A whole topic in psychology is devoted to the study of perception, in the section on mental processes. She immediately follows the topic of sensations, as the simplest mental process to a more complex one. The topic describes perception, its types and properties. Each of this knowledge cannot be indifferent, since perception as a mental process is unique, its features are amazing, they are talked about, this knowledge is used in their work by designers, fashion designers, fashionistas, psychotherapists, manufacturers of various products, architects, writers, composers - all of them whose activities are associated with exposure to humans through objects of their labor.
Concept of perception
In the perception of objects of the world (and internal organs, by the way, too) sometimes all the senses are involved , and hence the sensations that arise in them, and sometimes only some. But psychologists do not get tired of repeating that the process of perception is not limited only to the sum of sensations: visual, auditory, smell, touch, sense of balance, movement. When combined, these sensations give rise to a completely different mental process, which is based on the individual characteristics of a person, and therefore, instead of the total amount of images, a different conception 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 the vertical lines visually lengthen the object (i.e. the object only seems longer). When due to smaller details in the background, the object in the center seems smaller than exactly the same, but against the background of larger parts.
Unique perception property
The second reason for distortion of reality lies in the unique property inherent in this mental process - apperception. It consists in the dependence of perception on a person’s life experience, his values, and 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 psychology section “perception, its types and properties”, the following are distinguished: objectivity (during the process of perception in the mind an image of a certain object is created, and not its individual properties according to the sensations of human organs); constancy (immutability in time and space of the perceived image: even if an object changes position, it moves in our consciousness, its characteristics, once perceived, do not change); selectivity (isolation from the total mass of specific objects); meaningfulness (the process of perception is associated with thinking, the perceived object immediately correlates with what he saw earlier or with the knowledge gained throughout his life about this category of objects); structural (a person recognizes a changed object or phenomenon if its structural elements are preserved).
Types of perception
A large place in the topic "perception, its types and properties" is given to classification. As a criterion for dividing into types of results of the perception process take the spatio-temporal characteristics of the phenomena. Thus, perception is divided into: perception of time, space and movement. Using these mechanisms, perception allows you to accurately (well or almost exactly) determine the remoteness of an object from a person, his movement, the approximate speed of movement in space, and even the passage of time. Several interesting facts are associated with the latter type of perception. The passage of time seems slower if we are waiting for something. If we do something exciting, interesting, it “runs” faster, etc.
The perception characteristic is easily compiled from the above information, and this information is useful for the practical application of psychology knowledge in various areas of professional activity, as was said at the beginning of the article.
The topic “perception, its types and properties” is included in the general psychology discipline section, and the knowledge provided in the article is enough to analyze this topic, but the study of all the features of perception as a unique mental process does not end there. For example, an analysis of the perception of literary or musical works by most representatives of humanity (which genres are most in demand and due to what psychological characteristics of a particular nationality) ...