesian

in Thai

in Vietnamese

in Polish

जाणीव…

algılama, sezgi, görme…

idée [feminine], image [feminine], perception [feminine]…

認識（にんしき）, 知覚力（ちかくりょく）…

waarneming, inzicht…

धारणा, समझ, बोध…

એક માન્યતા/ શ્રદ્ધા/ બોધ/વિભાવના/વિશ્વાસ/ અનુમાન કે મંતવ્ય/ સલાહ/મત મુખ્યત્વે પરિસ્થિતિના દેખાવ પરથી મોટાભાગના લોકોની માન્યતા કે મંતવ્ય. માન્યતા/ શ્રદ્ધા/ બોધ/વિભાવના/વિશ્વાસ/ અનુમાન કે મંતવ્ય/ સલાહ/મત/ અનુભૂતિ/અભિજ્ઞતા/ સમજ/ સંવેદના/જ્ઞાન/ સુજ-બુજ /ધારણા…

intelligens…

iakttagelseförmåga, uppfattningsförmåga…

daya tanggapan…

das Wahrnehmungsvermögen…

oppfatning [masculine], syn [neuter], observasjonsevne [masculine]…

احساس, گمان, تصور…

розуміння, усвідомлення…

восприятие, представление, ощущение…

నమ్మకం లేక అభిప్రాయం-- వాస్తవాలు ఎలా తోస్తాయో దాన్ని బట్టి సామాన్యంగా ఎక్కువ మందికి ఏర్పడినది…

উপলব্ধি, ধারণা, একটি বিশ্বাস বা মতামত…

vnímavost…

perseptif…

การรับรู้…

sự nhận thức…

postrzeganie, percepcja…

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an answer or reaction

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1Process and terminology

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1.1Bruner's model of the perceptual process

1.2Saks and John's three components to perception

1.2.1Multistable perception

2Types of perception

Toggle Types of perception subsection

2.1Vision

2.2Sound

2.3Touch

2.4Taste

2.5Smell

2.6Social

2.6.1Speech

2.6.2Faces

2.6.3Social touch

2.7Multi-modal perception

2.7.1Time (chronoception)

2.7.2Agency

2.7.3Familiarity

2.7.4Sexual stimulation

2.8Other senses

3Reality

4Physiology

5Features

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5.1Constancy

5.2Grouping (Gestalt)

5.3Contrast effects

6Theories

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6.1Perception as direct perception (Gibson)

6.2Perception-in-action

6.3Evolutionary psychology

6.4Closed-loop perception

6.5Feature integration theory

6.6Shared Intentionality theory

6.7Other theories of perception

7Effects on perception

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7.1Effect of experience

7.2Effect of motivation and expectation

8Philosophy

9See also

10References

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10.1Citations

10.2Sources

11Bibliography

12External links

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Perception

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interpretation of sensory information

For other uses, see Perception (disambiguation).

"Percept" redirects here. For other uses, see Percept (disambiguation).

The Necker cube and Rubin vase can be perceived in more than one way.

Humans are able to have a very good guess on the underlying 3D shape category/identity/geometry given a silhouette of that shape. Computer vision researchers have been able to build computational models for perception that exhibit a similar behavior and are capable of generating and reconstructing 3D shapes from single or multi-view depth maps or silhouettes.[1]

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See also: Social identity theory

Psychologist Jerome Bruner developed a model of perception, in which people put "together the information contained in" a target and a situation to form "perceptions of ourselves and others based on social categories."[11][12] This model is composed of three states:

When people encounter an unfamiliar target, they are very open to the informational cues contained in the target and the situation surrounding it.

The first stage does not give people enough information on which to base perceptions of the target, so they will actively seek out cues to resolve this ambiguity. Gradually, people collect some familiar cues that enable them to make a rough categorization of the target.

The cues become less open and selective. People try to search for more cues that confirm the categorization of the target. They actively ignore and distort cues that violate their initial perceptions. Their perception becomes more selective and they finally paint a consistent picture of the target.

Saks and John's three components to perception[edit]

According to Alan Saks and Gary Johns, there are three components to perception:[13]

The Perceiver: a person whose awareness is focused on the stimulus, and thus begins to perceive it. There are many factors that may influence the perceptions of the perceiver, while the three major ones include (1) motivational state, (2) emotional state, and (3) experience. All of these factors, especially the first two, greatly contribute to how the person perceives a situation. Oftentimes, the perceiver may employ what is called a "perceptual defense", where the person will only see what they want to see.

The Target: the object of perception; something or someone who is being perceived. The amount of information gathered by the sensory organs of the perceiver affects the interpretation and understanding about the target.

The Situation: the environmental factors, timing, and degree of stimulation that affect the process of perception. These factors may render a single stimulus to be left as merely a stimulus, not a percept that is subject for brain interpretation.

Multistable perception[edit]

Stimuli are not necessarily translated into a percept and rarely does a single stimulus translate into a percept. An ambiguous stimulus may sometimes be transduced into one or more percepts, experienced randomly, one at a time, in a process termed multistable perception. The same stimuli, or absence of them, may result in different percepts depending on subject's culture and previous experiences.

Ambiguous figures demonstrate that a single stimulus can result in more than one percept. For example, the Rubin vase can be interpreted either as a vase or as two faces. The percept can bind sensations from multiple senses into a whole. A picture of a talking person on a television screen, for example, is bound to the sound of speech from speakers to form a percept of a talking person.

Types of perception[edit]

Cerebrum lobes

Vision[edit]

Main article: Visual perception

In many ways, vision is the primary human sense. Light is taken in through each eye and focused in a way which sorts it on the retina according to direction of origin. A dense surface of photosensitive cells, including rods, cones, and intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells captures information about the intensity, color, and position of incoming light. Some processing of texture and movement occurs within the neurons on the retina before the information is sent to the brain. In total, about 15 differing types of information are then forwarded to the brain proper via the optic nerve.[14]

The timing of perception of a visual event, at points along the visual circuit, have been measured. A sudden alteration of light at a spot in the environment first alters photoreceptor cells in the retina, which send a signal to the retina bipolar cell layer which, in turn, can activate a retinal ganglion neuron cell. A retinal ganglion cell is a bridging neuron that connects visual retinal input to the visual processing centers within the central nervous system.[15] Light-altered neuron activation occurs within about 5–20 milliseconds in a rabbit retinal ganglion,[16] although in a mouse retinal ganglion cell the initial spike takes between 40 and 240 milliseconds before the initial activation.[17] The initial activation can be detected by an action potential spike, a sudden spike in neuron membrane electric voltage.

A perceptual visual event measured in humans was the presentation to individuals of an anomalous word. If these individuals are shown a sentence, presented as a sequence of single words on a computer screen, with a puzzling word out of place in the sequence, the perception of the puzzling word can register on an electroencephalogram (EEG). In an experiment, human readers wore an elastic cap with 64 embedded electrodes distributed over their scalp surface.[18] Within 230 milliseconds of encountering the anomalous word, the human readers generated an event-related electrical potential alteration of their EEG at the left occipital-temporal channel, over the left occipital lobe and temporal lobe.

Sound[edit]

Anatomy of the human ear. (The length of the auditory canal is exaggerated in this image). Brown is outer ear. Red is middle ear. Purple is inner ear.

Hearing (or audition) is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations (i.e., sonic detection). Frequencies capable of being heard by humans are called audio or audible frequencies, the range of which is typically considered to be between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz.[19] Frequencies higher than audio are referred to as ultrasonic, while frequencies below audio are referred to as infrasonic.

The auditory system includes the outer ears, which collect and filter sound waves; the middle ear, which transforms the sound pressure (impedance matching); and the inner ear, which produces neural signals in response to the sound. By the ascending auditory pathway these are led to the primary auditory cortex within the temporal lobe of the human brain, from where the auditory information then goes to the cerebral cortex for further processing.

