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Sensation, Attention, and Perception Explained

The document discusses sensation, attention, and perception, highlighting that sensation is the awareness of stimuli from various sensory organs. Attention is described as the focus of awareness with functions such as alerting, selectivity, and vigilance. Perception is defined as the interpretation of sensation combined with meaning, influenced by Gestalt laws that govern visual information processing.

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9 views2 pages

Sensation, Attention, and Perception Explained

The document discusses sensation, attention, and perception, highlighting that sensation is the awareness of stimuli from various sensory organs. Attention is described as the focus of awareness with functions such as alerting, selectivity, and vigilance. Perception is defined as the interpretation of sensation combined with meaning, influenced by Gestalt laws that govern visual information processing.

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chandan kumar y
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Sensation, Attention and Perception

Dr. D. Dutta Roy, Ph.D.(Psy.)


LECTURE NOTES ON SENSATION,ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION :PROBLEMS OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
PERFORMING ART THERAPY CENTRE
RABINDRABHARATI UNIVERSITY
KOLKATA
12.1.2011

SENSATION

Sensation refers to awareness of stimulus. Stimulus refers to any thing that elicits response. This may be
internal(changes in organ system) or external changes (changes in surroundings). There are five sensory
organs excited by different types of stimuli.

1. Visual organ (Eye): Light


2. Auditory organ (Ear): Sound
3. Gustatory organ (Tongue):Chemical
4. Olfactory organ (Nose): Chemical
5. Cutaneous organ (Skin): Temperature,pressure

There is another organ named as kinesthetic organ excited by movement sensation. There are different
attributes of sensation as
1. Quality: Generic quality (light and sound), specific quality (red, blue)
2. Quantity: Low and high frequency of sound
3. Localization: sensing pressure across different areas over skin

It will be misnomer to assume that any change in physical stimulus on physical scale causes same
amount of change in the response scale. This is illustrated in problems of psychophysics. Psychophysics
is a study to understand relation between changes in physical stimulus on physical scale and changes in
response pattern on response scale. It discusses three types of thresholds of sensation as absolute,
differential and terminal threshold.

Attention
When individual focuses awareness to something, attention takes place. Attention is focus of awareness.
It has few functions like:

1. alerting: It is physical and mental preparedness to focus on specific stimulus.


2. selective function: Selectivity refers to a process by which attention is focused on stimulus or stimuli of
ongoing interest and other stimuli are ignored.
3. limited capacity channel:limited capacity to carry out the task. We can process one task at a time. This
causes serial processing.
4. vigilance: maintaining attention on a task continuously, for some
time, is called vigilance or sustained attention. It has been found that attending to a task for long is taxing,
particularly if the task is monotonous and it leads to decrease in performance.

PERCEPTION
Perception occurs when sensation carries certain meaning. This can be explained in this formula:

Perception = sensation+meaning

Sensation = perception - meaning


visual perception must be viewed as an active process by which the visual
information is interpreted and grouped according to a large number of rules.
These Gestalt laws allow a phenomenological interpretation of the interactions
between visual features that lead to the perception of composite objects.
These laws are given below:

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