Sensation and Perception: Understanding Sensory Processes

Posted on Mar 5, 2025 in Physical Education

Sensation and Perception

Sensation: The process that occurs when a stimulus is detected by receptors in the sense organs. It involves basic, immediate experiences caused by simple, isolated stimuli.

Perception: The thought process related to and influenced by learning and memory, leading to an understanding of a situation.

Attention: The adjustment of sensory organs and the body, resulting in a clear and vivid consciousness of certain stimuli or ideas, and provoking a disposition to act.

Types of Attention

  • Spontaneous Attention: Develops without being influenced by trends or education.
  • Voluntary Attention: Directed by conscious decisions.
  • Passive (Involuntary) Attention: Imposed on consciousness.
  • Spontaneous Acquired Attention: Produced by the will but ultimately becomes natural or chosen.

Factors that Attract Attention

  • Stimulus Intensity
  • Change: Perceptual changes capture the individual’s mind.
  • Stimulus Size
  • Repetition
  • Organic State: Internal drives that influence the response to stimulation.
  • Interest
  • Social Suggestion
  • Course of Thought

Thresholds

  • Threshold: The minimum intensity of physical energy required to produce any sensation.
  • Absolute Threshold: The minimum intensity of physical energy needed to produce a sensation.
  • Relative Threshold: The amount of stimulation that must be added or subtracted to cause a noticeable change.

Sensory Organs

Classification by Form of Operation

  • Mechanoreceptors: Stimulated by mechanical action.
  • Thermoreceptors: Stimulated by changes in temperature.
  • Chemoreceptors: Require a stimulus that generates a chemical reaction.
  • Photoreceptors: Stimulated by light.

Classification by Localization of Stimuli

  • Interoceptors: Stimulated by sensations originating within the body.
  • Proprioceptors: Capture stimuli in the joints.
  • Exteroceptors: Capture stimuli on the body’s surface (e.g., odor, taste, touch, pressure).
  • Telereceptors: Capture stimuli at a distance (e.g., sounds, smells, colors).

The Human Senses

There are 11 human senses:

Vision, hearing, taste, smell, somatosensory, vestibular, and kinesthetic.

  • Vision:
    • Pupil: A small opening that allows light to penetrate.
    • Iris: Regulates the pupil by expanding and contracting it.
    • Lens: Focuses light and modifies the curve, projecting it onto the retina.
  • Hearing: Involves the eardrum, hammer, anvil, stirrup, cochlea, and hair cells.
  • Somatosensory Senses: Detect physical contact, pressure, heat, cold, and pain.
  • Chemical Senses: Taste and smell.
  • Vestibular Senses: Provide a sense of direction and are responsible for the movement and orientation of the head and body.
  • Kinesthetic Sense: Informs about the relative position of body parts during movement.

Processes for Interpreting Sensations

  • Evocation: Our minds perceive what we expect to perceive.
  • Rectification: Sensations reaching our mind are modified to reflect how we interpret a given stimulus.
  • Organization: Data provided by our senses are continuously organized.

Perceptual Organization

  • Gestalt: We perceive objects as well-organized wholes rather than isolated parts.
  • Theory of Unconscious Inference: Knowledge is based on experience.
Binocular Cues
  • Convergence
  • Binocular or retinal disparity