Sound does not usually come from a single source: in real situations, sounds from multiple sources and directions are superimposed as they arrive at the ears. Hearing involves the computationally complex task of separating out sources of interest, identifying them and often estimating their distance and direction.[20]

Touch[edit]

Main article: Haptic perceptionThe process of recognizing objects through touch is known as haptic perception. It involves a combination of somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin surface (e.g., edges, curvature, and texture) and proprioception of hand position and conformation. People can rapidly and accurately identify three-dimensional objects by touch.[21] This involves exploratory procedures, such as moving the fingers over the outer surface of the object or holding the entire object in the hand.[22] Haptic perception relies on the forces experienced during touch.[23]

Gibson defined the haptic system as "the sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to his body by use of his body."[24] Gibson and others emphasized the close link between body movement and haptic perception, where the latter is active exploration.

The concept of haptic perception is related to the concept of extended physiological proprioception according to which, when using a tool such as a stick, perceptual experience is transparently transferred to the end of the tool.

Taste[edit]

Main article: TasteTaste (formally known as gustation) is the ability to perceive the flavor of substances, including, but not limited to, food. Humans receive tastes through sensory organs concentrated on the upper surface of the tongue, called taste buds or gustatory calyculi.[25] The human tongue has 100 to 150 taste receptor cells on each of its roughly-ten thousand taste buds.[26]

Traditionally, there have been four primary tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and saltiness. The recognition and awareness of umami, which is considered the fifth primary taste, is a relatively recent development in Western cuisine.[27][28] Other tastes can be mimicked by combining these basic tastes,[26][29] all of which contribute only partially to the sensation and flavor of food in the mouth. Other factors include smell, which is detected by the olfactory epithelium of the nose;[7] texture, which is detected through a variety of mechanoreceptors, muscle nerves, etc.;[29][30] and temperature, which is detected by thermoreceptors.[29] All basic tastes are classified as either appetitive or aversive, depending upon whether the things they sense are harmful or beneficial.[31]

Smell[edit]

Main article: Olfaction

Smell is the process of absorbing molecules through olfactory organs, which are absorbed by humans through the nose. These molecules diffuse through a thick layer of mucus; come into contact with one of thousands of cilia that are projected from sensory neurons; and are then absorbed into a receptor (one of 347 or so).[32] It is this process that causes humans to understand the concept of smell from a physical standpoint.

Smell is also a very interactive sense as scientists have begun to observe that olfaction comes into contact with the other sense in unexpected ways.[33] It is also the most primal of the senses, as it is known to be the first indicator of safety or danger, therefore being the sense that drives the most basic of human survival skills. As such, it can be a catalyst for human behavior on a subconscious and instinctive level.[34]

Social[edit]

Main article: Social perceptionSocial perception is the part of perception that allows people to understand the individuals and groups of their social world. Thus, it is an element of social cognition.[35]Though the phrase "I owe you" can be heard as three distinct words, a spectrogram reveals no clear boundaries.

Speech[edit]

Main article: Speech perception

Speech perception is the process by which spoken language is heard, interpreted and understood. Research in this field seeks to understand how human listeners recognize the sound of speech (or phonetics) and use such information to understand spoken language.

Listeners manage to perceive words across a wide range of conditions, as the sound of a word can vary widely according to words that surround it and the tempo of the speech, as well as the physical characteristics, accent, tone, and mood of the speaker. Reverberation, signifying the persistence of sound after the sound is produced, can also have a considerable impact on perception. Experiments have shown that people automatically compensate for this effect when hearing speech.[20][36]

The process of perceiving speech begins at the level of the sound within the auditory signal and the process of audition. The initial auditory signal is compared with visual information—primarily lip movement—to extract acoustic cues and phonetic information. It is possible other sensory modalities are integrated at this stage as well.[37] This speech information can then be used for higher-level language processes, such as word recognition.

Speech perception is not necessarily uni-directional. Higher-level language processes connected with morphology, syntax, and/or semantics may also interact with basic speech perception processes to aid in recognition of speech sounds.[38] It may be the case that it is not necessary (maybe not even possible) for a listener to recognize phonemes before recognizing higher units, such as words. In an experiment, Richard M. Warren replaced one phoneme of a word with a cough-like sound. His subjects restored the missing speech sound perceptually without any difficulty. Moreover, they were not able to accurately identify which phoneme had even been disturbed.[39]

Faces[edit]

Main article: Face perceptionFacial perception refers to cognitive processes specialized in handling human faces (including perceiving the identity of an individual) and facial expressions (such as emotional cues.)

Social touch[edit]

Main article: Somatosensory system § Neural processing of social touchThe somatosensory cortex is a part of the brain that receives and encodes sensory information from receptors of the entire body.[40]

Affective touch is a type of sensory information that elicits an emotional reaction and is usually social in nature. Such information is actually coded differently than other sensory information. Though the intensity of affective touch is still encoded in the primary somatosensory cortex, the feeling of pleasantness associated with affective touch is activated more in the anterior cingulate cortex. Increased blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) contrast imaging, identified during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), shows that signals in the anterior cingulate cortex, as well as the prefrontal cortex, are highly correlated with pleasantness scores of affective touch. Inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the primary somatosensory cortex inhibits the perception of affective touch intensity, but not affective touch pleasantness. Therefore, the S1 is not directly involved in processing socially affective touch pleasantness, but still plays a role in discriminating touch location and intensity.[41]

Multi-modal perception[edit]

Multi-modal perception refers to concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality and the effect such has on the perception of events and objects in the world.[42]

Time (chronoception)[edit]

Main article: time perception

Chronoception refers to how the passage of time is perceived and experienced. Although the sense of time is not associated with a specific sensory system, the work of psychologists and neuroscientists indicates that human brains do have a system governing the perception of time,[43][44] composed of a highly distributed system involving the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. One particular component of the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, is responsible for the circadian rhythm (commonly known as one's "internal clock"), while other cell clusters appear to be capable of shorter-range timekeeping, known as an ultradian rhythm.

One or more dopaminergic pathways in the central nervous system appear to have a strong modulatory influence on mental chronometry, particularly interval timing.[45]

Agency[edit]

Main article: Sense of agency

Sense of agency refers to the subjective feeling of having chosen a particular action. Some conditions, such as schizophrenia, can cause a loss of this sense, which may lead a person into delusions, such as feeling like a machine or like an outside source is controlling them. An opposite extreme can also occur, where people experience everything in their environment as though they had decided that it would happen.[46]

Even in non-pathological cases, there is a measurable difference between the making of a decision and the feeling of agency. Through methods such as the Libet experiment, a gap of half a second or more can be detected from the time when there are detectable neurological signs of a decision having been made to the time when the subject actually becomes conscious of the decision.

There are also experiments in which an illusion of agency is induced in psychologically normal subjects. In 1999, psychologists Wegner and Wheatley gave subjects instructions to move a mouse around a scene and point to an image about once every thirty seconds. However, a second person—acting as a test subject but actually a confederate—had their hand on the mouse at the same time, and controlled some of the movement. Experimenters were able to arrange for subjects to perceive certain "forced stops" as if they were their own choice.[47][48]

Familiarity[edit]

Recognition memory is sometimes divided into two functions by neuroscientists: familiarity and recollection.[49] A strong sense of familiarity can occur without any recollection, for example in cases of deja vu.

The temporal lobe (specifically the perirhinal cortex) responds differently to stimuli that feel novel compared to stimuli that feel familiar. Firing rates in the perirhinal cortex are connected with the sense of familiarity in humans and other mammals. In tests, stimulating this area at 10–15 Hz caused animals to treat even novel images as familiar, and stimulation at 30–40 Hz caused novel images to be partially treated as familiar.[50] In particular, stimulation at 30–40 Hz led to animals looking at a familiar image for longer periods, as they would for an unfamiliar one, though it did not lead to the same exploration behavior normally associated with novelty.

