NCERT Class 11 Psychology Sensory Attentional and Perceptual Processes

Sensory, Attentional and Percentual processes

Introduction

n the previous chapters you have already learnt how we respond to various stimuli present in the external and internal environment with the help of our receptors. While some of these receptors are clearly observable (for example, eyes or ears), others lie inside our body, and are not observable without the help of electrical or mechanical devices. This chapter will introduce you to various receptors that collect a variety of information from the external and internal worlds.

The focus will be particularly on the structure and function of eye and ear, including some interesting  processes associated with vision and audition. You will also know some importantthings about attention, which helps us to notice and register the information that our sense organs carry to us. Different types of attention will be described along with the factors that influence them. At the end, we will discuss the process of perception that allows us to understand the world in a meaningful way. You will also have an opportunity to know how we are sometimes deceived by certain types of stimuli such as figures and pictures.

KNOWING THE WORLD

The world in which we live is full of variety of objects, people, and events. Look at the room you are sitting in. You will find so many things around. Just to mention a few, you may see your table, your chair, your books, your bag,  your watch, pictures on the wall and manyother things. Their sizes, shapes, and colours are also different. If you move to other rooms of your house, you will notice several other new things (e.g., pots and pans, almirah, TV). If you go beyond your house, you will find still many more things that you generally know about (trees, animals, buildings). Such experiences are very common in our day-today life. We hardly have to make any efforts to know them.

If someone asks you, “How can you say that these various things exist in your room, or house, or in the outside environment?”, you will most probably answer that you see or experience them all around you. In doing so, you are trying to tell the person that the knowledge about various objects becomes possible with the help of our sense organs (e.g., eyes, ears). These organs collect information not only from the external world, but also from our own body. The information collected by our sense organs forms the basis of all our knowledge.

The sense organs register several kinds of information about various objects. However, in order to be registered, the objects and their qualities (e.g., size, shape, colour) must be able to draw our attention. The registered information must also be sent to the brain that constructs some meaning out of them. Thus, our knowledge of the worldaround us depends on three basic processes, called sensation, attention, and perception. These processes are highly interrelated; hence, they are often considered as different elements of the same process, called cognition.

NATURE AND VARIETIES OF STIMULUS

The external environment that surrounds us contains a wide variety of stimuli. Some of them can be seen (e.g., a house), while some can be heard only (e.g., music). There are several others that we can smell (e.g., fragrance of a flower) or taste (e.g., sweets). There are still others that we can experience by touching (e.g., softness of a cloth). All these stimuli

KNOWING THE WORLD

provide us with various kinds of information. We have very specialised sense organs to deal with these different stimuli. As human beings we are bestowed with a set of seven sense organs. These sense organs are also known as sensory receptors or information gathering systems, because they receive or gather information from a variety of sources. Five of these sense organs collect information from the external world. These are eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin.

While our eyes are primarily responsible for vision, ears for hearing, nose for smell, and tongue for taste, skin is responsible for the experiences of touch, warmth, cold, and pain. Specialised receptors of warmth, cold, and pain are found inside our skin. Besides these five external sense organs, we have also got two deep senses. They are called kinesthetic and vestibular systems. 

They provide us with important information about our body position and movement of body parts related to each other. With these seven sense organs, we register ten different variety of stimuli. For example, you may notice whether a light is bright or dim, whether it is yellow, red or green, and so on. With sound you may notice whether it is loud or faint, whether it is melodious or distracting, and so on. These different qualities of stimuli are also registered by our sense organs.

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 11 Psychology - Sensory, Attentional and Perceptual Processes