In psychology, perception is... Sensation and perception

The process of cognition of the external world is one of the areas studied by psychology. Modern science is in this matter the successor and successor of ancient philosophy, rooted in antiquity. Today, pundits in psychology have reached a consensus on the basic concepts that describe perception. This process is quite complex and has not yet been fully studied, but you can get a general idea of ​​it for yourself by mastering several concepts. So, there are two stable terms to describe this function of the human brain: perception and sensation.

Sensation and perception: definitions of concepts

Modern Western psychology claims that human interaction with the world begins with sensations. The latter are simple reflections in the human consciousness of various phenomena of the external world, perceived by the five senses. Sensations do not convey the whole picture of the environment, but only those aspects of it that directly come into contact with a person. Next, the brain analyzes the information received from sensations and forms a final idea of ​​​​external reality. Perception is this final result. Unlike the basic elements of cognition, it is a complex composite process that includes individual sensations as structural components.

Classification of sensations

Since sensations are generated by a specific physical stimulus, they are divided according to the level and modality of impact on various receptors:

1. Organic - associated with organic needs: thirst and hunger, breathing, etc. Sensations of this kind, as a rule, have a relatively strong emotional intensity and are often unconscious. Thus, diseases are associated not only with pain, but also with an emotional state: heart problems with a lack of joy, love, fears; liver problems - with irritability and anger.
2. Static - indications about the state of the body in space, active and passive movements, as well as movements of individual parts of the body relative to each other.
3. Kinesthetic - caused by stimulation emanating from receptors located in joints and muscles. Kinesthesia is closely related to vision: hand-eye coordination plays an important role in movements carried out under the control of vision.
4. Skin – pain, temperature, touch, pressure.
5. Tactile - unlike touch, are active in nature, since there is a deliberate feeling of an object associated with an impact on it. With touch, knowledge of the world occurs in the process of movement.
6. Olfactory and gustatory are of particular importance in the formation of an emotional environment that causes pleasant or unpleasant sensations in a person.
7. Auditory - are dual in nature, in other words, a person perceives sound with both ears. Thus, people who are deaf in one ear find it difficult to determine the source and direction of sound.
8. Visual - any color has an effect on a person, which is due not only to the physiological effect on the body, but also to the associations of the person himself. Some colors are capable of stimulating the nervous system, others are capable of inducing a trance, etc. For example, blue is usually associated with blue sky, orange with fire, etc.
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An example of the difference between perception and sensation

To clearly demonstrate the difference between sensation and perception, let us imagine an individual eating an apple. It is clear that, firstly, he is holding the fruit with his hand, and his brain perceives this as a separate tactile sensation. Secondly, when biting an apple, this person clearly feels its taste - sweetness, sourness, etc. This also gives the brain information from the sensation. Thirdly, the visual perception of an apple is also only a separate sense provided by the eyes, one of the sense organs. Fourthly, when eating a fruit, a person feels its specific smell. Information about it is also transmitted to the brain as an independent sensation. Finally, fifthly, when biting an apple, a person hears a characteristic cracking sound, because at this time he receives auditory perception. Thus, when an individual comes into contact with a fruit, he has five completely independent sensations. But complex mental mechanisms synthesize all the information from them and provide consciousness with a single picture, a single idea of ​​the apple, that is, a holistic picture of reality. It is a total, composite vision of the environment that represents the perception of the world.

But there is one subtlety when sensation can be identical to perception. For example, if a person does not eat an apple, does not inhale its aroma, but only holds it with his eyes closed. In this case, he receives only one sensation - tactile, and therefore the complete picture of the perceived reality will consist of only one sensation. At least until the person opens his eyes.

