The nature has endowed the ability to feel and feel all living beings on earth, but the ability to perceive what is happening requires not only the nervous system, but also more highly developed functions. Psychology studies a wide range of mental processes, including human sensations and perceptions. These concepts are often used as equivalent and interchangeable in speech, but within the framework of the scientific approach, each of them has its own characteristics.
Definition
Sensation is the primary stage of a sensorimotor reaction. And it is connected with perception with strong threads. Both phenomena act as intermediaries in the transfer of the environment, which exists regardless of consciousness, based on the impact on the senses: this unites them.
But in psychology, perception is not just a sensual image of an object or phenomenon, but also its awareness. It characterizes a diverse range of relationships, resulting in meaningful situations. So, perception can safely be called a form of cognition of reality.
Perception formation
The development of perception is inextricably linked with activity. Solving various tasks, a person at the same time inevitably perceives the surrounding. And in this process, a person can not only see, but also look or even peer, not only hear, but also listen, and possibly listen. Thus, he performs certain actions aimed at correlating the image of perception with the object, which are necessary first for realizing the object itself, and then for its practical application.
This is the most significant difference between perception and sensations: the ability not only to respond to a sensory stimulus, but also to penetrate consciousness into a particular quality belonging to a certain subject. Therefore, this phenomenon provides a sufficiently high development not only of sensory activity, but also of motor functions.
So, on the example of the artist’s creative work, the connection between perception and activity is especially vivid: the contemplation of the surrounding space by the artist and the subsequent image in the picture are components of a single process.
Sensation as the basis of perception
Any perception passes through an introductory stage of recognition of an object, which is based on sensory indicators of sensations transmitted by the senses. And they, in turn, respond to external irritations. This makes both phenomena related to each other.
But perception is not just a collection of sensations. It is a rather complex holistic process, qualitatively different from those initial feelings that form its basis. In addition, it includes the accumulated experience, the perception of the perceiver, as well as emotions.
So, in psychology, perception is a unity of sensory and semantic, sensation and thinking. But at the same time, the mind relies on the impression, using it as a starting point for its further development.
Sensation characteristic
In order to better understand what is the foundation of perception as a mental phenomenon, it is necessary to turn to the nature of the sensations themselves, which are dependent on external stimuli and, reflecting their individual features, have a number of certain properties:
- One of the main characteristics is a quality threshold. For example, for visual sensations - the contrast of color, for auditory ones - the timbre of the voice, etc.
- The quantitative threshold, or intensity, is determined by the strength of the stimulus and the state of the receptor itself.
- Spatial localization - correlation with a specific part of the body that is exposed to the stimulus.
- Adaptation is the adaptation of the senses to the stimulus. For example, adaptation to any smell that constantly surrounds.
Perceptual properties
Unlike sensations, perception reflects the totality of all the properties of an object, that is, considering it as a whole, without breaking it apart. And at the same time, it has a number of its specific features:
- Integrity - recognition of the whole object in its individual parts, the ability to perceive the whole picture. For example, seeing a trunk, a person completes the image of an elephant in his mind.
- Constancy - lies in the constancy of form, size, color under varying conditions of their perception, in the ratio of objective reality and a specific object in it.
- Objectivity - recognition is not a set of sensations, but directly an object that has a specific function.
- Meaningfulness - awareness of the value of the subject, the inclusion of the process of thinking, analysis and evaluation.
Thus, the properties of perception and the properties of sensation, on the one hand, are heterogeneous in nature, and on the other hand, without the adoption of that foundation built from individual characteristics, it is impossible to form such a mental phenomenon as perception. This whole consists of transformed parts passed through the prism of awareness and experience.
Classification of sensations
Since sensations are generated by a certain physical stimulus, they are divided according to the level and modality of the effect on various receptors:
- Organic - associated with organic needs: thirst and hunger, breathing, etc. Sensations of this kind, as a rule, have a relatively bright emotional richness and are often unaware. So, diseases are associated not only with pain, but also with an emotional state: heart problems with a deficit of joy, love, fears; liver problems - with irritability and anger.
- Static - indications of the state of the body in space, active and passive movements, as well as the movements of individual parts of the body relative to each other.