Recent studies on lesions in the area concluded that rats with a damaged perirhinal cortex were still more interested in exploring when novel objects were present, but seemed unable to tell novel objects from familiar ones—they examined both equally. Thus, other brain regions are involved with noticing unfamiliarity, while the perirhinal cortex is needed to associate the feeling with a specific source.[51]

Sexual stimulation[edit]

Main article: Sexual stimulation

Sexual stimulation is any stimulus (including bodily contact) that leads to, enhances, and maintains sexual arousal, possibly even leading to orgasm. Distinct from the general sense of touch, sexual stimulation is strongly tied to hormonal activity and chemical triggers in the body. Although sexual arousal may arise without physical stimulation, achieving orgasm usually requires physical sexual stimulation (stimulation of the Krause-Finger corpuscles[52] found in erogenous zones of the body.)

Other senses[edit]

Main article: SenseOther senses enable perception of body balance; acceleration, including gravity; position of body parts; temperature; and pain. They can also enable perception of internal senses, such as suffocation, gag reflex, abdominal distension, fullness of rectum and urinary bladder, and sensations felt in the throat and lungs.

Reality[edit]

In the case of visual perception, some people can see the percept shift in their mind's eye.[53] Others, who are not picture thinkers, may not necessarily perceive the 'shape-shifting' as their world changes. This esemplastic nature has been demonstrated by an experiment that showed that ambiguous images have multiple interpretations on the perceptual level.

The confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies such as camouflage and biological mimicry. For example, the wings of European peacock butterflies bear eyespots that birds respond to as though they were the eyes of a dangerous predator.

There is also evidence that the brain in some ways operates on a slight "delay" in order to allow nerve impulses from distant parts of the body to be integrated into simultaneous signals.[54]

Perception is one of the oldest fields in psychology. The oldest quantitative laws in psychology are Weber's law, which states that the smallest noticeable difference in stimulus intensity is proportional to the intensity of the reference; and Fechner's law, which quantifies the relationship between the intensity of the physical stimulus and its perceptual counterpart (e.g., testing how much darker a computer screen can get before the viewer actually notices). The study of perception gave rise to the Gestalt School of Psychology, with an emphasis on a holistic approach.

Physiology[edit]

Main article: Sensory systemA sensory system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch), taste and olfaction (smell), as listed above. It has been suggested that the immune system is an overlooked sensory modality.[55] In short, senses are transducers from the physical world to the realm of the mind.

The receptive field is the specific part of the world to which a receptor organ and receptor cells respond. For instance, the part of the world an eye can see, is its receptive field; the light that each rod or cone can see, is its receptive field.[56] Receptive fields have been identified for the visual system, auditory system and somatosensory system, so far. Research attention is currently focused not only on external perception processes, but also to "interoception", considered as the process of receiving, accessing and appraising internal bodily signals. Maintaining desired physiological states is critical for an organism's well-being and survival. Interoception is an iterative process, requiring the interplay between perception of body states and awareness of these states to generate proper self-regulation. Afferent sensory signals continuously interact with higher order cognitive representations of goals, history, and environment, shaping emotional experience and motivating regulatory behavior.[57]

Features[edit]

Constancy[edit]

Main article: Subjective constancyPerceptual constancy is the ability of perceptual systems to recognize the same object from widely varying sensory inputs.[5]: 118–120 [58] For example, individual people can be recognized from views, such as frontal and profile, which form very different shapes on the retina. A coin looked at face-on makes a circular image on the retina, but when held at angle it makes an elliptical image.[20] In normal perception these are recognized as a single three-dimensional object. Without this correction process, an animal approaching from the distance would appear to gain in size.[59][60] One kind of perceptual constancy is color constancy: for example, a white piece of paper can be recognized as such under different colors and intensities of light.[60] Another example is roughness constancy: when a hand is drawn quickly across a surface, the touch nerves are stimulated more intensely. The brain compensates for this, so the speed of contact does not affect the perceived roughness.[60] Other constancies include melody, odor, brightness and words.[61] These constancies are not always total, but the variation in the percept is much less than the variation in the physical stimulus.[60] The perceptual systems of the brain achieve perceptual constancy in a variety of ways, each specialized for the kind of information being processed,[62] with phonemic restoration as a notable example from hearing.Law of Closure. The human brain tends to perceive complete shapes even if those forms are incomplete.

Grouping (Gestalt)[edit]

Main article: Principles of grouping

The principles of grouping (or Gestalt laws of grouping) are a set of principles in psychology, first proposed by Gestalt psychologists, to explain how humans naturally perceive objects with patterns and objects. Gestalt psychologists argued that these principles exist because the mind has an innate disposition to perceive patterns in the stimulus based on certain rules. These principles are organized into six categories:

Proximity: the principle of proximity states that, all else being equal, perception tends to group stimuli that are close together as part of the same object, and stimuli that are far apart as two separate objects.

Similarity: the principle of similarity states that, all else being equal, perception lends itself to seeing stimuli that physically resemble each other as part of the same object and that are different as part of a separate object. This allows for people to distinguish between adjacent and overlapping objects based on their visual texture and resemblance.

Closure: the principle of closure refers to the mind's tendency to see complete figures or forms even if a picture is incomplete, partially hidden by other objects, or if part of the information needed to make a complete picture in our minds is missing. For example, if part of a shape's border is missing people still tend to see the shape as completely enclosed by the border and ignore the gaps.

Good Continuation: the principle of good continuation makes sense of stimuli that overlap: when there is an intersection between two or more objects, people tend to perceive each as a single uninterrupted object.

Common Fate: the principle of common fate groups stimuli together on the basis of their movement. When visual elements are seen moving in the same direction at the same rate, perception associates the movement as part of the same stimulus. This allows people to make out moving objects even when other details, such as color or outline, are obscured.

The principle of good form refers to the tendency to group together forms of similar shape, pattern, color, etc.[63][64][65][66]

Later research has identified additional grouping principles.[67]

Contrast effects[edit]

Main article: Contrast effectA common finding across many different kinds of perception is that the perceived qualities of an object can be affected by the qualities of context. If one object is extreme on some dimension, then neighboring objects are perceived as further away from that extreme.

"Simultaneous contrast effect" is the term used when stimuli are presented at the same time, whereas successive contrast applies when stimuli are presented one after another.[68]

The contrast effect was noted by the 17th Century philosopher John Locke, who observed that lukewarm water can feel hot or cold depending on whether the hand touching it was previously in hot or cold water.[69] In the early 20th Century, Wilhelm Wundt identified contrast as a fundamental principle of perception, and since then the effect has been confirmed in many different areas.[69] These effects shape not only visual qualities like color and brightness, but other kinds of perception, including how heavy an object feels.[70] One experiment found that thinking of the name "Hitler" led to subjects rating a person as more hostile.[71] Whether a piece of music is perceived as good or bad can depend on whether the music heard before it was pleasant or unpleasant.[72] For the effect to work, the objects being compared need to be similar to each other: a television reporter can seem smaller when interviewing a tall basketball player, but not when standing next to a tall building.[70] In the brain, brightness contrast exerts effects on both neuronal firing rates and neuronal synchrony.[73]

Theories[edit]

Perception as direct perception (Gibson)[edit]

Cognitive theories of perception assume there is a poverty of stimulus. This is the claim that sensations, by themselves, are unable to provide a unique description of the world.[74] Sensations require 'enriching', which is the role of the mental model.

The perceptual ecology approach was introduced by James J. Gibson, who rejected the assumption of a poverty of stimulus and the idea that perception is based upon sensations. Instead, Gibson investigated what information is actually presented to the perceptual systems. His theory "assumes the existence of stable, unbounded, and permanent stimulus-information in the ambient optic array. And it supposes that the visual system can explore and detect this information. The theory is information-based, not sensation-based."[75] He and the psychologists who work within this paradigm detailed how the world could be specified to a mobile, exploring organism via the lawful projection of information about the world into energy arrays.[76] "Specification" would be a 1:1 mapping of some aspect of the world into a perceptual array. Given such a mapping, no enrichment is required and perception is direct.[77]

Perception-in-action[edit]

From Gibson's early work derived an ecological understanding of perception known as perception-in-action, which argues that perception is a requisite property of animate action. It posits that, without perception, action would be unguided, and without action, perception would serve no purpose. Animate actions require both perception and motion, which can be described as "two sides of the same coin, the coin is action." Gibson works from the assumption that singular entities, which he calls invariants, already exist in the real world and that all that the perception process does is home in upon them.