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Saturday, July 13, 2013 01:08 + in the quotation book
Topic 4-5. Sensation and perception There is nothing in consciousness that was not previously in sensation.
Ernst Heine Has it ever occurred to you to count the entire stock of knowledge about objects, phenomena, i.e.
about everything that surrounds you? Even if someone willing to do so was found and did the calculations, he would be surprised that the stock of knowledge is so huge.  How do we gain knowledge about the world around us?
A person receives the very first knowledge about the world around us with the help of special mental processes - sensations and perceptions.
Sensations and perceptions are the main provider of knowledge. Thanks to them, a person distinguishes objects and phenomena by color, smell, taste, temperature, smoothness, size, volume and other characteristics. Sensations and perceptions underlie more complex mental processes - thinking, memory, imagination. Thanks to accumulated ideas obtained through sensations and perceptions, we learn to adapt and navigate the world around us. Let's take one of the simplest examples. If we are lightly dressed and get caught in the rain without an umbrella, we return home in wet clothes, dirty, and cold. The lesson is not in vain - we remember our unpleasant feelings. The next time we are going to leave the house, we listen to the weather forecast and not only take an umbrella, but also put on a raincoat or jacket and appropriate shoes. Sensations and perceptions are similar, but there are significant differences between them. ^What are sensations?
Sensations arise from direct contact with an object.
So, for example, we learn about the taste of an apple that we were treated to when we try it. It looks red and beautiful, but when you bite into it, it may turn out to be sour. How did our favorite variety of apples come about? We tried different varieties, our feelings summed up - this apple is sweet for some, sweet and sour for others, sour for others - I like it. However, there are people who love all apples. ^ Sensation is a mental process that occurs in a person when the sense organs are exposed to objects and phenomena, which consists in reflecting (cognition)
the individual properties of these objects and phenomena. Underline the word “separate”.
All surrounding objects have many properties. Touch the desk. What do you feel? By touching, we gain knowledge not about the entire desk, but only about its individual properties - it is hard, dry, rough. Now look at the desk. What is she like? Through vision we can say that the desk is of a certain color, shape (gray, dirty, written on, rectangular, etc.). Knock on the desk. How do you feel? Through hearing we determine that the desk is wooden and makes a dull sound. All these are examples of individual sensations through which we experience the world around us. Remember: through sensations we receive information not about the entire object, but only about its individual properties. ^ Mechanisms of sensations.
To make it even clearer what sensations are, let’s consider how this process occurs.
Have you heard of the concept “ analyzers
”?
This is a complex nervous mechanism that produces a subtle analysis of the surrounding world, i.e.
highlights its individual elements and properties. Each analyzer is designed to isolate and analyze certain information.
The most famous analyzers in humans are: visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile - according to the five basic senses. Each analyzer has a specific structure: 1) receptors
- sensory organs (eye, ear, tongue, nose, skin, muscles);
2) conductor
- nerve fibers from receptors to the brain;
3) central sections
in the cerebral cortex.
How does the sensation happen? For example, we touched the desk. The receptors on the skin of the fingers received a signal, they transmit it through conductors to the cerebral cortex, where complex processing of the received information takes place (the sensation actually occurs) and the person receives the knowledge that the table is cold, rough, etc. Or a hot iron... In the cerebral cortex, information is processed and an instant conclusion is made: it’s hot and painful. Immediately there is a reverse signal: withdraw your hand. All analyzer departments work as a single unit. If one department is damaged, there is no sensation. For example, people born blind will never know the sensation of color. We experience the world around us and communicate with each other using our senses: eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue. Through these organs, information enters the brain, and we know where we are, what is happening around us, etc. Think about how a person hears sounds? “I hear with my ears!” - you say, but this is an incomplete answer. A person hears with the help of the hearing organ, which is complex. The ear is only part of it. The auricle, or outer ear, is a funnel through which a person catches air vibrations. After passing through the auditory canal, they affect the eardrum. The vibrations of the membrane are transmitted to the auditory ossicles and reach the inner ear. Further along the nerves, the impulses reach the auditory center located in the cerebral cortex. Only with its help can we recognize sound signals. This is how sensations arise. It is not without reason that the definition notes that sensations arise when surrounding objects and phenomena influence the analyzers (sense organs). ^ Types of sensations.
The sensations, as you already understand, are different.
The main sensations associated with the five human senses are identified. 1. Visual sensations
.
Through them, a healthy person receives about 80% of information about the world around him - sensations of color and light
.
 What, thanks to visual sensations, can we say about the world around us?
Visual sensations help to navigate in space.
Colors affect people differently. ^ Red
– excites, activates;
Orange
– cheerful and cheerful, sociable;
Yellow
– warm, invigorating, flirtatious, crafty;
^ Green
– calm, cozy mood;
Blue
- calm, serious, sad, invigorates mental work; if there is a lot of it, it causes coldness;
Purple
is mysterious, a combination of red and blue: attracts and repels, excites and sad.
2. Auditory sensations.
They occupy the second place in importance in a healthy person.
The main purpose for humans is speech recognition and other sound signals
.
Speech, music and noise sensations are distinguished. Loud noise has a negative impact on a person (on mental activity and the cardiovascular system). Why do we need two ears? Maybe one would be enough? Two ears allow you to determine the direction of the sound source. If you close one ear, you will have to turn your head in all directions to determine where the sound is coming from. The importance of hearing in a person’s life is very great. With the help of hearing, people receive information and communicate with each other. The child hears the speech of adults, and at first simply recognizes the sounds, and then begins to imitate them. Little by little he learns to pronounce individual sounds and words, and then masters speech. Rear 1.
Using a simple experiment, check who has better hearing.
To do this, you need to sit sideways to each other at a distance of about one and a half meters and close your eyes. The presenter brings his watch closer to you and away from you in turn. When you hear ticking, you say, “I hear it.” Having stopped hearing, “I don’t hear.” 3. Taste sensations.
The human tongue has taste buds that are responsible for
four taste sensations
.
The tip of the tongue recognizes sweet sensations, the back surface of the tongue recognizes bitter sensations, and the sides of the tongue recognize salty and sour sensations. As a person becomes full, the role of taste sensations increases, but a hungry person will eat less tasty food. Food consists of different components and evokes complex taste sensations. When we eat, we feel heat, cold, and sometimes headaches due to changes in atmospheric pressure, all of which affect the taste of food. In addition, taste sensations are not perceived in their pure form; they are associated with olfactory sensations. Often what we think of as “taste” is actually smell. For example, coffee, tea, tobacco, lemons stimulate the organ of smell more than the organ of taste. 4. Olfactory sensations.
Responsible for
recognizing odors.
In modern man, they play a minor role in understanding the world, but they influence the emotional background and well-being of a person.
When vision and hearing are affected, the olfactory sensations become important. Many animals, such as dogs, live solely by smell. In our nose, the membrane of sensory cells responsible for the sense of smell occupies an area about the size of a fingernail on both sides. In a dog, if you straighten it, it will cover more than half of its body. A person’s weak sense of smell is compensated by the higher development of other senses. By the way, when we simply breathe, the stream of air passes the membrane, and therefore we have to sniff - pass air over the membrane in order to smell it. There are five main types of smell that we can detect: 1. floral; 2. spicy (lemon, apple), 3. putrid (rotten eggs, cheese), 4. burnt (coffee, cocoa), 5. ethereal (alcohol, camphor).  Why does a person need taste and smell sensations? 5. Tactile sensations - a combination of skin and motor sensations when feeling objects.
With their help, a small child learns about the world.
For people without vision, this is one of the important means of orientation and cognition. For example, when reading, Braille is used. Deaf people, in order to understand what the interlocutor is saying to them, can recognize speech by the movement of the vocal cords (by placing the back of the hand on the speaker's neck). Deaf-blind Elena Keller was able to fully exist in society through the tactile-motor learning system. She received an education, graduated from college, defended her dissertation, and held a government position in the employment of people with disabilities. The sense of touch is associated with sensations of temperature, pain, pressure, humidity, etc. These are the main types of sensations. ^ Others are also highlighted. 6. Organic – sensations of hunger, thirst, satiety, suffocation, abdominal pain, etc.
Receptors for these sensations are located in the corresponding walls of the internal organs: esophagus, stomach, intestines.
Everyone knows the feeling of hunger. But how do we know when we feel hungry? Hunger has nothing to do with an empty stomach, as many people think. After all, patients often, despite the lack of food in the stomach, do not want to eat. Hunger occurs when there is a lack of certain nutrients in the blood. Then a signal is sent to the “hunger center” located in the brain - the work of the stomach and intestines is activated. This is why a hungry person often hears his stomach growling. How long can you go without food? It depends on the individual. A very calm person may not eat for longer, since protein reserves in his body are consumed more slowly than those of an easily excitable person. The world record for the duration of fasting was claimed by a woman in South Africa, who, according to her, lived only on water for 102 days! ^ 7. Kinesthetic (motor) sensations - sensations of movement and position of body parts
.
Do a little experiment. Close your eyes and stand in some position: follow the command “at attention”, and then take the same position again. Think about which of the five senses helped you repeat the movement? It was a motor sensation caused
by irritation of receptors located in muscles, ligaments, and joints.
When walking, dancing, cycling, we feel a change in the speed or direction of our movement thanks to the vestibular apparatus of the inner ear. 8 ^.
Vibration sensations - occur when the surface of the body is exposed to air vibrations produced by moving or oscillating bodies. They play an important role in the deaf and blind.
With the help of these sensations, deaf-blind people learn about the approach of a vehicle or a person, touching the lips of a speaking person and feeling their vibration, they can learn the alphabet and then speak. are distinguished separately .
There is evidence that a person, using ordinary senses, can perceive stimuli that are beyond the lower threshold of his sensitivity, i.e.
a person reacts not only to those signals that he is aware of, but also to those that he is not aware of. Premonition and foresight are built on this. ^ Examples from life: 1. Pshonik conducted an experiment with his daughter in 1952. In the kitchen during breakfast, the daughter kept her finger on the button to which the current was connected. When the light came on, the current flowed, you had to have time to take your finger off the button. Over time, the girl, without the light bulb, withdrew her finger, reacting to subthreshold sensations. Together with the light bulb, Pshonik turned on a generator of high-frequency sounds that were not audible to the ear, the girl reacted to these sounds. 2. “25th frame.” The human eye consciously perceives 24 frames per second, and the video is based on this. An experiment was conducted: while watching a film in a cinema, the 25th frame with an advertisement was turned on: “Buy suspenders.” The human eye cannot consciously read this inscription, but the picture of the frame leaves an image on the retina. None of the viewers will say that they saw this inscription, but 15-20% of the viewers went to buy suspenders. This technique is prohibited. ^ The importance of developing sensations.

