Sensation and Perception

Looking for articles that answer your questions on sensation and perception? This one should do it!

image credit: 2.bp.blogspot.com

Perception is a part of the cognitive process that helps us make sense of our environment so that we can make decisions in our own, unique ways through the inputs we select and prioritise; how we organise the selected inputs and our personal interpretations of the information we gather from the way we have arranged the inputs we have selected.

Human perception, thus, is the subjective or personal result of sensation. It is the dynamic "knowing" about the direct sensation "in your mind." Perception is subjective because it occurs within you. It is dynamic because can change from moment to moment and situation to situation. Depending on the moment, the mood and other factors, you may perceive the same sensations differently at various instances.

To explain the perceptual process in more detail, let me take a personal example:

As I stand and deliver a lecture to my class, your consciousness makes you aware of sitting there listening to me, the external other. As I speak, you hear the sensation of sound, feel the discomfort of your chair, smell the cold air blowing from the air-conditioner mixed with other people smells, see me standing, a colleague sleeping, another texting, the LCD PowerPoint display, the cloudless blue sky, workers on the terrace next door and so on...

These sensations are available to the entire class but its individual members "perceive" different things. One student chooses to select a whispered comment from his friend over my words; another concentrates on the pain the chair causes her back instead of my lecture; a third compares the colour of my sari with the blue sky while you listen closely to what I'm trying to get across.

Each student will have a different perception of the class depending on her selection of sensations to prioritise, the way she organises the sensations she selects and the interpretations she derives from the structures she has created in her mind.

Sensation is automatic. If my visual and aural mechanism works, I cannot NOT see or hear. So as I stand in class, I can see and hear and feel and smell all that is available within the range of my sensory abilities. At the end of my lecture, though, if you asked me what I saw, I would only be able to identify those things that I actually "looked" at--i.e., those objects I chose to select and organise and interpret in my mind. Therefore, my perception of the class and yours would be very different because you and I would probably be selecting different objects to "look at" depending on our individual filters--our own personalities, our interests, our knowledge-set, our previous experiences, our moods, emotions, attitudes etc.

A policeman friend once told me that one of his worst nightmares was to investigate a public incident of which there were many different witnesses because witness accounts of the same event are sure to differ wildly and even contradict each other because of individual perceptions (which each witness would be sure was 100% correct!)

It should be obvious to you now that perception is not--and cannot ever be--reality and that just as Gerbner's General Model shows, the real event E ceases to exist once it has been perceived and become E¹. The degree of similarity or distance of E¹ to E (or the perceived event to the real event) depends on certain factors. Gerbner suggests selection, context and availability as factors controlling the perceptual dimension.

I will discuss some other factors that affect sensation and perception in the next few posts.

The author, Dr. Ranee Kaur Banerjee consults under the brand Expressions@Work to create and deliver learning and development programs in communication and soft skills.