In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of taking in, picking, organizing, and understanding sensory information. It includes collecting data from sense organs and interpreting it in the brain. Consider this: Light enters our eyes, and the brain works on this information to build up a mental picture of what is going on "out there". Perception is a lot more than just "information coming in". It is an active process.
There are many ways to study perception. There are biological or physiological approaches, psychological approaches through the philosophy of mind and experiments. There are studies by philosophers such as David Hume, John Locke, George Berkeley.
History of the study of perception
The study of perception started with the study of sight. This makes sense because humans understand the world largely by looking at it.
Ancient Greece
The first studies of perception happened in the years 460371 BC by the Greek philosopher Democritus. He believed the shapes we see were pictures which flew to our eyes, where our soul would then recognize them. The philosopher Plato (427–348 BC) later came up with a new idea, he believed the eyes worked by first making light and then scanning the world. Another Greek philosopher and student of Plato called Aristotle (384–322 BC) did not agree with these ideas. He presented a new theory : Light can only come from bright objects, like fire and the sun. Light is not something you can touch Light hits objects and then bounces off the object to hit our eyes Light moves through something that humans can't see
Aristotle's ideas were then accepted for hundreds of years.
10th & 11th Century
Ibn al-Haytham wrote the first mathematical description of the visual process
17th Century
Kepler explained what is inside of the eye. Descartes said that the way our physical senses see the world does not affect how we think about the world. Locke and Descartes both thought humans saw color because of the senses.
18th Century
Kant suggested that humans can't know about things which our senses don’t see. Because of this he stated that a god and a soul were not possible.
19th Century
New techniques were created and used to study the brain and perception. Many of these studies were paired with data on human behavior. The psychologist Wundt stated that perception could not just be explained by the way the body works and that psychology was needed too.
20th Century
Gestalt psychology was formed. The idea behind this group of thinkers was that perception is more than the sum of our senses.
Process of Perception
Bruner's model of perception
When we see someone we don't know, we are looking for signs which will tell us things about them. As we pick up on some signs, we match this person to a group we have seen before. The search for signs that tell us about who they are becomes less broad. We now only search for signs that put this person into the group we have matched them to.
Saks and Johns model of perception
The perceiver : This is the person doing the observing and perceiving. There are three things that can have an effect on someone's perception. These are : How much experience someone has, how motivated this person is, and how they are feeling. Also, in some situations someone can use a "perceptual defense", this is when they only see what they want to see. The person who is being watched and perceived : The least the other person knows about them the more they will try to guess. The time and place this situation is happening at : This affects the amount of attention the perceiver gives to a situation.
Types of perception
Vision
Vision is what you see. Seeing something happens when light enters the eyes. This light is turned into an electric message which travels to the brain and gets turned into a picture.
Sound
Sound is what you hear. The ears catch movement from sound waves which move in every direction. The brain takes these in, creating what we hear.
Touch
Touch is what you feel with your skin. The skin's top layer has receptors that take information in when touched. These receptors can sense pain, how hot or cold something is and how heavy something is. Receptors then send this information to our nervous system.
Taste
Taste is the flavor of things we eat or drink. Our tongue has many little bumps which take in our food's flavor. These bumps then send a message to our brain for us to taste.
Smell
The skin inside your nose has small cells which send messages to your brain when you breathe in. Your brain then senses the smell.