What happens if a person is deprived of many sensations from birth?
This person will develop more slowly and worse.
It is not for nothing that blind children begin to walk and talk later. Sensations are formed and developed as a result of practical actions and exercises. Therefore , it is necessary that the child receives the maximum number of different sensations
(through games, toys, communication).
Mowgli children are examples of the importance of early child development. So, in 1825, a young man of about twenty-two years old was found in a German city. He avoided people, bumped into objects, and did not respond to speech. Gradually he learned to speak and said that he lived in a cellar and remembered hands that sometimes appeared and gave bread and water. Once a week I woke up feeling washed and wearing new underwear. Then they took him to the outskirts and left him. There are people who see only two colors or see 40 colors. Why does this difference depend? From human experience. For example, 5 thousand years ago The Egyptians saw only 6 colors. This was explained by the peculiarity of the colors of the landscape where they lived. ^ The sensations depend on the exercises.
Every person has an innate ability to sense. Over the course of life, sensations transform and become more diverse. But for this they need to be developed. To make sensations more perfect, it is necessary to specifically exercise the senses. Many professions require subtle sensations and, in turn, contribute to their development. For example, artists, musicians, dancers, foreign language teachers, and musical instrument tuners have significantly higher sensations than other people. The blind have excellent hearing, the deaf have excellent vision. The Germans often blinded their hunting dogs in one eye and one ear, which increased their sense of smell and vision. This means that sensations can and should be improved.

