The Importance Of Sensation And Perception

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Sensation and perception are two processes that interconnect to allow one to gain sense of the surrounding world. Sensation, which is the reception of an external stimulus through sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound, is the initial step of this process, whereas perception is the second step, where interpretation of this data is converted into a mental representation, which is then capable of being used by the individual. Sensation turns into perception through transduction, which is the conversion of external stimuli into signals that are then sent to the brain and analyzed. In the Sensory Challenge, the five senses are tested, providing a score at the end that indicates how acute these senses truly are in that individual. The Sensory Challenge …show more content…

The severity of taste often depends on the individual, with some people being super-tasters. These people possess more taste buds, or “organs of taste transduction” (Schacter, Psychology, 2014). As stated, taste buds facilitate the transduction of signals sent by taste receptor cells, which sense the presence of food molecules in saliva. The Sensory Challenge gave three choices of food combinations, the objective being to choose the most desirable combination. The correct choices were combinations with opposing “tastes,” such as sweet and …show more content…

Ossicles then amplify the sound waves and pass them along the middle ear, where, eventually, fluid carries these waves to auditory receptors that transmit this signal to the auditory nerve and, therefore, the brain (Schacter, Psychology, 2014). The Senses Challenge “challenged” the perception of the perception of sound through a test in which a piano octave is played, except the last note is the same as the first note. The brain expects the scale to be completed, so one thinks that the last note they hear is the last note in the sequence of the scale, not the

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