Chapter 4 Overview

Chapter Overview:

In this chapter you are going to learn about sensation and perception. Most people believe that we have five senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste). Try this little online quiz to test your senses. What most people do not realize is that we have 2 other senses (kinaesthetic sense and vestibular sense). Each sensory receptor receives information from our environment and then our perception of this information is what we experience (see, hear, feel, smell, taste). Differentiating between a sensation and a perception is key to your understanding of the chapter.

• A sensation is the process of receiving, converting, and transmitting sensory information from our environment to our brain.
• A perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting this sensory information.

In other words, you may see a computer in front of you, but how do you know it is a computer and not a TV or a chair? Your eyes bring in the sensory information of vision, while the information that your eyes get are sent to your brain and your brain tells you that is a computer. You may be asking, how does your brain know that it is a computer? Well, you will just have to read the chapter to find an answer.

This chapter is divided into 4 sections:

4.1    Understanding Sensation

4.2    How We See and Hear

4.3    Our Other Senses

4.4    Understanding Perception