The constructivist view, held by such philosophers as Ernst von Glasersfeld, regards the continual adjustment of perception and action to the external input as precisely what constitutes the "entity," which is therefore far from being invariant.[78] Glasersfeld considers an invariant as a target to be homed in upon, and a pragmatic necessity to allow an initial measure of understanding to be established prior to the updating that a statement aims to achieve. The invariant does not, and need not, represent an actuality. Glasersfeld describes it as extremely unlikely that what is desired or feared by an organism will never suffer change as time goes on. This social constructionist theory thus allows for a needful evolutionary adjustment.[79]

A mathematical theory of perception-in-action has been devised and investigated in many forms of controlled movement, and has been described in many different species of organism using the General Tau Theory. According to this theory, "tau information", or time-to-goal information is the fundamental percept in perception.

Evolutionary psychology[edit]

Many philosophers, such as Jerry Fodor, write that the purpose of perception is knowledge. However, evolutionary psychologists hold that the primary purpose of perception is to guide action.[80] They give the example of depth perception, which seems to have evolved not to aid in knowing the distances to other objects but rather to aid movement.[80] Evolutionary psychologists argue that animals ranging from fiddler crabs to humans use eyesight for collision avoidance, suggesting that vision is basically for directing action, not providing knowledge.[80] Neuropsychologists showed that perception systems evolved along the specifics of animals' activities. This explains why bats and worms can perceive different frequency of auditory and visual systems than, for example, humans.

Building and maintaining sense organs is metabolically expensive. More than half the brain is devoted to processing sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's metabolic resources. Thus, such organs evolve only when they provide exceptional benefits to an organism's fitness.[80]

Scientists who study perception and sensation have long understood the human senses as adaptations.[80] Depth perception consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of which is based on a regularity of the physical world.[80] Vision evolved to respond to the narrow range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects.[80] Sound waves provide useful information about the sources of and distances to objects, with larger animals making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making and hearing higher-frequency sounds.[80] Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the environment that were significant for fitness in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.[80] The sense of touch is actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold, tickle, and pain.[80] Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive.[80] An important adaptation for senses is range shifting, by which the organism becomes temporarily more or less sensitive to sensation.[80] For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim or bright ambient light.[80] Sensory abilities of different organisms often co-evolve, as is the case with the hearing of echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the sounds that the bats make.[80]

Evolutionary psychologists claim that perception demonstrates the principle of modularity, with specialized mechanisms handling particular perception tasks.[80] For example, people with damage to a particular part of the brain are not able to recognize faces (prosopagnosia).[80] Evolutionary psychology suggests that this indicates a so-called face-reading module.[80]

Closed-loop perception[edit]

The theory of closed-loop perception proposes dynamic motor-sensory closed-loop process in which information flows through the environment and the brain in continuous loops.[81][82][83][84] Closed-loop perception appears consistent with anatomy and with the fact that perception is typically an incremental process. Repeated encounters with an object, whether conscious or not, enable an animal to refine its impressions of that object. This can be achieved more easily with a circular closed-loop system than with a linear open-loop one. Closed-loop perception can explain many of the phenomena that open-loop perception struggles to account for. This is largely because closed-loop perception considers motion to be an integral part of perception, and not an interfering component that must be corrected for. Furthermore, an environment perceived via sensor motion, and not despite sensor motion, need not be further stabilized by internal processes.[84]

Feature integration theory[edit]

Main article: Feature integration theory

Anne Treisman's feature integration theory (FIT) attempts to explain how characteristics of a stimulus such as physical location in space, motion, color, and shape are merged to form one percept despite each of these characteristics activating separate areas of the cortex. FIT explains this through a two part system of perception involving the preattentive and focused attention stages.[85][86][87][88][89]

The preattentive stage of perception is largely unconscious, and analyzes an object by breaking it down into its basic features, such as the specific color, geometric shape, motion, depth, individual lines, and many others.[85] Studies have shown that, when small groups of objects with different features (e.g., red triangle, blue circle) are briefly flashed in front of human participants, many individuals later report seeing shapes made up of the combined features of two different stimuli, thereby referred to as illusory conjunctions.[85][88]

The unconnected features described in the preattentive stage are combined into the objects one normally sees during the focused attention stage.[85] The focused attention stage is based heavily around the idea of attention in perception and 'binds' the features together onto specific objects at specific spatial locations (see the binding problem).[85][89]

Shared Intentionality theory[edit]

Main article: Shared intentionality

A fundamentally different approach to understanding the perception of objects relies upon the essential role of Shared intentionality.[90] Michael Tomasello hypothesized that social bonds between children and caregivers would gradually increase through the essential motive force of shared intentionality beginning from birth.[91] The notion of shared intentionality, introduced by Michael Tomasello, was developed by later researchers, who tended to explain this collaborative interaction from different perspectives, e.g., psychophysiology,[92][93][94] and neurobiology.[95] The Shared intentionality approach considers perception occurrence at an earlier stage of organisms' development than other theories, even before the emergence of Intentionality. Because many theories build their knowledge about perception based on its main features of the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information to represent the holistic picture of the environment, Intentionality is the central issue in perception development. Nowadays, only one hypothesis attempts to explain Shared intentionality in all its integral complexity from the level of interpersonal dynamics to interaction at the neuronal level. The hypothesis of neurobiological processes occurring during Shared intentionality[96] highlights that, at the beginning of cognition, very young organisms cannot distinguish relevant sensory stimuli independently. Because the environment is the cacophony of stimuli (electromagnetic waves, chemical interactions, and pressure fluctuations), their sensation is too limited by the noise to solve the cue problem. The relevant stimulus cannot overcome the noise magnitude if it passes through the senses. Therefore, Intentionality is a difficult problem for them since it needs the representation of the environment already categorized into objects (see also binding problem). The perception of objects is also problematic since it cannot appear without Intentionality. From the perspective of this hypothesis, Shared intentionality is collaborative interactions in which participants share the essential sensory stimulus of the actual cognitive problem. This social bond enables ecological training of the young immature organism, starting at the reflexes stage of development, for processing the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in developing perception.[97] From this account perception emerges due to Shared intentionality in the embryonic stage of development, i.e., even before birth.[98]

Other theories of perception[edit]

Enactivism

The Interactive Activation and Competition Model

Recognition-By-Components Theory (Irving Biederman)

Effects on perception[edit]

Effect of experience[edit]

Main article: Perceptual learningWith experience, organisms can learn to make finer perceptual distinctions, and learn new kinds of categorization. Wine-tasting, the reading of X-ray images and music appreciation are applications of this process in the human sphere. Research has focused on the relation of this to other kinds of learning, and whether it takes place in peripheral sensory systems or in the brain's processing of sense information.[99] Empirical research show that specific practices (such as yoga, mindfulness, Tai Chi, meditation, Daoshi and other mind-body disciplines) can modify human perceptual modality. Specifically, these practices enable perception skills to switch from the external (exteroceptive field) towards a higher ability to focus on internal signals (proprioception). Also, when asked to provide verticality judgments, highly self-transcendent yoga practitioners were significantly less influenced by a misleading visual context. Increasing self-transcendence may enable yoga practitioners to optimize verticality judgment tasks by relying more on internal (vestibular and proprioceptive) signals coming from their own body, rather than on exteroceptive, visual cues.[100]

Past actions and events that transpire right before an encounter or any form of stimulation have a strong degree of influence on how sensory stimuli are processed and perceived. On a basic level, the information our senses receive is often ambiguous and incomplete. However, they are grouped together in order for us to be able to understand the physical world around us. But it is these various forms of stimulation, combined with our previous knowledge and experience that allows us to create our overall perception. For example, when engaging in conversation, we attempt to understand their message and words by not only paying attention to what we hear through our ears but also from the previous shapes we have seen our mouths make. Another example would be if we had a similar topic come up in another conversation, we would use our previous knowledge to guess the direction the conversation is headed in.[101]