Task 2.
We can check your tactile threshold for differences in sensations, i.e.
the minimal difference between two stimuli that produces a noticeable difference in sensation. Work is carried out in pairs. Take a paperclip and straighten it. One of you closes your eyes and extends your hand, the other places the two sharp legs of a paper clip on the back of your hand. At first, the distance between the legs is about 6 cm, gradually reduce this distance until the participant has the sensation of one touch (although the two ends of the paper clip are still touching). Measure the distance between the ends of the paperclip. This is your tactile sensitivity threshold. The lower this indicator, the higher the tactile sensitivity. ^What is perception?
The second mental process, which is responsible for our primary knowledge of the world around us and is closely related to sensation, is perception.
^ Perception is a mental process that occurs in a person when the sense organs are exposed to objects and phenomena, which consists in a
holistic reflection (cognition) of these objects and phenomena. Underline the word “whole”.
As you already understand, sensations allow you to reflect and perceive only individual properties of objects: colors, shape, size, smoothness, sounds, temperature, etc. But we will not receive objects through sensations of a complete image. So, if you describe a lemon through sensations, it will be something yellow, sour, oblong, rough and nothing more. Perception allows us to “see” the holistic image of an object. During perception, the individual properties of objects are combined into a single image. We see objects not only with our eyes, but also with our minds. Information about the world around us gradually accumulates in the brain - we have experience that is involved in the process of perception. ^ Perception is based on a person’s sensations and past experiences.
Look at the notebook and describe it.
How will you create her image? From sensations of color, shape, volume, roughness. Why are you sure that this is a notebook and not a ball or a shirt? Only thanks to past experience. When perceiving familiar objects, recognition occurs immediately; a person only needs to combine 2-3 signs. For example, you have geranium at home, you know what it looks like. When you come to visit someone and see the same geranium, you will recognize it instantly. And you see the plant standing next to it for the first time and wonder what it’s called. ^ Types of perceptions.
According to the action of the predominant analyzer, there are visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile perceptions.
There are also more complex types of perception that arise as a result of the work of several analyzers. 1. Perception of objects.
All types of sensations operate in the perception of objects.
When we see an orange, we combine visual, gustatory, olfactory and tactile impressions. The perception of individual objects is a very complex process. We identify the main features of an object, discard the unimportant ones, and then recognition of the object occurs. When perceiving familiar objects, recognition occurs quickly. Every time we perceive, we form a visual image of an object. We call this object a word. Therefore, perception is closely related to speech. When we perceive an unfamiliar object, we try to establish its similarity to a familiar one. For example, perceiving a watch and mentally calling it with this word, we are distracted from such unimportant features as the material from which the case is made, size, shape and highlight the main feature - the indication of time.  Does everything that surrounds a person fall into his field of perception? How does the choice of an object of perception occur? 2. Perception of space,
i.e.
the distance of objects from us and from each other, their shape and size
.
These perceptions are built on the basis of a combination of visual, auditory, skin and motor sensations. Only accumulated experience gives us a correct idea of ​​the size of objects. A person standing in a boat far from the shore appears much smaller than a person standing on the shore. But no one will say that one person is big and the other is small. We say: one person is close and the other is far from us. By the strength of the sound of thunder, we determine the distance separating us from an approaching thunderstorm; using touch with our eyes closed, we can determine the shape of an object. Through the experience of perceptions, we form an idea of ​​perspective. When we look at the rails going into the distance, we see that they converge on the horizon line. Our eyes see this, and our brains, therefore, our experience suggests that they do not converge anywhere. The children have no experience yet, they think that the rails converge, so they ask: what is there? 3. Perception of time.
There is
a reflection of the duration and sequence of events
occurring in the world.
This is a very subjective process. The perception of the duration of time depends on what fills that time. Time periods filled with something pleasant are perceived as shorter. So it feels like a change always flies by instantly, and a boring lesson lasts a very long time. Depends on age: children perceive time as dragging on for a long time, while for adults, days and months fly by very quickly.  Why is it that when we feel good, time is perceived as passing quickly, and when we feel bad or bored – as dragging slowly?
There are people who always know what time it is.
Such people have a well-developed sense of time. The sense of time is not innate, it develops as a result of accumulated experience. Task 3
.
Check who has a well-developed sense of time. Periodically, without looking at the clock, say what time it is; the one who guessed correctly more often (or was closer to the correct time) has an excellent sense of time. 4. Perception of movement.
There is
a reflection of changes in the spatial relationships of the environment and the observer himself
.
It involves visual, auditory, muscle and other sensations. If an object moves in space, then we perceive its movement due to the fact that it leaves our field of best vision and forces us to move our eyes or head. If objects move towards us and we try to focus our gaze on them, our eyes converge at one point and the eye muscles tense. Thanks to this tension, we form the idea of ​​distance. By internal sensations we perceive the movements of our own body. Perceiving the world, a person highlights something in it, but does not notice something at all. For example, during a lesson you can enthusiastically watch what is happening outside the window and absolutely not notice what the teacher is saying there. What a person highlights is the object
of perception, and everything else is
the background
.
Sometimes they can change places. Task 4
.
Look at the image of the young woman half turned away. Can you immediately notice an old woman with a big nose and chin hidden in her collar? The individual uniqueness of perception depends on the mental state of a person at the moment. If he is cheerful, cheerful, joyfully excited, then one perception, if he is scared, sad, angry, then a completely different one. Therefore, the perception of the same person, event, phenomenon by different people is so different. Thus, each perception includes not only sensations, but also a person’s past experience, his thoughts, emotions, i.e. Every perception is influenced by a person’s personality. ^ Illusions of perception.
Sometimes our senses and our perceptions let us down, as if deceiving us.
Such “deceptions” of the senses are called illusions.

Vision is more susceptible to illusions than other senses. No wonder they say: “don’t believe your eyes”, “optical illusion”.  Light objects against a dark background appear enlarged compared to their actual size. A dark object appears smaller than a light one of the same size. These illusions are explained by the fact that each light outline of an object is surrounded by a light border on the retina. It increases the size of the image. In general, all light objects seem larger to us than dark ones.
People appear thinner in a dark dress than in a light one.

 When comparing two figures, one of which is smaller than the other, we mistakenly perceive all parts of the smaller figure as smaller, and all parts of the larger figure as larger. This is clearly visible in the figure: the upper segment in it seems longer than the lower one, although in fact they are equal.  Look at the picture, which shows lines - horizontal and vertical. Which ones are longer? You will say that the vertical ones are longer. This is a visual error. Lines of equal length. The horizontal ones are divided in half by the vertical ones and therefore seem to be shorter.  Artists, architects, and tailors are well aware of visual illusions. They use them in their work. For example, a tailor sews a dress from striped fabric. If he arranges the fabric so that the stripes are horizontal, then the woman in this dress will appear taller. And if you “lay” the stripes horizontally, the wearer of the dress will appear shorter and thicker.  Upside-down is a type of optical illusion when the nature of the perceived object depends on the direction of gaze. One of these illusions is the “duck hare”: the image can be interpreted as both an image of a duck and an image of a hare.

 Sometimes illusions arise under the influence of strong emotions: For example, in fear a person can mistake one thing for another (a stump in the forest for an animal.)

 There is an illusion of non-existent objects, most often based on a false perspective, ambiguous connections.  There are illusions caused by the relationship between “figure” and “ground”. Looking at the drawing, we see first one figure, then another. These could be stairs going up or down, or two profiles changing to a drawing of a vase, etc. Sometimes other senses deceive us.  If you eat a piece of lemon or herring and wash it down with tea with a little sugar, the first sip will seem very sweet.  An interesting phenomenon is experienced by astronauts. When weightlessness sets in, they experience the illusion of turning over. That is, they think they are upside down and feet up, although in fact their body is positioned correctly.  There are entire illusory works of art. They are a triumph of fine art over reality. Example: drawing “Waterfall” by Maurice Escher. The water circulates here endlessly; after the wheel rotates, it flows further and ends up back to the starting point. If such a structure could be built, then there would be a perpetual motion machine! But upon closer examination of the picture, we see that the artist is deceiving us, and any attempt to build this structure is doomed to failure. Task 5.
All people have illusions of perception. Ask your friends to look at these drawings, and they will create the same illusions as you.

New concepts
:
perception, sensation, kinesthetic, organic, vibration sensations, illusions of perception. Test questions.

1. What is sensation and perception?
2. What are the similarities and differences between these processes?
3. What are the physiological mechanisms of sensations?
4. What types of sensations and perceptions do you know? What do they mean?

