What are the steps in the perception process

Introduction to Perception

Perception is defined as a set of processes used by humans to make sense of all the stimuli that we face. It is basically an interpretation about the situation we are in and it can range from the smell of the garden you are in to the sight of beautiful birds flying up in the sky. It all depends on how we interpret all these different sensations. These senses are nothing but sensory impressions we get from the stimuli in the world around us. It is perception which enables us and gives us the ability to navigate the world. It helps make decisions about everything, from which T-shirt to wear, which restaurant to go to or how fast to run away from a tiger.

Suppose we close your eyes. The thoughts that run in your mind are nothing but accumulation of data. And in this data, majority of it is perception. The things you see, smell, hear and feel and you make sense out of it and this process of using your stimuli and getting an impression and making an interpretation is perception. It is an unconscious process which keeps happening as and when we come across a stimuli.

The Perception Process

This process of perception is such that it always begins with a stimulus which happens every second around us and then it ends with what we interpret from that stimulus. The very amazing thing about it is that it is an unconscious process which happens at a subtle level thousand times a day and we don’t even realize it. Now one may ask what an unconscious process is, so to make it clear an unconscious process is simply one that happens without awareness or intention.
For example, the brain need not be told that it is hungry, or it is cold outside.

What are the Stages involved in Perception process ?

Perception has three stages, namely selection, organization and interpretation. We will see each of the following in detail.

Selection

Selection comes into the picture when there are many things and we can’t take in so much as the capacity of the brain is less therefore, we have to select the stimuli. That was in layman words. Talking about perception, the world that we live in is filled with an infinite number of stimuli that we might attend to, but our brains do not have the resources to pay attention to everything. So, our first step is Selection which means selecting what we would like to attend to. This is usually unconscious, but sometimes intentional decision. The stimuli that we select , it may be smell, sight, voice , touch or any sense perception, that becomes an attended stimuli. This is selection, the very first process of what we call as perception.

Organization

The choice that we make sets off a series of reactions in our brain once we have chosen to attend to a stimulus in the environment. This might be unconscious but most of the time its conscious. The process of the nerves is called the neural process and it starts with the activation of our sensory receptors. These receptors are nothing but touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. After the activation, the receptor transforms the energy into an activity which after being tr transmitted to our brains, becomes a mental represented created by us. This representation is called as precept. At a single point in time, we can create multiple precepts.

Interpretation

The last stage is of interpretation which happens after we have attended to a stimulus. After the organization of the information that our brain has received we interpret it in a way that makes sense using our existing information about the world. And then we turn it to something we can analyze and understand. This happens unconsciously thousands of times a day.
Thus, to conclude in a simple and apt way we can say that perception is organizing, identifying and then interpreting the information we get from the various stimuli and then represent and understand the world around.

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  1. Select
  2. Sort
  3. Interpret
  4. Reference

All disagreements between human beings occur as a result of differing realities generated from the same environment. The perception process is the method we use to create our reality from our environment. We all create our realities of people, events, and things in our environment internally using the three steps of perception: selecting, sorting and interpreting data from the external environment.

Perception is an individual act. There is no such thing as two people having identical life experiences; therefore, there are no two people who perceive a situation in exactly the same manner.

Each day we are bombarded by a wide variety of environmental messages. Some of the messages we pay attention to, while others simply go right past us. The perception process is the method by which we take these environmental messages, select certain ones, attach meanings to them, and finally create a picture of our environment. That picture is what we call our reality.

Although different sources explain the perception process using different numbers of stages, here we will describe three overall steps in the perception process. In this order:

  • First, we select cognitions from our environment.
  • Second, we sort and organize those cognitions.
  • Third, we interpret our environment by attaching meaning to our cognitions.
What are the steps in the perception process
11.3.1: "Perception Process" (CC BY 4.0; J. Marteney)

All five of our senses (sight, smell, hearing, feeling, and taste) are like windows to the world through which information passes from the environment to us. At any moment in time we are exposed to more information than we can process. Are you aware of your breathing or the temperature in the room or if you are hungry or tired? Are you even aware of the existence of your feet? Before I mentioned your feet, your concentration was on reading this book. You blocked out other cognitions from your environment. That is, you had not selected the data about your breathing, your being hungry, or your feet to enter the perception process.

Select

Select is the first stage of perceptions and acts as a filtering mechanism. When we say select, we don’t mean just a conscious selection effort. Selection of cognitions is actually more of an awareness process. In the Process of Perception graphic, we come upon an accident and become flooded with cognitions. Most of the data we are exposed to is filtered out, while some is selected to pass on to our awareness. From all of the thousands of stimuli we are bombarded with at any one moment, we choose some to enter our awareness. Intense, repetitious, or changing stimuli attract our attention and shape what we notice , or select, and what we ignore.

If you have ever visited friends who live near a busy street or a railroad track, you’ll notice that they aren’t even aware of the noise. Their selecting filter has screened out that data, as it is now unimportant to them.

Sort

Sort is the second phase of perception, where we organize and prioritize our selected cognitions. We organize and prioritize the data so that certain cognitions stand out over other cognitions. This organization is based on our experiences which may not be shared by others. Each of us has our own unique method of organizing.

You will organize the cognitions you receive from the accident in the graphic differently than another person might. You might be a bicyclist and focus on the cognitions from the rider. You might know someone who works for a fire station and organize your cognitions from how they are performing. We all organize cognitions differently so that certain features which stand out for one person, may not be the ones the other person placed high in his or her sorting process.

Interpret

Interpret is the third phase of the perception process. Here is where we add meaning to the organized cognitions. That is, we attach a meaning to the data that has been selected and sorted. At this point in the perception process we have an ordered collection of cognitions, which makes no sense and has no meaning. In this phase, we search our memory and assign meaning to the data based on its similarity to our previous experiences.

Another way of looking at this is that you can never really encounter an environment completely objective. You eventually attach meaning to the data, using your experiences from past situations that you have stored in your memory. Communication scholars Hans Toch and Malcolm MacLean described this process when they stated,

“We can never encounter a stimulus before some meaning has been assigned to it by some perceiver. Therefore, each perception is the beneficiary of all previous perceptions; in turn, each new perception leaves its mark on the common pool. A perception is thus a link between the past which gives it its meaning and the future which it helps to interpret.” 1

This quotation begins to explain how our life experiences are drawn upon to interpret the current information that is being perceived. That interpretation, in turn, is used to explain other perceptions of a future environment. This process gives us an understanding of our environment, which we call our "reality."

Reference

  1. Toch, Hans and Malcolm S. MacLean Jr. "Perception, Communication and Educational Research: A Transactional View." Audio Visual Communication Review, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 55-77. Accessed 6 November 2019.


This page titled 11.3: The Perception Process is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Jim Marteney (ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)) .

What are the 4 stages of the perception process?

Stages of Perception.
Stimulation (understanding stimuli exist).
Organization (comparing existing knowledge with the stimuli).
Interpretation (making meaning of the stimuli).
Memory (Storage of one's experience about the stimuli).
Recall (Using the stored knowledge in the future).

What are the 5 stages of the perception process?

There are five states of perception, which are: stimulation, organization, interpretation, memory, and recall.

What are the steps in the process of perception quizlet?

selection..
organization..
interpretation..
negotiation..

Which is the first step in process of perception?

Selecting is the first part of the perception process, in which we focus our attention on certain incoming sensory information.