Vision
The ability to see including color perception.Hearing
The ability to hear sound. Most humans can hear sound between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz.Touch
The ability to sense the physical world though physical contact with it.Haptic Perception
The combination of touch + time whereby humans can understand the movement of things they are touching. For example, the ability to perceive the shaking of an aircraft in turbulence.Taste
The ability to sense the composition of a substance with the mouth, particularly food and beverages.Smell
The ability to sense the composition of the air with the nose. This greatly influences taste and appears to play a role in memory.Time
The ability to sense the passage of time and to estimate how much time has passed between events.Self
The sense that you exist and a general awareness of your body and mind.Agency
The sense that you are in control of your body and mind and that you have some limited ability to influence the external world.Body Position
Awareness of the position of parts of the body. For example, awareness of where your legs are at a point in time as you run. This relies on senses known as the somatosensory system.Gravity
Awareness of the weight of the body and the effects of gravity. This relies on senses known as the vestibular system which is part of the inner ear.Speed, Acceleration & Direction
Awareness of the speed and acceleration of the body. For example, an individual on an uncontrolled snowboard who can sense a significant rate of acceleration. Also relies on the vestibular system.Balance & Motion
Perception of the stability of the body as it moves through space and time. This relies on multiple senses such as vision, somatosensory and vestibular systems.Temperature
The ability to sense the temperature of parts of your body and things that you touch. Relies on the somatosensory system.Internal Senses
The ability to sense your organs. For example, the ability to sense that you are in need of oxygen and must breath or that you need to go to the bathroom.Pain
An unpleasant sense provided by the central nervous system that signals problems with the body.Intuition
The ability to sense knowledge that doesn't originate with the conscious mind. The ancient Greeks including Plato and Socrates viewed this as a connection to some type of universal presence. Modern science tends to view intuition as the product of unconscious thought, although this isn't currently well understood.Salience
Salience is the ability to automatically perceive what might be important in a sea of sensory information. For example, a bicyclist who picks up the sound of a car behind them from a great deal of city noise.Social Perception
The ability to sense social information independently of conscious thought. For example, the ability to intuitively sense emotions possibly using cues such as body language and facial expressions.Overview
Perception is the ability to make sense of the world by detecting and interpreting information. This includes the mechanisms that detect raw information such as eyes that detect light and color. Perception is also a cognitive process that converts this raw information into meaning, often in real time.
Summary
Perception is the ability to sense information including low level things such as sound and high level things such as voices or the mood of a room.
| Definitions: Perception | ||
Type | ||
Definition (1) | Cognition that processes sensory information. | |
Definition (2) | Awareness of the self and the external world. | |
Related Concepts | ||
