Perception: its types and properties

A whole theme in psychology, in the section on mental processes, is devoted to the study of perception . It follows immediately the theme of sensations, as the simplest psychic process to a more complex one. The theme describes the perception, its types and properties. Each of these knowledge can not remain indifferent, since perception as a mental process is unique, its characteristics are amazing, they are said to be used by designers, fashion designers, women of fashion, psychotherapists, producers of various products, architects, writers, composers - all those , Whose activities are connected with the impact on a person through the objects of his labor.

The concept of perception

In the perception of the objects of the surrounding world (and internal organs, by the way, too), sometimes all sense organs are involved , and so are the sensations in them that are nascent, and sometimes only a few. But psychologists do not tire of repeating that the process of perception is not reduced only to the sum of sensations: visual, auditory, sense of smell, touch, sense of balance, movement. Connecting, these sensations give birth to a completely different mental process, which is based on individual characteristics of a person, and therefore, instead of the total sum of images, a different view of what is seen appears in the mind. Sometimes it reflects reality, sometimes it distorts it. Distortion occurs for two main reasons.

Illusions of perception

Psychologists have long noticed some patterns in the perception of all people. They are called illusions of perception. When vertical lines visually lengthen the object (i.e., the object only seems longer). When due to smaller details on the background, the object in the center seems smaller than exactly the same, but against the background of larger details.

Unique property of perception

The second reason for the distortions of reality lies in the unique property inherent in this mental process - apperception. It consists in the dependence of perception on the life experience of a person, his values, actual needs (we see only what we want to see). In a word, from the content of the psyche of this particular person.

Among the other properties of perception in the section of psychology, "perception, its types and properties" are distinguished by the following: objectivity (during the process of perception, the image of a certain object is created in the consciousness, and not its individual properties according to the sensations of human organs); Constancy (invariance in time and space of the perceived image: even if the subject changes position, moves, in our consciousness its characteristics, once perceived, do not change); Selectivity (isolation of the total mass of specific items); Meaningfulness (the process of perception is connected with thinking, the perceived subject immediately correlates with what he saw before or with knowledge obtained during life about this category of objects); Structure (a person recognizes a changed object or phenomenon if its structural elements are preserved).

Types of perception

A great place in the subject "perception, its types and properties" is given to classification. As a criterion for distinguishing between the types of results of the process of perception, the spatio-temporal characteristics of phenomena are taken. Thus, perception is divided into: the perception of time, space and motion. With the help of these mechanisms, perception allows you to accurately (or almost accurately) determine the distance from a person, the movement, the approximate speed of movement in space, and even the flow of time. The last kind of perception involves several interesting facts. The flow of time seems slower if we are in anticipation of something. If we are doing something interesting interesting, it "runs" faster, and so on.

From the above information, the perception characteristic is easily compiled, and this information is useful for the practical application of knowledge of psychology in various spheres of professional activity, as it was said at the beginning of the article.

The topic "perception, its types and properties" is included in the section of the discipline "general psychology", and the knowledge given in the article is sufficient to analyze this topic, but the study of all the features of perception as a unique mental process does not end there. For example, the analysis of the perception of literary or musical works by the majority of representatives of mankind (which genres are most in demand and because of what psychological features of one or another nationality) ...