1. What role do sensations and perceptions play in our lives?
2. What are perceptual illusions? Give examples of illusions.
3. Describe what sensations make up the image of the perception of a pine tree.
4. Why do we notice dust on furniture and not feel the specks of dust that land on our face?
5. Choose the correct answer.

9.1.
During training, the sensitivity of the senses: a) does not change;
b) improves to a certain limit; c) improves without limit; d) gets worse. 9.2.
The perception of objects depends most of all on: a) the quality of a person’s sensations and experience;
b) on the temperament and character of a person; c) from the movement or rest of these objects; d) all answers are correct; d) all answers are incorrect. Follow the link and complete the test tasks. Test tasks. Literature
1. Rogov E.I.
Psychology of cognition. – M.: Vlados, 2001. 2. Dubrovina I.V. and others. Psychology. – M.: Academy, 1999. 3. Yanovskaya L.V. Basics of psychology. – M.: World of Books, 2007. 4. Proshchitskaya E.N. Workshop on choosing a profession. – M.: Enlightenment, 1995. 5. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation 6. https://www.effecton.ru/185.html 7. https://www.e-psy. ru/html/publish/st6.html 8. https://works.tarefer.ru/70/100071/index.html 9. https://www.diclib.com/cgi-bin/d1.cgi?l= ru&base=colier&page=showid&id=8872 10. https://psi.webzone.ru/tema/tema8.htm 11. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception 12. https://net22.ru/category /vospriyatie/ 13. https://azps.ru/articles/proc/indexvo.html Illusions of perception
1. https://www.psy.msu.ru/illusion/ 2. https://vadim-andreev.narod. ru/ufo/iluzia.htm 3. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusions 4. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion
Development of sensations and perception
1. https://adalin.mospsy .ru/l_01_00/l_01_13b.shtml 2. https://psyvision.ru/help/psy-psy-psy/5-psyhology/263-popsnsferalich
Diagnostics of sensation and perception
1. https://pro-psixology.ru/psixologiya -metodicheskie-…perceptivnyx-sposobnostej.html This is interesting to know
^ Is it possible to improve your perception?
You can improve your perception. To become observant, do the following.

1. Listen carefully to how your friend, who studies better than you and always gets excellent grades, answers in class. Try to imitate him and only after that develop your own style of answering the teacher’s questions.
2. When preparing for lessons, learn to highlight the main thing in the material and focus your attention on it.
3. Choose your examples to illustrate the rules and laws you are learning.
4. Learn to analyze your activity in class and in social events and note the features of your perception, comparing it with the perception of your classmates.

5. To train your powers of observation, we offer you a simple exercise. a) remember who answered in class today? But yesterday? b) what questions did the students answer? c) what actions did the teacher perform? d) what was their purpose? e) do you know how many blondes and brunettes are in your class? Try to systematically train and develop your powers of observation, devoting at least a few minutes to it every day.[/td]

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Mechanism of sensations

Perception is, as we have found out, a cumulative complex of sensations processed by the brain. What is necessary to make the primary feelings themselves possible? First, of course, you need the external object itself - the source of sensations. Secondly, a set of tools is needed that will help the subject come into contact with him and receive information from him. In Western psychology, such functional adaptations of the body are called analyzers. The author of the term is the famous Russian scientist, academician I. P. Pavlov. According to his theory, analyzers have a three-part structure, consisting of receptors, conductors and a center.

Forms of sensory knowledge

In sensory cognition, three levels are distinguished, the purpose of which is to prepare the individual for the transition to a higher stage of cognitive activity associated with abstraction. The main forms of this type of cognition include:

• Sensations, which are the initial level of cognition. This level of sensory cognition provides people with only an initial and one-sided understanding of objects, such as their appearance, smell, and taste.
• At the stage of perception, there is a certain accumulation of knowledge acquired by the individual earlier through sensations, which allows the person to form a fairly complete image of the object in his mind.
• At the final stage, representation, the images perceived from outside begin to be independently reproduced in the brain, creating a visual and meaningful picture of reality.

However, knowing the world through feelings is not capable of revealing the essence of phenomena occurring in the world - this level of cognitive activity is more complex, it requires the individual to use logic, analysis and rational thinking. Thus, only by combining living contemplation of the surrounding reality with abstract thinking will a person have the opportunity to fully understand the world around him.

Receptors

Receptors are those nerve endings that come into direct contact with external objects and provide the perception of information through stimulation.

Accordingly, they are located in the sense organs - eyes, ears, tongue, nasal cavity, skin. Such receptors are called exteroceptors, that is, receptors directed outward, to the outside world. They are the basis for the primary sensations of the surrounding reality. But along with them, there is another group of receptors aimed at a person’s internal sensations - hunger, thirst, etc. These nerve endings are called interoreceptors.

What is the feeling

Sensation (sensory experience) is a mental process, which is a mental reflection of individual properties and states of the external environment that affect our senses. Simply put, it is the body's detection of external or internal stimulation. For example, the eyes detect light waves, the ears detect sound waves.

The sensation process consists of three successive stages:

1. Sensory receptors detect stimuli (stimuli).
2. Sensory stimuli are converted into electrical impulses (action potentials) that must be decoded by the brain.
3. Electrical impulses travel along neurons to specific parts of the brain, where the impulses are deciphered into information (perception comes into play).

For example, when soft tissue is touched, mechanoreceptors (sensory receptors on the skin) note that your skin has been touched. This sensory information is then converted into neural information through a process called transduction. Next, the neural information travels along nerve pathways to the corresponding part of the brain, where sensations are perceived as touching tissue.

There are two points worth mentioning here. First: despite the fact that our body experiences sensations 24 hours a day, we feel only one thing at a particular moment (with the help of attention). After some time, we can remember other sensations, recalling the experience corresponding to them. Second: we are not superheroes, so our sensory experience cannot detect radio waves, x-rays or microscopic parasites crawling on our skin. We also cannot catch all the smells around us or taste and understand every spice in a dish. In this regard, dogs and other animals are significantly superior to us.