Effect of motivation and expectation[edit]

Main article: Set (psychology)A perceptual set (also called perceptual expectancy or simply set) is a predisposition to perceive things in a certain way.[102] It is an example of how perception can be shaped by "top-down" processes such as drives and expectations.[103] Perceptual sets occur in all the different senses.[59] They can be long term, such as a special sensitivity to hearing one's own name in a crowded room, or short-term, as in the ease with which hungry people notice the smell of food.[104] A simple demonstration of the effect involved very brief presentations of non-words such as "sael". Subjects who were told to expect words about animals read it as "seal", but others who were expecting boat-related words read it as "sail".[104]

Sets can be created by motivation and so can result in people interpreting ambiguous figures so that they see what they want to see.[103] For instance, how someone perceives what unfolds during a sports game can be biased if they strongly support one of the teams.[105] In one experiment, students were allocated to pleasant or unpleasant tasks by a computer. They were told that either a number or a letter would flash on the screen to say whether they were going to taste an orange juice drink or an unpleasant-tasting health drink. In fact, an ambiguous figure was flashed on screen, which could either be read as the letter B or the number 13. When the letters were associated with the pleasant task, subjects were more likely to perceive a letter B, and when letters were associated with the unpleasant task they tended to perceive a number 13.[102]

Perceptual set has been demonstrated in many social contexts. When someone has a reputation for being funny, an audience is more likely to find them amusing.[104] Individual's perceptual sets reflect their own personality traits. For example, people with an aggressive personality are quicker to correctly identify aggressive words or situations.[104]

One classic psychological experiment showed slower reaction times and less accurate answers when a deck of playing cards reversed the color of the suit symbol for some cards (e.g. red spades and black hearts).[106]

Philosopher Andy Clark explains that perception, although it occurs quickly, is not simply a bottom-up process (where minute details are put together to form larger wholes). Instead, our brains use what he calls predictive coding. It starts with very broad constraints and expectations for the state of the world, and as expectations are met, it makes more detailed predictions (errors lead to new predictions, or learning processes). Clark says this research has various implications; not only can there be no completely "unbiased, unfiltered" perception, but this means that there is a great deal of feedback between perception and expectation (perceptual experiences often shape our beliefs, but those perceptions were based on existing beliefs).[107] Indeed, predictive coding provides an account where this type of feedback assists in stabilizing our inference-making process about the physical world, such as with perceptual constancy examples.

Embodied cognition challenges the idea of perception as internal representations resulting from a passive reception of (incomplete) sensory inputs coming from the outside world. According to O'Regan (1992), the major issue with this perspective is that it leaves the subjective character of perception unexplained.[108] Thus, perception is understood as an active process conducted by perceiving and engaged agents (perceivers). Furthermore, perception is influenced by agents' motives and expectations, their bodily states, and the interaction between the agent's body and the environment around it.[109]

Philosophy[edit]

Main article: Philosophy of perception

Perception is an important part of the theories of many philosophers it has been famously addressed by Rene Descartes, George Berkeley, and Immanuel Kant to name a few. In his work The Meditations Descartes begins by doubting all of his perceptions proving his existence with the famous phrase "I think therefore I am", and then works to the conclusion that perceptions are God-given.[110] George Berkely took the stance that all things that we see have a reality to them and that our perceptions were sufficient to know and understand that thing because our perceptions are capable of responding to a true reality.[111] Kant almost meets the rationalists and the empiricists half way. His theory utilizes the reality of a noumenon, the actual objects that cannot be understood, and then a phenomenon which is human understanding through the mind lens interpreting that noumenon.[112]

6.1 The Process of Perception – Psychology of Human Relations

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Title PageWelcome I. Chapter 1: Self-Concept1.1 Understanding the Self1.2 Exploring IdentityII. Chapter 2: Cultural Diversity2.1 Culture and Diversity2.2 Elements of Culture2.3 Diversity in the WorkplaceIII. Chapter 3: Behavioral Change3.1 Motivation and Goal Setting3.2 Mindset and GritIV. Chapter 4: Personality Development4.1 Introduction to Personality4.2 Culture and Personality4.3 Personality, Values, and Attitudes in the WorkplaceV. Chapter 5: Emotions5.1 Functions of Emotions5.2 Emotional Intelligence5.3 Culture and EmotionVI. Chapter 6: Perception6.1 The Process of Perception6.2 Effects on Perception6.3 Improving PerceptionVII. Chapter 7: Interpersonal Communication7.1 Elements of Interpersonal Communication7.2 Speaking and ListeningVIII. Chapter 8: Stress8.1 What is Stress?8.2 Coping With Stress8.3 Stress in the WorkplaceIX. Chapter 9: Conflict Resolution9.1 Understanding Conflict9.2 Conflict Management Strategies9.3 Teamwork and Conflict in the WorkplaceX. Chapter 10: Workplace Success10.1 Career Development and Growth10.2 Professionalism10.3 Workplace CommunicationXI. Appendix A: AssignmentsAssignment 1: Understanding Your Self-ConceptAssignment 2: Developing your Cultural CompetencyAssignment 3: Identifying Your GoalsAssignment 4: Your Traits, Values, and AttitudesAssignment 5: EI in Personal and Workplace ExperiencesAssignment 6: Perceiving Social Media InfluencersAssignment 7: Interpersonal Communication SkillsAssignment 8: Perceived StressAssignment 9: Conflict ResolutionAssignment 10: Workplace Success SkillsXII. Appendix B: DiscussionsNetiquette Guidelines for Online DiscussionsDiscussion 1: "Who am I?" Identity ExplorationDiscussion 2: Diversity Experiences in the WorkplaceDiscussion 3: Growing your MindsetDiscussion 4: Culture and Personality in the WorkplaceDiscussion 5: Cultural Differences in EmotionsDiscussion 6: Perception CheckingDiscussion 7: Cultural IntelligenceDiscussion 8: Coping StylesDiscussion 9: Team Formation and DiversityDiscussion 10: Ethics in the Workplace

Psychology of Human Relations

6.1 The Process of Perception

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Discuss how salience influences the selection of perceptual information.

Explain the ways in which we organize perceptual information.

Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory information. This cognitive and psychological process begins with receiving stimuli through our primary senses (vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell). This information is then passed along to corresponding areas of the brain and organized into our existing structures and patterns, and then interpreted based on previous experiences (Figure 6.1). How we perceive the people and objects around us directly affects our communication. We respond differently to an object or person that we perceive favorably than we do to something or someone we find unfavorable. But how do we filter through the mass amounts of incoming information, organize it, and make meaning from what makes it through our perceptual filters and into our social realities?

Figure 6.1 The process of perception.

Selecting Information

We take in information through all five of our senses, but our perceptual field (the world around us) includes so many stimuli that it is impossible for our brains to process and make sense of it all. So, as information comes in through our senses, various factors influence what actually continues on through the perception process (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Selecting is the first part of the perception process, in which we focus our attention on certain incoming sensory information (Figure 6.2). Think about how, out of many other possible stimuli to pay attention to, you may hear a familiar voice in the hallway, see a pair of shoes you want to buy from across the mall, or smell something cooking for dinner when you get home from work. We quickly cut through and push to the background all kinds of sights, smells, sounds, and other stimuli, but how do we decide what to select and what to leave out?

Figure 6.2 Even in a noisy place, you can hear someone call your name from across the room. Friday Night Party – Ontario Library Association – CC BY 2.0.

We tend to pay attention to information that is salient. Salience is the degree to which something attracts our attention in a particular context. The thing attracting our attention can be abstract, like a concept, or concrete, like an object. For example, a person’s identity as a Native American may become salient when they are protesting at the Columbus Day parade in Denver, Colorado. Or a bright flashlight shining in your face while camping at night is sure to be salient. The degree of salience depends on three features (Fiske & Tayor, 1991). We tend to find things salient when they are visually or aurally stimulating, they meet our needs or interests, or when they do or don’t meet our expectations.

