PSY 101 Introduction to Phycology. Sensation and Perception

Sensation and Perception
Name
Institution
Sensation and Perception
Sensation and perception form an integral part of human life as it determines a person’s understanding of their surrounding environment. Sensation refers to the process through which a person detects or rather receives information from their immediate environment. Receptors to the physical stimuli from the environment are the five sensory organs of human beings, eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue, which are further classified into the sense of vision, hearing, smell, touch, and taste respectively. The process of sensation involves all the five senses in distinct processes involving the different sensory organs. Each of the organs plays an important role of receiving physical stimuli from the environment and encoding the information into the nervous system CITATION Van14 \l 2057 (Selst, 2014). The process of sensation can thus be broken down into two primary stages, reception of the stimuli and the decoding or processing of the information transmitted by the nervous system into the brain. The first stage is referred to as the Bottom-up processing which is the analysis of the stimulus by the sensory organs or receptors which continues up to the brain. Top-down processing is the discerning of the context or information passed along to the brain and the mind by somewhat complex mental processes which help in the creation of perceptions CITATION Hug15 \l 2057 (Matlin, 2015). Top-down processing involves the analysis of experiences and expectations.
The process of sensation further involves the transformation of energy from the stimulus into neural impulses that the brain can accommodate and understand through a process referred to as transduction. Light energy, for instance, is transformed to neural impulses in a process known as phototransduction. Constructing or rather forming a perception requires the attainment of a minimum amount of stimulation. An absolute threshold is the minimum amount of stimulation...