Many psychologists have asked the question “How to measure the intensity of a sensation?” The answer has not yet been found, but the thresholds have been identified:

1. Absolute threshold: The minimum amount of stimulation that a person can detect 50% of the time. This is the point at which something becomes tangible to our senses. For example, the quietest sound we can hear, or the slightest touch we can feel. Anything below this threshold goes unnoticed.
2. The difference threshold (or simply noticeable difference) is the minimum difference that must occur between two body stimuli to identify them as two separate sensations 50% of the time. Here's an example: you hear the sound of a radio in the next room, and then realize that someone has turned up the volume. The difference threshold is the amount of change required to recognize that a change has occurred. However, the difference itself is not absolute. Imagine that you are holding a suitcase weighing 5 kilograms in your hand. If you add 1 kilogram, you will feel the difference. But if it weighs 50 and you add 1 kilogram to it, you will hardly notice it. Therefore, we need to talk about percentages and not absolute ratios. In the first case the difference is 20%, and in the other 2%.
3. The final threshold is the maximum amount of stimulation a person can feel.

There are several theories that can help us better understand the concept of sensation.

Signal detection theory

You've probably been in a crowded room with many people talking at the same time. Situations like this can make it difficult to focus on a single stimulus, such as a conversation you're having with a friend.

We often face a similar challenge: focusing our attention on certain things while at the same time trying to ignore the flow of information entering our senses. When we try to confront this, we make conscious decisions about what is important to us and what is background noise. This concept is called signal detection theory because we want to focus on one thing and ignore everything else.

Sensory adaptation

Have you ever wondered why we immediately notice certain smells or sounds, and then after a while we seem to stop noticing them, and they fade into the background? As soon as we adapt to the perfume or the ticking of a clock, we cease to recognize them. This process is called sensory adaptation: perhaps the logic of evolution here is that if the stimulus does not change, then why do we need to constantly feel it?

Center

The center of the analyzer is the brain. More precisely, its various sections that are responsible for the area of ​​sensory organs entrusted to them. Some parts of the brain are responsible for visual perception, others for tactile perception, and so on. The center of the analyzer, receiving a signal from receptors through conductors, converts it into a specific sensation that a person feels.

These are the features of perception of the external world - in fact, we cannot directly experience taste or smell. Our brain only recreates and reconstructs sensations based on the data received from the receptors. And the whole panorama of diverse sensations exists only in a person’s head.

Types of sensory cognition

The sensory type of cognition is based on the work of sensory analyzers and the human sensory system as a whole. Nowadays science identifies the following types of sensory perception:

• visual;
• auditory;
• tactile;
• taste;
• through smell;
• using the vestibular apparatus.

In addition, sometimes intuition is classified as a type of sensory cognition, losing sight of the fact that intuition does not start from logic and is not based on sensations. In essence, intuition can be attributed to a separate, very unique form of cognition, combining both rational and irrational principles.

Visual sensations

There is no unanimous opinion among scientists about which of the senses, and therefore which sensation, is the most important, that is, carrying the largest amount of valuable information to the analytical center of the brain, which forms the final perception. In psychology, more precisely in its main trends, today the leading role is given to vision. It is believed that most of the information (up to 80%) that makes up perception is visual contact. Whether this is true or not, in any case, it is obvious that the visual function is a very important source of information about the external world. Her sense organs are a pair of eyes that physically perceive information from light vibrations. Correct functioning of the eyes allows us to perceive photon waves in the color spectrum, which subsequently allows the brain to generate all the many colors that color the world in our minds.

It should be noted that colors are chromatic, that is, those that form a color spectrum, observed, for example, in a rainbow. The opposite of them is achromatic. There are only three of them - black, white and gray.

Stages of sensory cognition

Modern science divides the cognitive process into several stages.

• The first stage of cognition is characterized by a kind of “imprinting” into the human psyche of knowledge about the appearance of various things;
• At the second stage, which is the comprehension of the surrounding reality, people form the necessary knowledge and judgments about it.
• The third stage includes the formation of stable and well-founded knowledge about the world around us, followed by a person’s interpretation of the feelings that initially arose in his mind.

Auditory sensations

Next to visual information, the ability to recognize sound plays a very important role in human life. The latter is an important way of communication and more. Sound waves that are perceived by auditory receptors are divided into two groups according to the nature of their sensation. The first includes noise sensations, that is, sounds that do not have a rhythmic structure in the vibrations of the sound wave. In contrast, rhythmically organized waves are called musical sensations.

↑ Intuition

Cognition cannot be reduced only to sensations and thinking.
Intuition occupies an important place in the process of cognition, as well as in creativity. Intuition

- direct comprehension of the truth as a result of “insight”, sudden understanding without direct reliance on logical proof, rational thinking.

Both the scientists and thinkers of the ancient world (Plato, Aristotle) ​​and the present time attached great importance to intuition in knowledge. Intuition uses the data of sensory knowledge, but is not it. Intuition is not rational knowledge, since reason does not directly involve logic.

Kinesthetic sensations

The life activities of most people involve significant mobility - walking, typing, dressing and many other daily activities that cannot be performed without using motor function. This explains the importance of clarity of motor sensations for life, because without them it would be extremely difficult to even bring a spoon to the mouth. These kinesthetic feelings, as mentioned above, are generated not by sensory organs, but by nerve endings distributed throughout the body.

Tactile sensations

Tactile sensations are also important for people’s communication with the outside world, and in addition, they provide a deeper perception of a person by a person. This is especially noticeable in a sexual context, but also in raising children and in other forms of relationships. Suffice it to recall, for example, the tradition of shaking hands. In other words, the sense of touch is of direct importance both for procreation (and therefore the preservation of the species) and for the development of society as a whole.

Some people, namely deaf-blind people, that is, deprived of the ability to see and hear, generally use tactile sensations as the only form of communication with other people.

In general, psychologists distinguish two types of tactile sense: tactile and temperature. The latter is responsible for recognizing heat and cold, and the former covers the rest of the complex of diverse sensations associated with touch.

Perception disturbance

Adequate perception of a person is determined by the fact that, perceiving any object or phenomenon, he, as a rule, recognizes it as an isolated case from general practice. For this reason, perception depends on mental operations. The extent to which a person understands the world around him, the extent to which he perceives it, that is, through the prism of his worldview and acquired experience.

