Sensation and Perception

Sensation and perception are two processes which play a large role in how we see reality. While they are intimately related, their roles are fundamentally MUCH different. Let's come up with two operation definitions.

Sensation refers to the passive process of taking in information from the environment through the senses into the brain.

Perception refers to the active process of actually interpreting the information.


      A plethora of information is probably being sensed by you at this moment. You feel that room temperature? Maybe the light is to bright coming from your TV? Is someone talking near you? Do you hear something in the distance, or the smell of your deodorant? We are constantly absorbing input from our environment. Well the input that we can noticed anyway.

      You can't see radio-waves or feel dust-mites crawling on you. It should also be noted it may be hard to sense multiple input from the same sense.Try listening in on the conversation the girl across from you is having in a noisy room. Or maybe you can spot out the smell of roses in a flower shop. We only sense that which we are able to.

      It should be also while their are five main senses you have others as well. In fact some sources suggest that humans have up to 20 senses. Other examples being sense equilibrioception (balance and acceleration) , nociception(pain) , thermoception(heat and temperature) magnetoception(magnetic fields) as well as time and pressure


     Now the process of perceiving is a bit more complex. It is based on the interpretation of information. The way we perceive things is different from other animals, even other people. Have you ever had a time where you and a group of people saw something for an instance and when it came to describing it you had 10 different stories. That's because even though you got the same input, your brains perceived the object differently. Your eye's photo-receptors were aligned to see different things.
   
     Another example would be eyewitness testimony. Let's say a man robbed a woman in broad daylight. He runs past 7 people who saw the attack. One witness might say he was 5'8 with a medium build and brown hair. Another witness who might say he was 5'7 with a medium build and black hair. One witness might say he had light brown eyes another might say dark brown. One might say darker tone, another might say he was lighter toned. This is just a common example on people can perceive different thing