Visual and Aural Stimulation

It is probably not surprising to learn that visually and/or aurally stimulating things become salient in our perceptual field and get our attention. Creatures ranging from fish to hummingbirds are attracted to things like silver spinners on fishing poles or red and yellow bird feeders. Having our senses stimulated isn’t always a positive thing though. Think about the couple that won’t stop talking during the movie or the upstairs neighbor whose subwoofer shakes your ceiling at night. In short, stimuli can be attention-getting in a productive or distracting way. However, we can use this knowledge to our benefit by minimizing distractions when we have something important to say. It’s probably better to have a serious conversation with a significant other in a quiet place rather than a crowded food court.

Needs and Interests

We tend to pay attention to information that we perceive to meet our needs or interests in some way. This type of selective attention can help us meet instrumental needs and get things done. When you need to speak with a financial aid officer about your scholarships and loans, you sit in the waiting room and listen for your name to be called. Paying close attention to whose name is called means you can be ready to start your meeting and hopefully get your business handled. When we don’t think certain messages meet our needs, stimuli that would normally get our attention may be completely lost. Imagine you are in the grocery store and you hear someone say your name. You turn around, only to hear that person say, “Finally! I said your name three times. I thought you forgot who I was!” A few seconds before, when you were focused on figuring out which kind of orange juice to get, you were attending to the various pulp options to the point that you tuned other stimuli out, even something as familiar as the sound of someone calling your name. We select and attend to information that meets our needs.

We also find information salient that interests us. Of course, many times, stimuli that meet our needs are also interesting, but it’s worth discussing these two items separately because sometimes we find things interesting that don’t necessarily meet our needs (Figure 6.3). I’m sure we’ve all gotten sucked into a television show, video game, or random project and paid attention to that at the expense of something that actually meets our needs like cleaning or spending time with a significant other. Paying attention to things that interest us but don’t meet specific needs seems like the basic formula for procrastination that we are all familiar with.

Figure 6.3 If you’re engrossed in an interesting video game, you may not notice other perceptual cues. Tex playing video games – Rebecca Pollard – CC BY 2.0.

In many cases we know what interests us and we automatically gravitate toward stimuli that match up with that. For example, as you filter through radio stations, you likely already have an idea of what kind of music interests you and will stop on a station playing something in that genre while skipping right past stations playing something you aren’t interested in. Because of this tendency, we often have to end up being forced into or accidentally experiencing something new in order to create or discover new interests. For example, you may not realize you are interested in Asian history until you are required to take such a course and have an engaging professor who sparks that interest in you. Or you may accidentally stumble on a new area of interest when you take a class you wouldn’t otherwise because it fits into your schedule. As communicators, you can take advantage of this perceptual tendency by adapting your topic and content to the interests of your audience.

Expectations

The relationship between salience and expectations is a little more complex. Basically, we can find expected things salient and find things that are unexpected salient. While this may sound confusing, a couple examples should illustrate this point. If you are expecting a package to be delivered, you might pick up on the slightest noise of a truck engine or someone’s footsteps approaching your front door. Since we expect something to happen, we may be extra tuned in to clues that it is coming. In terms of the unexpected, if you have a shy and soft-spoken friend who you overhear raising the volume and pitch of their voice while talking to another friend, you may pick up on that and assume that something out of the ordinary is going on. For something unexpected to become salient, it has to reach a certain threshold of difference. If you walked into your regular class and there were one or two more students there than normal, you may not even notice. If you walked into your class and there was someone dressed up as a wizard, you would probably notice. So, if we expect to experience something out of the routine, like a package delivery, we will find stimuli related to that expectation salient. If we experience something that we weren’t expecting and that is significantly different from our routine experiences, then we will likely find it salient.

There is a middle area where slight deviations from routine experiences may go unnoticed because we aren’t expecting them. To go back to the earlier example, if you aren’t expecting a package, and you regularly hear vehicle engines and sidewalk foot traffic outside your house, those pretty routine sounds wouldn’t be as likely to catch your attention, even if it were slightly more or less traffic than expected. This is because our expectations are often based on previous experience and patterns we have observed and internalized, which allows our brains to go on “autopilot” sometimes and fill in things that are missing or overlook extra things. Look at the following sentence and read it aloud:

Percpetoin is bsaed on pateetrns, maening we otfen raech a cocnlsuion witouht cosnidreing ecah indviidaul elmenet.

This example illustrates a test of our expectation and an annoyance to every college student. We have all had the experience of getting a paper back with typos and spelling errors circled. This can be frustrating, especially if we actually took the time to proofread. When we first learned to read and write, we learned letter by letter. A teacher or parent would show us a card with A-P-P-L-E written on it, and we would sound it out. Over time, we learned the patterns of letters and sounds and could see combinations of letters and pronounce the word quickly. Since we know what to expect when we see a certain pattern of letters, and know what comes next in a sentence since we wrote the paper, we don’t take the time to look at each letter as we proofread. This can lead us to overlook common typos and spelling errors, even if we proofread something multiple times. Now that we know how we select stimuli, let’s turn our attention to how we organize the information we receive.

Organizing Information

Organizing is the second part of the perception process, in which we sort and categorize information that we perceive based on innate and learned cognitive patterns. Three ways we sort things into patterns are by using proximity, similarity, and difference (Coren, 1980).

Proximity

In terms of proximity, we tend to think that things that are close together go together (Figure 6.4). For example, have you ever been waiting to be helped in a business and the clerk assumes that you and the person standing near you are together? The moment usually ends when you and the other person in line look at each other, then back at the clerk, and one of you explains that you are not together. Even though you may have never met that other person in your life, the clerk used a basic perceptual organizing cue to group you together because you were standing in proximity to one another.

Figure 6.4 Most people would likely say that there are twelve groups of coffee beans in this image based on proximity. Coffee Beans illustration from The Encyclopedia of Food – Artemas Ward – Public Domain.

Similarity

We also group things together based on similarity. We tend to think similar-looking or similar-acting things belong together. For example, a group of friends that spend time together are all males, around the same age, of the same race, and have short hair. People might assume that they are brothers. Despite the fact that many of their features are different, the salient features are organized based on similarity and they are assumed to be related (Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5 A group of friends that spend time together may be viewed as being related due to similarity. My friends Eder, Andro, Nenos and the little one – Marsel Majid Elia – CC BY-SA 4.0.

Difference

We also organize information that we take in based on difference. In this case, we assume that the item that looks or acts different from the rest doesn’t belong with the group (Figure 6.6). For example, if you ordered ten burgers and nine of them are wrapped in paper and the last is in a cardboard container, you may assume that the burger in the container is different in some way. Perceptual errors involving people and assumptions of difference can be especially awkward, if not offensive. Have you ever attended an event, only to be mistaken as an employee working at the event, rather than a guest at the event?

Figure 6.6 Jelly beans have been separated according to different flavors and their associated visual appearance. Jelly Belly jelly beans – Brandi Sims – CC BY 2.0

These strategies for organizing information are so common that they are built into how we teach our children basic skills and how we function in our daily lives. I’m sure we all had to look at pictures in grade school and determine which things went together and which thing didn’t belong. If you think of the literal act of organizing something, like your desk at home or work, we follow these same strategies. If you have a bunch of papers and mail on the top of your desk, you will likely sort papers into separate piles for separate classes or put bills in a separate place than personal mail. You may have one drawer for pens, pencils, and other supplies and another drawer for files. In this case you are grouping items based on similarities and differences. You may also group things based on proximity, for example, by putting financial items like your checkbook, a calculator, and your pay stubs in one area so you can update your budget efficiently. In summary, we simplify information and look for patterns to help us more efficiently communicate and get through life.

Simplification and categorizing based on patterns aren’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, without this capability we would likely not have the ability to speak, read, or engage in other complex cognitive/behavioral functions. Our brain innately categorizes and files information and experiences away for later retrieval, and different parts of the brain are responsible for different sensory experiences. In short, it is natural for things to group together in some ways. There are differences among people, and looking for patterns helps us in many practical ways. However, the judgments we place on various patterns and categories are not natural; they are learned and culturally and contextually relative. Our perceptual patterns do become unproductive and even unethical when the judgments we associate with certain patterns are based on stereotypical or prejudicial thinking.

