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In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and
organizing sensory information. Methods of studying perception range from essentially biological or physiological approaches, through psychological approaches to the often abstract 'thought-experiments' of mental philosophy.
The senses
Human perception depends on the five senses of Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste and
Touch along with the often neglected sense of proprioception. Beyond these, some believe in the existence of other senses such as precognition (or foretelling) or telepathy (direct communication between human minds/brains without transmittance through any other medium). While
these are controversial, it is known that animals of other species possess senses that are not found in humans: for example, some
fish can detect electric fields,
while pigeons have been shown to detect magnetic fields and to use them in homing.
History of the study of perception
The subjective nature of perception, and hence of cognition, has attracted the
attention of philosophers since antiquity, for example in the qualia which have been
known since the Sufi thinkers, or in the extreme idealism of George Berkeley.
Perception is one of the oldest fields within scientific psychology, and there are correspondingly many theories about its
underlying processes. The oldest quantitative law in psychology is the Weber-Fechner Law, which quantifies the relationship between the intensity of physical stimuli and their
perceptual effects. It was the study of perception that gave rise to the Gestalt
school of psychology, with its emphasis on holistic approaches.
Perception and reality
Many cognitive psychologists hold that, as we move about
in the world, we create a model of how the world works. That is, we sense the objective
world, but our sensations map to percepts, and these percepts are provisional, in the same sense that scientific hypotheses are provisional (cf. in
the scientific method). As we acquire new information, our
percepts shift. Abraham Pais' biography refers to the 'esemplastic' nature
of imagination. In the case of visual perception, some people can actually see the percept shift in their mind's eye. Others who are not picture thinkers, may not necessarily perceive the 'shape-shifting' as their world changes. The
'esemplastic' nature has been shown by experiment: an ambiguous image has multiple interpretations on the perceptual level. Just as one object can give
rise to multiple percepts, so an object may fail to give rise to any percept at all: if the percept has no grounding in a
person's experience, the person may literally not perceive it.
These confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies
such as camouflage, and also in biological mimicry, for example by Peacock butterflies, whose
wings bear eye markings that birds respond to as though they were the eyes of a dangerous predator.
See also
External links
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