With various types of mental disorders, there is a disruption of the above-described processes of sensation and perception, and, accordingly, a distortion in the reflection of reality. Thus, there is a disorder of the “body schema”: the problem is awareness of the shape, position of one’s own body, its disintegration into parts, the feeling of extra limbs, and the like.

Violation of the integrity of sensations of different modalities can lead to an inadequate perception of reality, as, for example, the sounds of speech emanating from a person do not correlate with the person himself, but are perceived as two independent objects.

There are a number of different deviations in perception: illusions, hallucinations, agnosia and others, but all of them initially present the problem of accepting any feelings, emotions, unpleasant sensations, since it is on the basis of sensory data that a person identifies the meaning and significance of phenomena and events.

Taste sensations

The human sense of taste is quite well developed, much stronger than the sense of smell. In addition to the tongue, the organs of perception of this sensation include the area of ​​the soft palate.

The sense of taste consists of four components: bitterness, sweetness, acidity and saltiness. A certain part of the tongue is responsible for each of them, and the final combination of all four factors makes up the entire variety of flavors that are familiar to humans.

Rational cognition

Rational knowledge is carried out by reason. It is unique to humans and is a rather complex way of reflecting reality.

Basic mechanisms of rational cognition: comparison, assimilation, generalization, distraction.

Forms of rational knowledge:

1. A concept is a thought that asserts the general and essential properties of an object.
2. A judgment is a thought that affirms or denies something about an object.
3. Inference (conclusion) is the mental connection of several judgments and the derivation of a new judgment from them.

An example of an inference: if a > b and b > c , then a > c .

Types of inferences:

1. Inductive inference - from the particular to the general.
2. Deductive reasoning - from the general to the specific.
3. The one that is obtained by analogy.

Synesthesia of sensations

The peculiarities of human perception are such that sometimes several basic sensations can be synthesized into one. In psychology, this phenomenon is referred to as “synesthesia.” Most often, such a relationship arises between the visual and sound senses. A person experiences synesthesia as a stable associative connection between shades and sounds. For example, some melodies may have their own characteristic color in the perception of such people.

Another variant of synesthesia, although more rare, is the synthesis of visual sensation with olfactory sensation. This kind of connection gives different color shades their own smell. A similar phenomenon develops in people whose work involves the sense of smell, for example, sommeliers or perfumers.

Synesthesia as a special way of perceiving the world

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which an impression specific to one sense organ is combined with another additional sensation or image.

So, for example, phrases like: “salty joke”, “bitter reproach”, “stinging speech”, “sweet lie” and the like - acquire a very specific tangible meaning. The most common type of synesthesia is considered to be letter-color and number-color associations, when, for example, “6” evokes an image of a yellow tint or the letter “B” is perceived as purple.

The version of the origin of this phenomenon states that in infancy all people are synesthetes: certain neural connections initially maintain contact between the senses, and thus sounds and smells are intertwined in the mind, coloring, for example, the letters of the alphabet in different tones. For a certain group of people, this peculiarity of sensation and perception of the surrounding world persists throughout their lives.

Measuring sensations

In psychology, there is a special section whose field of study includes the study of the relationship between the strength of the stimulus and the brightness of the experienced sensation. This branch of science is called psychophysics. Its task is to build an adequate system for calculating sensation thresholds and develop a measurement scale corresponding to it.

Psychophysicists propose calling the threshold for the onset of a feeling, that is, the minimum impact of a stimulus below which the sensation disappears, the absolute lower threshold. Accordingly, the absolute upper threshold will be the degree of influence above which the sensation will also disappear.

Examples of such limits for human auditory perception are frequencies below 16 Hz (infrasound) and above 20 kHz (ultrasound).

↑ The concept of “cognition”.

Cognition is
the activity of people, the purpose of which is to obtain new reliable knowledge about the surrounding world, reality, man and society, based on its sensory and rational comprehension.
Epistemology
studies the theory of knowledge - this is a branch of philosophy that analyzes the nature and possibilities of knowledge, its boundaries and conditions of reliability.

In relation to the process of cognition, the following philosophical directions are distinguished:

Gnosticism

- a philosophical doctrine, the main idea of ​​which is that cognitive activity for a person is a vital necessity (“Cognition is a necessity”).

Optimism -

a philosophical movement that considers the world to be entirely knowable (“The world is possible to know”).

Agnosticism

- a philosophical doctrine that states that the world is impossible to know. The rationale for this fact is as follows: a person can cognize an object only with the help of his sensations and internal experiences, but it is impossible to become the object itself and “see the world” from its side, which distorts the facts about what is being cognized. And such concepts as “god”, “soul”, “universe” are in principle unknowable, since they exist beyond the possible limits of the human mind. (“The world is impossible to know”).

Relativism

- a philosophical doctrine, the meaning of which is that all truths can only be relative, those. capable of changing depending on conditions (“Everything in the world is relative”).

Skepticism

- a direction in philosophy that questions the possibility of knowing reality (“Doubts regarding the possibility of knowledge”).

Adaptation of sense organs

Prolonged contacts of stimuli and receptors are initiated by a process called adaptation of sensations. In other words, sensory organs that have adapted to regular exposure can reduce their sensitivity to the point of completely ignoring the impact. This adaptation is called negative. If, under the influence of prolonged contact with a stimulus, the intensity of sensations increases, the adaptation is called positive.

The most flexible adaptation in humans is observed to visual sensations, and the least flexible - to auditory sensations and to the experience of pain.

conclusions

In the recent past, scientists attributed sensory cognition to the lowest level of human thinking. This conclusion was justified by the fact that an individual who knows the world only through feelings is guided exclusively by instincts. But modern philosophy looks at the sensory type of cognition from a different angle, linking together both sensory and rational methods of studying the surrounding reality, and also recognizing feelings as a kind of foundation for more detailed and logic-based cognitive activity.