- Kinesthetic - caused by excitations emanating from receptors located in the joints and muscles. Kinesthesia is closely related to vision: hand-eye coordination plays an important role in movements controlled by vision.
- Skin - pain, temperature, touch, pressure.
- Tactile - unlike touch, are active in nature, because there is a deliberate palpation of the subject, coupled with the impact on him. When you touch, cognition of the world occurs in the process of movement.
- Olfactory and gustatory - of particular importance are the formation of an emotional environment that causes a person to have pleasant or unpleasant sensations.
- Auditory - have a dual character, in other words, a person perceives sound with both ears. So, people with deafness in one ear find it difficult to determine the source and direction of the sound.
- 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 can excite the nervous system, others can enter into a trance, etc. For example, blue is usually associated with a blue sky, orange with fire, etc.
Varieties of perception
Unlike sensation, perception is divided into the following types:
- The perception of space, size and form is considered a product of human development and personal experience. In the visual perception of space, in the first place, deep sensations are important when sensory and thought processes work together.
- The perception of movement, on the one hand, arises as a result of the merging of a set of visual sensations, and on the other, it is a specific experience that can vary depending on the perception of the objects themselves in movement, that is, is formed on the basis of acquired experience, and not within certain patterns.
- Perception of time - its basis is the feeling of duration, which is influenced by a subjective assessment of what is happening. And the experiences, in turn, are due to the rhythm of the life processes themselves and the organic sensations of man. So, for example, in relation to the past, saturated with memorable events, time is perceived as a long period, and as short enough if it was not filled with something interesting. In contrast to the perception of the present, when boring periods last forever, and a vivid episode flies in an instant.
Types of sensations and types of perception are very closely intertwined, but only the categories of the first phenomenon are the basis for creating the second, that is, having vision and hearing, a person is capable of perceiving space, movement, etc.
Impaired perception
Adequate perception of a person is determined by the fact that, perceiving any object or phenomenon, he, as a rule, is aware of it as an isolated case from general practice. For this reason, perception depends on mental operations. As far as a person understands the surrounding world, so much he perceives it, i.e., through the prism of his worldview and acquired experience.
With various kinds of mental disorders, there is a violation of the above processes of sensation and perception, and, accordingly, a distortion in the reflection of reality. So, there is a disorder of the “body scheme”: the problem is the awareness of the shape, position of one’s own body, its disintegration into parts, the feeling of excess extremities, and the like.
Violation of the integrity of sensations of different modality can lead to an inadequate perception of reality, such as, for example, the sounds of speech coming from a person do not correlate with the person himself, but are perceived as two separate objects.
There are a number of different deviations in perception: illusions, hallucinations, agnosia and others, but all of them initially represent the problem of accepting any feelings, emotions, unpleasant sensations, since it is on the basis of sensory data that a person reveals the meaning and significance of phenomena and events.
Synesthesia as a special way of perceiving the world
Synesthesia is a phenomenon of perception in which an impression specific to one sense organ is combined with another complementary sensation or image.
So, for example, phrases like: “salty joke,” “bitter reproach,” “stinging speech,” “sweet lie,” and the like, take on a very concrete tangible meaning. The most common type of synesthesia is the letter-color and number-color associations, when, for example, “6” causes an image of a yellow tint or the letter “B” is perceived as purple.
The version of the origin of this phenomenon says that in infancy all people are synaesthetes: certain neural connections initially maintain contact between the senses, and thus sounds and smells intertwine in the mind, for example, coloring the letters of the alphabet in different tones. A certain group of people has a similar feature of sensation and perception of the world around them that lasts a lifetime.
Perception exercise
Fruits of various colors are laid out in front of the subject, they can be of different types and textures. A person with closed eyes tries to give the maximum description to each of them: first, just fixing his feelings (cold, hot, smooth, rough, etc.), then trying to feel his color intuitively, and in the end, connecting thinking and experience, gives a complete characteristics of the object.
Such an experiment helps to understand the blurred boundary between two phenomena and to distinguish perception from sensations. So, in real life, this makes it possible to clearly realize when a person simply senses a phenomenon, an event, not taking into account assessment and reasoning, and when thinking is included in the process.