Psychology of Perception Easy Way To Test Your Memory

The psychology of perception is a process through which an organism becomes aware of the world around it. Perception arouses sensations in our hearts. It creates sensory stimulation to know, research, and decide anything.

Broader Meaning

In a broader sense, perception is a process, whereby a meaning is given to a sensation produced by sensory stimulation. It is a means by which a person gains awareness about his surroundings and environment.

How Psychology of Perception Helps Us

This process helps us become aware of the world around us. It also indicates the ability of a person to distinguish an object from its general background. It usually refers to the way, the world looks, tastes, or smells.

Perception in psychology also implies observation, recognition, and discrimination. The perception is in a way a sensation plus its meaning. It is the basis of knowledge. It is the beginning of knowledge and our sensation gives the raw materials of knowledge and by perception that material is elaborated into definite knowledge of the external world. The foundation of a great part of our knowledge is sense perception and so education must train that sense. The perception may be subjective or objective.

Psychology of Perception: Perception Types

There are two types of perceptions-subjective and objective. Subjective perception may be faulty at times. Since perception is a component of knowledge, correct knowledge depends on correct perception. This perception takes place with the help of sensory organs. Thus we have visual perception, auditory perception, olfactory perception, and muscular perception. On the other hand, objective perception articulates thinking, reflecting, and materializing anything effectively.

Psychology of Perception: Disorders of Perception

Imperceptions: Psychology of Perception

Imperception is the inability to recognize anything. This may be due to the damage to the sense organs. For example-Anesthesia is imperception. This damage to sense organs could be either partial or complete, temporary or permanent. 

Illusion in Psychology of Perception

An illusion is a false perception. For example- Mistaking a rope for a snake; a tree for an animal, etc. are all due to illusion. The illusion occurs in mental diseases. The illusion may be either auditory or visual.

Hallucination in Psychology of Perception

Hallucination is an imaginary perception. It is a gross error of perception. For example- Seeing objects that do not exist;  hearing sounds that are false; seeing objects moving in a room; etc. Hallucination occurs in mental disorders. Sometimes it is present in certain psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia.

Laws of Perception or Principles of Perception

• Proximity or nearness of objects which we see near circles as a pair.
• Similarity or organization: most people see that a triangle is formed with 3 dots at the apex and two dots at the base.
• The symmetry or good figure.
• Continuity or good communication is when we tend to perceive a line that starts in one way as continuing in the same way. We can see a straight line as continuing on a straight course.
• Closure or the law of closure refers to a perceptual process that organizes the prescribed world by filling in gaps in stimulation.

Perception Depends

Perception depends on intact sensory organs and stimuli of these organs involve the organization of peripheral sensory events.

• On our learning education or knowledge about perceptions, and about the ability to perceive about others.
• On our expectations or perception, and
• On our motives, needs, and characteristics in a cognitive style.

Our needs, attitudes, and values influence our perception to a great extent. Subjective factors influencing attention and perception include- Needs, interests, desires, attitudes, and mood.

Properties of Stimulation: Psychology of Perception

Perception depends on sensory data, both from the environment and from the body. There is individual variation in perception. Our perception of other people and their points of view are very important factors in our behavior towards them. Social influence and group influence also play a great role in our changing behavior.

Intellectual Perception

A person’s intellectual perception, thinking, and reasoning can influence his behavior in a given situation. That is why each individual behaves in a way, which makes sense to them.

Stimulation in Psychology of Perception

Stimulus is a factor of stimulation, which gives rise to a person or object to do a job, to accomplish certain things or objects. Stimuli factors are proximity and similarity.

Sensation Works in Psychology of Perception

All our information regarding the outside world comes to us through the sense organs. They are the windows of our soul or the gateway of knowledge. Our eyes, ears, nose, skin, etc. are the main sense organs with which our brain is intimately connected. A sensation is a reaction or response aroused in us by the stimulus. A sensation is an elementary mental process. Every sense organ is so constituted that reacts only to a definite stimulus.

Psychology of Perception: How Every Perception Works on the Memory

Before we jump into the functions of memory, we should know the definition of memory.

Definition

Memory is an act of remembering something or anything of past events and experiences associated with effects. It is in fact, the storage of information from the experience closely related to learning. It is also the power of the ability to retain information and produce it in the process of learning and recalling it from time to time as it needs for the sake of knowledge and learning.

Factors Of Memory

Memory is also the process of receiving impressions. The factors involved in memory include registration or reception of impressions, retention conserving of experiences, reproduction or recall of past experiences, and recognition identifying the recalled ideas as known before. The memory formation and storage are done in the brain. The structures of the brain involved in memory formation and storage are hippocampus, cortex, and cerebellum.

Neurons and Cells of Memory

About one hundred billion neurons in the brain are involved in forming memories, including a layer of 4.6 million cells in the hippocampus. Human learning begins with the sense taking an environmental stimulus that is eventually transformed into the memory trace or memory link.

Types of Human Memory

STM and LTM

Human memory is based on the length of time involved. There are usually two kinds of memory; short-term memory (STM), which is immediate memory, about 0 to some minutes; and other is long-term memory (LTM). The recent memory, the recent memory, and the remote memory are all known as long-term memory.

Recent Memory

The recent memory refers only to recent events of the past few hours or days. We can test it by asking patients about the nature of their breakfast; particularly the type of food article they actually had in their breakfast, and also about the accompanying visitors they had in the hospital.

Recent memory refers to the retention of information over the past few months. We can find such a memory by asking the patients about the current events. Remote memory is the ability of an individual to remember events in the distant past. The patient with defects in recent memory is believed to have well-preserved remote memory. The memory theories have also described three other types of memory. They are episode memory, semantic memory, and implicit memory.

Episode Memory, Semantic Memory, and Implicit Memory

Episode Memory

The episode memory consists of long-term memories of things or events that happened to a person at any time or place. Such specific events could be even telephonic messages. The episodic memories are memories of episodes long or short of our lives. It is, actually, remembrances of things past, that make up our episodic memory.

Semantic Memory

Semantic memory is for knowledge and facts, which refer to the meaning of words, concepts, and rules for using them in language. This kind of memory is considered very stable.

Implicit Memory

Implicit memory is for automatic skills; such as speaking grammatically or driving a car. The semantic and implicit memories do not decline with age and persons continue to accumulate information over the lifetime. However, there is some decline in episodic memory with aging due to impairment of frontal lobe functioning.

Memory Test

We can accomplish our Memory Test with the help of the Wechsler memory scale, which yields a memory quotient. The memory functions can be assessed by comparing the patient’s statement with that given by the patient’s close associates. Besides, by putting various simple and common questions on general information, we can assess a patient’s state of memory easily to a great extent.

Difference of Memory Among Individuals

Some fortunate people can acquire information easily by retaining it for a long time with accuracy. Some can acquire it readily but, at the same time forget it quickly, and the reverse is also possible in some cases. Some lucky people have very good memory for names, figures, and dates; while others can learn languages pretty quickly and in a better way; but some others take a long to pick up languages. These memory differences are due to mental development at different stages.

Signs of Good Memory

Rapidity and length of time over which a thing is learned and remembered; promptness with which we remember a thing and recall accuracy with which a thing is recalled and the serviceableness of what is recalled. So the signs of a good memory are easy and rapidity of learning; long duration of retention; rapidity and accuracy of reproduction; and re-service of memory.

Conditions of a Good Memory

The state of having freshness of mind and brain, good health, heredity background, and attention is the prerequisite of a good memory. An individual requires all these conditions for a sharp memory.