Formation of perception

The entire set of sensations described above forms perception. Memory plays an important role in this process, which allows a person to remember the experiences acquired in the process of interaction with the outside world. In this way, children's perception begins to develop - in the process of playing, manipulating objects, crawling and grabbing everything. The ability to store memory summarizes all received information in the form of experience and constantly enriches it throughout life. It, in turn, allows the brain and consciousness to form a holistic view of the outside world. It is important to note that perception is not just the sum of sensations collected into a bundle. This is a synthesis that allows, based on a number of senses, to perceive the world holistically, without dissecting it in the mind into various component parts.

Definition

Sensation is the primary stage of the sensorimotor response. And it is tightly connected with perception. Both phenomena act as intermediaries in the transmission of the environment, existing independently of consciousness, based on the impact on the senses: this unites them.

But in psychology, perception is not just a sensory image of an object or phenomenon, but also its awareness. It characterizes a diverse range of relationships that result in meaningful situations. Thus, perception can be safely called a form of knowledge of reality.

Types and types of perception

In human psychology, experts distinguish several types and types of perception. Currently, this is a more or less established and universal system, accepted everywhere. As elsewhere, the development of perception goes from simple to complex. The simplest type is based on one of the sensations. This could be listening to music or inhaling the scent of a flower. In these examples, perception is built by one analyzer based on one stimulus. If several sensations are included in the process of reflection, as, for example, when watching a movie or when making a bouquet, then perception is of a complex type.

In addition, perception in psychology is divided into several types. This classification is based on distinguishing the types of perceived objects themselves. Thus, experts distinguish into separate types the perception of time, the perception of space, the perception of movement, and even the perception of a person by a person. The latter is scientifically called social perception.

The perception of time is based on changes in the internal processes of the human psyche, and therefore is largely subjective.

The perception of space gives an idea of ​​the shape, size and location of objects in three-dimensional reality. The movement of objects along the coordinate axis forms the perception of movement. The latter can be relative or non-relative. Relative perceives the movement of an object depending on other objects. The non-relative, on the contrary, perceives the object in isolation from outsiders.

What is perception

Now let’s find out what perception is and try to understand how and how it differs from sensation.

Perception (perception) is sensory knowledge of objects in the surrounding world, which subjectively appears to be direct, immediate. While sensation is used to detect sound waves, perception is used by the brain to interpret the sound of a guitar, for example. The way we perceive our surroundings is what sets us apart from animals and from each other.

To look at the phenomenon of perception, we need to talk about theories that are either directly or indirectly related to it.

Gestalt principle

The German word “gestalt” roughly translates to “whole” or “form,” and Gestalt psychologists believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. According to the theory, in order to interpret what we receive through our senses, we try to organize this information into certain groups. This allows the information to be interpreted in the future without unnecessary repetition.

For example, when you see one dot, you perceive it as such, but when you see five dots together, you group them together, saying “a series of dots.” Without such a tendency, our perception will view the same series as “dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.” In this case, the processing process itself will increase approximately five times in time, and also reduces perceptual ability.

Maintaining Constancy of Perception

Imagine if every time an object changed in perception, we had to completely rework it. For example, as you approached a building, with each step you would have to re-evaluate the size of the building because it would get bigger.

Fortunately, this doesn't happen. Because of our ability to maintain consistency in our perceptions, we roughly estimate the height of a building no matter how far away we are from it. Perceptual constancy refers to our ability to see things differently without reinterpreting the properties of the object. Usually they talk about three constants: size, shape, brightness.

Size constancy refers to our ability to see objects as maintaining the same size, even at a distance. This is true for all our senses. As we move away from the speaker, the song becomes softer. We understand this and perceive the sound to be approximately as loud.

Everyone saw the round plate. However, when we look at it from an angle, it looks more like an ellipse. The constancy of the shape allows us to perceive this plate as round, although the angle from which we look seems to distort the shape.

Brightness constancy refers to our ability to recognize that a color remains the same regardless of how it appears at different levels. That dark blue shirt you wore on the beach suddenly “turns” black when you walk into a dark room. Without color consistency, we will constantly reinterpret color and be amazed at the miraculous transformation that constantly “happens” to our clothes.

Objectivity and constancy of perception

Objectivity and constancy are properties of perception distinguished by modern psychologists.

Objectivity is the concreteness of an object, that is, its presence and objective presence in space and time. In contrast, psychologists distinguish purely speculative, abstract concepts and categories, which are not products of the reflective process and the object of perception, but the fruit of thinking or imagination. Therefore, only phenomena that have the characteristic of objectivity can be perceived. This is called the objective principle.

Perception in psychology is also endowed with the property of constancy, that is, the ability of consciousness to preserve its essential characteristics of an object, regardless of the distance to the person. That is, the same object, for example, a large balloon, moving away from a person, will still be interpreted by consciousness as a large balloon. This property of the psyche makes it possible to distinguish perspective and adequately navigate in space.

↑ Process of cognition

The process of cognition, no matter how it takes place, always presupposes the presence of two sides: the subject and the object of cognition.

Subject of knowledge

- a cognizing person, endowed with will and consciousness, or a collective, the whole society.

Object of knowledge

– what the subject’s cognitive activity is aimed at. Can be animate (a person himself, an animal) and inanimate (natural phenomena); material (really existing object) or ideal (hypothesis, theory)

Means of knowledge

- devices used to obtain knowledge (measuring instruments, microscopes, reagents)

Result of knowledge

- knowledge is a product of the relationship of thought to reality, existing in a logical linguistic form in the form of concepts, judgments, symbols, signs

Knowledge consists of two levels: empirical and theoretical

. But it is impossible to contrast the sensual and rational in cognition, since these two stages of cognition manifest themselves as a single process. The difference between them is not temporary, but qualitative: the first stage is lower, the second is higher.

Knowledge

is the unity of sensory and rational knowledge of reality. Knowledge is the result of knowledge of reality, the content of consciousness.

Outside of sensory representation, man has no real knowledge. For example, many concepts of modern science are very abstract, and yet they are not free from sensory content. Not only because these concepts ultimately owe their origin to the experience of people, but also because in their form they exist in the form of a system of sensory signs. On the other hand, knowledge cannot do without the rational data of experience and their inclusion in the results and course of the intellectual development of mankind.