Looking back on my everyday life, before I took this class, I used perception in everything I did. I never knew when I was looking at the color in the trees or the depth of certain objects that it was all my perception. After taking Sensation and Perception I began to realize a lot more about perceptions and how to view our environment in a different way. The book that we needed to read, in my opinion, was a little hard to grasp some of the concepts. I was never too great in biology during high school and a lot of these concepts incorporated biology. I had to reread the chapter a couple of times to fully understand it. Once I reread the chapter, it became clearer and very interesting to read. I have learned that every part of your body in some shape or way involves perception. Also each part of the body needs another part to function and view perception. Without your eyes, your ears may not perceive perception the way they are suppose too. The book layout was very good and made each chapter connect to the next chapter. Each new chapter talked about a new part of the body and how it perceives perception. The chapter went from talking about the brain and how it functions, and then worked its way all the way down to your taste buds and how you perceive smells. I really enjoyed that each chapter connected to the next because it really made the class more interesting. This class drew my attention to each chapter and everything that involves perception.
In my opinion a person perception of scent and selective attention are two very important concepts everyone should understand in the perception world. Both of these topics are very interesting, and I cannot pick just one to explain and say it was my favorite part. The issue of why people pay attention, how much they do and to what is often more referred to as selective attention. Selective attention is when someone focuses on specific objects and filters out others. According to our textbook and lecture slides many people find certain things in the environment more important than others. I believe that selective attention is interesting to learn about because it is something that humans use in their everyday life. While I watch television or a movie I flitter out not-so-important aspects in the movie and focus on what is important. Sometimes I focus on what they are wearing instead of the actual movie. The senses take in billions of bits of information every second, but only about 40 are processed by the brain. A selective attention happens to everyone and it happens every day in every scene of someone’s life. I believe that everyone should be more knowledgably about selective attention. The second aspect of the perceptions class that everyone should be advised about is the perception of smell. Every second of the day you smell something. Whether it is good, bad, yummy, or even disgusting, you smell something. When humans try and detect smells, they tend go with the stronger scent. When someone has a cold, though, their senses become weak and they cannot pick up on the stronger scent. Humans can recognize scents, but they can never label them accurately. This appears to be caused by an inability to retrieve the name from memory, not from a lack of sensitivity. Sometimes though people can pick up and scent and remember a time, but cannot remember why they can think of that time. The perception of smell is a chemical reaction it involves a lot of nervous. While learning about perception, smell and attentions are two very important things that stick out in my mind for everyone to learn about.
Overall this course was very interesting and the professor was very helpful throughout the whole course. The readings very interesting and they captured my eye. I realized that in every aspect that I do throughout life, I am always using perception and I also realized that perception is more than just biology. I am very pleased with how my very first online class went. I really enjoyed looking at everyone’s blog posts. It was interesting to see how everyone else reacted to the readings Also it was nice to see how everyone interrupted the readings differently than I did. This was a very good class to take and I am very happy that I took it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKcpfFvuf8 This video shows many different perceptions.
By: Stephanie Zilinski
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