We also organize interactions and interpersonal experiences based on our firsthand experiences. Misunderstandings and conflict may result when two people experience the same encounter differently. Punctuation refers to the structuring of information into a timeline to determine the cause (stimulus) and effect (response) of our communication interactions (Sillars, 1980). Applying this concept to interpersonal conflict can help us see how the process of perception extends beyond the individual to the interpersonal level. This concept also helps illustrate how organization and interpretation can happen together and how interpretation can influence how we organize information and vice versa.

Where does a conflict begin and end? The answer to this question depends on how the people involved in the conflict punctuate, or structure, their conflict experience. Punctuation differences can often escalate conflict, which can lead to a variety of relationship problems (Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 1967). For example, Linda and Joe are on a project team at work and have a deadline approaching. Linda has been working on the project over the weekend in anticipation of her meeting with Joe first thing Monday morning. She has had some questions along the way and has e-mailed Joe for clarification and input, but he hasn’t responded. On Monday morning, Linda walks into the meeting room, sees Joe, and says, “I’ve been working on this project all weekend and needed your help. I e-mailed you three times! What were you doing?” Joe responds, “I had no idea you e-mailed me. I was gone all weekend on a camping trip.” In this instance, the conflict started for Linda two days ago and has just started for Joe. So, for the two of them to most effectively manage this conflict, they need to communicate so that their punctuation, or where the conflict started for each one, is clear and matches up. In this example, Linda made an impression about Joe’s level of commitment to the project based on an interpretation she made after selecting and organizing incoming information. Being aware of punctuation is an important part of perception checking, which we will discuss later. Let’s now take a closer look at how interpretation plays into the perception process.

Interpreting Information

Although selecting and organizing incoming stimuli happens very quickly, and sometimes without much conscious thought, interpretation can be a much more deliberate and conscious step in the perception process. Interpretation is the third part of the perception process, in which we assign meaning to an experience using a mental structure known as schema. A schema is a cognitive tool for organizing related concepts or information. Schemata are like databases of stored, related information that we use to interpret new experiences. Overtime we incorporate more and more small units of information together to develop more complex understandings of new information.

We have an overall schema about education and how to interpret experiences with teachers and classmates (Figure 6.7). This schema started developing before we even went to preschool based on things that parents, peers, and the media told us about school. For example, you learned that certain symbols and objects like an apple, a ruler, a calculator, and a notebook are associated with being a student or teacher. You learned new concepts like grades and recess, and you engaged in new practices like doing homework, studying, and taking tests. You also formed new relationships with classmates, teachers, and administrators. As you progressed through your education, your schema adapted to the changing environment. How smooth or troubling schema reevaluation and revision is varies from situation to situation and person to person. For example, some students adapt their schema relatively easily as they move from elementary, to middle, to high school, and on to college and are faced with new expectations for behavior and academic engagement. Other students don’t adapt as easily, and holding onto their old schema creates problems as they try to interpret new information through old, incompatible schema.

Figure 6.7 When you first looked at this image, did you identify it as a classroom? Chances are you have had many experiences in classrooms and have developed a schema for what a classroom looks like. Typical classroom in Br. Andrew Gonzales Hall – Malate269 – Attribution Only License.

It’s also important to be aware of schemata because our interpretations affect our behavior. For example, if you are doing a group project for class and you perceive a group member to be shy based on your schema of how shy people communicate, you may avoid giving them presentation responsibilities in your group project because you do not think shy people make good public speakers.

As we have seen, schemata are used to interpret others’ behavior and form impressions about who they are as a person. To help this process along, we often solicit information from people to help us place them into a preexisting schema. In the United States and many other Western cultures, people’s identities are often closely tied to what they do for a living. When we introduce others, or ourselves, occupation is usually one of the first things we mention. Think about how your communication with someone might differ if he or she were introduced to you as an artist versus a doctor. We make similar interpretations based on where people are from, their age, their race, and other social and cultural factors.

In summary, we have schemata about individuals, groups, places, and things, and these schemata filter our perceptions before, during, and after interactions. As schemata are retrieved from memory, they are executed, like computer programs or apps on your smartphone, to help us interpret the world around us. Just like computer programs and apps must be regularly updated to improve their functioning, we update and adapt our schemata as we have new experiences.

Summary

Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information. This process affects our communication because we respond to stimuli differently, whether they are objects or persons, based on how we perceive them.

Given the massive amounts of stimuli taken in by our senses, we only select a portion of the incoming information to organize and interpret. We select information based on salience. We tend to find salient things that are visually or aurally stimulating and things that meet our needs and interests. Expectations also influence what information we select.

We organize information that we select into patterns based on proximity, similarity, and difference.

We interpret information using schemata, which allow us to assign meaning to information based on accumulated knowledge and previous experience.

Discussion Questions

Take a moment to look around wherever you are right now. Take in the perceptual field around you. What is salient for you in this moment and why? Explain the degree of salience using the three reasons for salience discussed in this section.

As we organize information (sensory information, objects, and people) we simplify and categorize information into patterns. Identify some cases in which this aspect of the perception process is beneficial. Identify some cases in which it could be harmful or negative.

Think about some of the schemata you have that help you make sense of the world around you. For each of the following contexts—academic, professional, personal, and civic—identify a schema that you commonly rely on or think you will rely on. For each schema you identified note a few ways that it has already been challenged or may be challenged in the future.

Remix/Revisions featured in this section

Small editing revisions to tailor the content to the Psychology of Human Relations course.

Added and changed some images as well as changed formatting for photos to provide links to locations of images and CC licenses.

Added doi links to references to comply with APA 7th edition formatting reference manual.

Attributions

CC Licensed Content, Original

Modification, adaptation, and original content. Provided by: Stevy Scarbrough. License: CC-BY-NC-SA

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Communication in the Real World. Authored by: University of Minnesota. Located at: https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/chapter/2-1-perception-process/ License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

References

Coren, S. (1980). Principles of perceptual organization and spatial distortion: The Gestalt illusions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 6(3) 404–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.6.3.404

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social Cognition, 2nd ed. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2) 181–92. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.181

Rozelle, R. M. & Baxter, J. C. (1975). Impression formation and danger recognition in experienced police officers. Journal of Social Psychology, 96(1), 53-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1975.9923262

Sillars, A. L. (1980). Attributions and communication in roommate conflicts. roommate Conflicts. Communication Monographs, 47(3), 180–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758009376031

Watzlawick, P., Bavelas, J. B., & Jackson, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication: A study of interactional patterns, pathologies, and paradoxes. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

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PERCEPTION Definition & Usage Examples | Dictionary.com

GamesDaily CrosswordWord PuzzleWord FinderAll gamesFeaturedWord of the DaySynonym of the DayWord of the YearNew wordsLanguage storiesAll featuredPop cultureSlangEmojiMemesAcronymsGender and sexualityAll pop cultureWriting tipsGrammar Coach™Writing hubGrammar essentialsCommonly confusedAll writing tipsGamesFeaturedPop cultureWriting tipsperception[ per-sep-shuhn ]show ipaSee synonyms for: perceptionperceptions on Thesaurus.comnounthe act or faculty of perceiving, or apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.immediate or intuitive recognition or appreciation, as of moral, psychological, or aesthetic qualities; insight; intuition; discernment: an artist of rare perception.the result or product of perceiving, as distinguished from the act of perceiving; percept.Psychology. a single unified awareness derived from sensory processes while a stimulus is present.Law. the taking into possession of rents, crops, profits, etc.See moreOrigin of perception1First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English percepcioun, from Old French percepcïon, from Latin perceptiōn-, stem of perceptiō “comprehension,” literally, “a taking in”; see percept, -ionOther words for perception1 awareness, sense, recognitionSee synonyms for perception on Thesaurus.comOther words from perceptionper·cep·tion·al, adjectivenon·per·cep·tion, nounnon·per·cep·tion·al, adjectivere·per·cep·tion, nounself-per·cep·tion, nounun·per·cep·tion·al, adjectiveWords Nearby perceptionpercentilepercent signper centumperceptperceptibleperceptionperceptiveperceptualperceptual defenceperceptual mappingPercevalDictionary.com Unabridged

Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024How to use perception in a sentenceBourla acknowledged that the late October date, coming right before the election, created the perception of political involvement, which could undermine confidence in the vaccine.Pfizer’s Albert Bourla: Vaccine efforts are improving Big Pharma’s reputation | Alan Murray | September 10, 2020 | FortuneOver the past three decades, public perceptions of information technology have taken some wild turns.The race for a COVID-19 vaccine shows the power of ‘community intelligence’ | matthewheimer | September 9, 2020 | FortuneI do think, however, there is a perception among people in street organizations that the police are not doing their job.What Can Mayors Do When the Police Stop Doing Their Jobs? | by Alec MacGillis | September 3, 2020 | ProPublicaThe perception was that most absentee voters were Republicans, so Democrats focused on Election Day voters, and getting them to the polls.GOP Chair Who Called Mail Voting ‘Fraught With Danger’ Voted by Mail 22 Straight Times | Andrew Keatts | August 10, 2020 | Voice of San DiegoBusinesses and corporate institutions also yield significant influence in shaping policies and public perceptions around LGBTQ issues.Rider surveillance poses threat to LGBTQ privacy | Christopher Wood | August 7, 2020 | Washington BladeHis hero, Bruce Springsteen, is a gazillionaire, but he still manages to come across as a regular guy, so perception is reality.Will Chris Christie Regret His Cowboy Hug? | Matt Lewis | January 5, 2015 | THE DAILY BEASTClinton is further back in history, and there is a perception that back then everything was rainbows and sunshine and gumdrops.How A Jeb Bush Candidacy Would Hurt Chris Christie And Shake Up The 2016 GOP Field | David Freedlander | December 16, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThat perception is false and often reflects not just ignorance but also elitism and racism.Forget the Kids Who Can’t Get In; What About Those Who Don’t Even Apply? | Jonah Edelman | December 9, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTTheir interest, as ever, is in pushing the perception that Washington is dysfunctional.Inside the Democrats’ Godawful Midterm Election Wipeout | Michael Tomasky | November 5, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTIt was negative, and very personal, and most of it was probably my own perception of things.Ron Perlman's Secret Suicide Attempt | William O’Connor | October 28, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTHere, as in so many of these childish admirations, we have to do not with a purely æsthetic perception.Children's Ways | James SullyYet, if one looks closely, under the froth and foppery, some of the charm and perception of the man still shines through.A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope | Colley CibberWith children of finer perception the transition to a correct profile view may be carried much further.Children's Ways | James SullyBorn on March 29, 1769, he early distinguished himself by his precocity and his quickness of perception.Napoleon's Marshals | R. P. Dunn-PattisonForcing himself to believe that he had been the victim of some kind of illusory perception, he vigorously restrained his feelings.Three More John Silence Stories | Algernon BlackwoodSee More ExamplesBritish Dictionary definitions for perceptionperception/ (pəˈsɛpʃən) /nounthe act or the effect of perceivinginsight or intuition gained by perceivingthe ability or capacity to perceiveway of perceiving; awareness or consciousness; view: advertising affects the customer's perception of a productthe process by which an organism detects and interprets information from the external world by means of the sensory receptorslaw the collection, receipt, or taking into possession of rents, crops, etcSee moreOrigin of perception1C15: from Latin perceptiō comprehension; see perceiveDerived forms of perceptionperceptional, adjectiveCollins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition

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Perception - Psychology - Oxford Bibliographies

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PERCEPTION | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary

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Meaning of perception in English

perceptionnoun us

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/pɚ-/ uk

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/pəˈsep.ʃən/

perception noun

(BELIEF)

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SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Opinions, beliefs and points of view

Afrocentric

agnosticism

angle

anti-ideological

article of faith

ascription

bubble

creed

heretical

heretically

hot take

idea

outlook

pole

pretension

prism

redistributionist

relativism

relativistic

someone's idea of something idiom

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Ideas, concepts and theories

perception noun

(SIGHT)

[ U ] the quality of being aware of things through the physical senses, especially sight: Drugs can alter your perception of reality.

[ U ] someone's ability to notice and understand things that are not obvious to other people: She has extraordinary powers of perception for one so young. He's not known for his perception.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Knowledge and awareness

acquaintance

alertness

as every schoolboy/schoolchild knows idiom

astuteness

at/in the back of your mind idiom

familiarity

firsthand

general knowledge

gnostic

grounding

lived experience

metacognition

nescience

nescient

off someone's radar idiom

sensibility

street smarts

theory of mind

visual literacy

witting

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perception | Intermediate English

perceptionnoun us

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/pərˈsep·ʃən/

perception noun

(BELIEF)

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perception noun

(AWARENESS)

[ U ] an awareness of things through the physical senses, esp. sight

perception | Business English

perceptionnoun [ C or U ] uk

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Examples of perception

perception

And because of that, it's really shaping the perception of millions of people.

From Hollywood Reporter

Some changes in sensor perception take a little longer to accomplish, but not as long as might be expected.

From ABC News

It might be a small detail, but sometimes perception matters, especially when it can show respect to a player.

From ESPN

A boy's reading environment can help shape his perception and involvement with reading: allow for spontaneity and whimsy in his reading environment.

From Huffington Post

Perceptions of strain often vary even among those involved.

From CNN

Sensory experiences can play a large role in your perception of a store and brand.

From Minneapolis Star Tribune

This suggests a potential link between sensory perceptions and emotions.

From Baltimore Sun

But the number $4.8 billion might change that perception.

From NPR

His background includes the study of animal sensation and perception, and conditioned responses to sweetness in foods.

From CNN

Collocations with perception

perception

These are words often used in combination with perception. Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

aural perceptionThis enables the twins to replace discursive speech with a primordial yet arcane language that relies solely on aural perception.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

categorical perceptionFor a critic of categorical perception, it is encouraging to analyze this phenomenon in terms of shepard's law of generalization.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

conscious perceptionA number of the studies cited as demonstrations of direct perception are in fact demonstrations of direct conscious perception.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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What is the pronunciation of perception?

Translations of perception

in Chinese (Traditional)

看法, 見解，觀念，看法, 視覺…

in Chinese (Simplified)

看法, 认识，观念，看法, 视觉…

in Spanish

idea, imagen, percepción…

in Portuguese

impressão, percepção, perspicácia…

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जाणीव…

algılama, sezgi, görme…

idée [feminine], image [feminine], perception [feminine]…

認識（にんしき）, 知覚力（ちかくりょく）…

waarneming, inzicht…

धारणा, समझ, बोध…

intelligens…

iakttagelseförmåga, uppfattningsförmåga…

daya tanggapan…

das Wahrnehmungsvermögen…

oppfatning [masculine], syn [neuter], observasjonsevne [masculine]…

احساس, گمان, تصور…

розуміння, усвідомлення…

восприятие, представление, ощущение…

উপলব্ধি, ধারণা, একটি বিশ্বাস বা মতামত…

vnímavost…

perseptif…

การรับรู้…

sự nhận thức…

postrzeganie, percepcja…

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perception (SIGHT)

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Perception | Definition, Process, Examples, Differences, & Facts | Britannica

Perception Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

What is Perception? – General Psychology

PERCEPTION | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

Perception: The Sensory Experience of the World

Perception - Wikipedia

6.1 The Process of Perception – Psychology of Human Relations

PERCEPTION Definition & Usage Examples | Dictionary.com

Perception - Psychology - Oxford Bibliographies

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Perception | Definition, Process, Examples, Differences, & Facts | Britannica

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What is Perception? – General Psychology

PERCEPTION | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

Perception: The Sensory Experience of the World

Perception - Wikipedia

6.1 The Process of Perception – Psychology of Human Relations

PERCEPTION Definition & Usage Examples | Dictionary.com

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