Nature endowed all living beings on earth with the ability to feel and feel, but the ability to perceive what is happening requires the presence of not only the nervous system, but also more highly developed functions. Psychology deals with the study of 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 a scientific approach, each of them has its own characteristics.
Definition
Sensation is the primary stage of the sensorimotor reaction. And it is connected with strong threads with perception. Both phenomena act as mediators in the transfer of the environment that exists independently 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 that result in meaningful situations. Thus, perception can be safely called a form of cognition.reality.
Shaping Perception
The development of perception is inextricably linked with activity. Solving various problems, a person inevitably perceives the environment. 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 understanding 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 one or another quality belonging to a particular object. Therefore, such a phenomenon provides for a fairly high development of not only sensory, but also 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 goes through an introductory stage of object recognition, which is based on sensory indicators of sensations transmitted by the senses. And they, in turn, react to external stimuli. This makes both phenomena related to each other.
But perception is not just a collection of sensations. It is quite complexa process qualitatively different from those initial feelings that form its basis. In addition, it includes accumulated experience, the thinking of the perceiver, as well as emotions.
So, in psychology, perception is the unity of sensual 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.
Characterization of sensations
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 specific properties:
- One of the main characteristics is the quality threshold. For example, for visual sensations - color contrast, for auditory sensations - voice timbre, 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 - the adaptation of the senses to the stimulus. For example, adaptation to any smell that constantly surrounds.
Properties of perception
Unlike sensations, perception reflects the totality of all the properties of an object, that is, considering it as a whole, not splitting it into parts. And at the same time, it has a number of its own specificFeatures:
- Integrity - recognition of the whole object by 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 - is the constancy of form, size, color under varying conditions of their perception, in the ratio of objective reality and a certain object in it.
- Objectivity - recognition not of a set of sensations, but directly of an object that has a specific function.
- Meaningfulness - awareness of the meaning 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 accepting 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 impact 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 saturation and are often not conscious. So, diseases are associated not only with pain, but also with an emotive state: heart problems with a lack of joy, love, fears; liver problems withirritability and anger.
- Static - indications of 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.
- Kinesthetic - are 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 visually controlled movements.
- Dermal - pain, temperature, touch, pressure.
- Tactile - unlike touch, they are active in nature, since there is a deliberate palpation of an object, associated with an impact on it. With touch, knowledge of the world occurs in the process of movement.
- Olfactory and gustatory - they are of particular importance in the formation of an emotional environment that causes a person to have pleasant or unpleasant sensations.
- Auditory - are of a dual nature, in other words, a person perceives sound with both ears. So, people who are deaf in one ear find it difficult to determine the source and direction of the sound.
- Visual - any color affects 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 induce trance, etc. For example, blue is usually associated with blue skies, orange with fire, etc.
Varieties of perception
Unlike sensation, perception is subdividedinto the following types:
- Perception of space, size and shape - is considered a product of the development and personal experience of a person. In the visual perception of space, first of all, 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 hand, it is a specific experience that may vary depending on the perception of the objects themselves in motion, i.e., it 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 the subjective assessment of what is happening. And experiences, in turn, are due to the rhythm of the life processes themselves and the organic sensations of a person. So, for example, in relation to the past, full of memorable events, time is perceived as a long period, and as short enough if it was not filled with something interesting. Unlike the perception of the present, when boring periods drag on forever, and a bright episode flies by in a moment.
Types of sensations and types of perception are very tightly intertwined, but only the categories of the first phenomenon are precisely the basis for creating the second, that is, having sight and hearing, a person is capable of perceiving space, movement, etc.
Perceptual disturbance
Adequate perception of a person is determined by the fact that, perceiving an objector a phenomenon, he is usually 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 world around him, so he perceives it, that is, 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": a problem in understanding 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 modality can lead to inadequate perception of reality, as, for example, the sounds of speech coming 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, agnosias 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 perceptual phenomenon in which an impression specific to one sense organ is combined with another complementary sensation or image.
Thus, for example, phrases like: "s alty joke", "bitter rebuke", "stinging speech", "sweet lie" and the like -acquire a very concrete tangible meaning. The most common type of synesthesia is considered to be 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 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, a similar feature of feeling and perceiving the world around them persists all their lives.
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 of each of them: first, simply fixing his sensations (cold, hot, smooth, rough, etc.), then trying to intuitively feel its color, and in the end, connecting thinking and experience, gives a complete characteristic of the object.
Such an experiment helps to understand the blurred boundary between two phenomena and to distinguish perception from sensation. So, in real life, this makes it possible to clearly realize when a person simply feels some phenomenon, event, without taking into account assessment and reasoning, but when thinking is included in the process.
