Sensory adaptation is becoming continuously exposed to a stimulus to the point of not perceiving that stimulus anymore.

New Mexico Highlands University

- Vision 
- Hearing 
- Touch 
- Taste
- Smell
- Pain
- Social 
- Multi-modal
- Sensory Adaptation

Types of Perception

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

The perception of smell, or olfaction, is the process of perceiving smell. Sense of smell occurs when an odor binds to a receptor within the nose, transmitting a signal to the olfactory system. The sense of smell has been deemed important to survival efforts. The loss of a sense of smell can result from some injuries or illnesses. The loss of smell has been gaining traction as an early indicator for some neurodegenrative diseases in research, and has been identified as an early symptom of COVID-19. 

Smell

Touch is the result of the complex somatosensory system of sensory neurons and neural pathways. The general umbrella term for touch is the somatic senses, or somesthetic senses. The perception of touch through movement is known as proprioception, while the perception of touch through objects is known as haptics. Haptic perception is achieved through touching objects or surfaces. 


Touch

The sense of taste is perception of flavor. The perception of taste occurs when a substance within the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds in the oral cavity, primarily on the tongue. 

Taste

Multi-modal perception refers to the ability of the nervous system to combine all different inputs from the various senses to create enhanced detection or identification of a particular stimulus. An example of multi-modal perception is lipreading. 

Multi-Modal

The perception of sound is called hearing, or auditory perception. The perception of sound happens through the perception of noise through vibrations, changes in pressure within the surrounding medium, through the ear (in humans). 

Hearing (auditory perception)

An unpleasant sensory experience that comes from harmful, intense, and/or damaging stimuli. 

Pain

Social perception is the act of identifying and utilizing social cues to assess social rules, social roles, relationships, context, and the characteristics of others. Social perception is the study how and why people form impressions and make inferences about other people. Social perception also refers to how people learn about other's feelings or emotions through what they gather from aspects such as physical appearance, communication, facial expressions, tone, and hand gestures. The 4 main components of social perception are observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation. 

Social perception

Sensory Adaptation

Signal detection theory provides a framework for understanding how motivation, expectations, and other factors influence our ability to detect a meaningful stimulus against background noise. It is one of the primary theories used to explain why certain sensations lead to conscious perception while others do not.

Signal Detection Theory

Vision, also known as visual perception, is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment by constructing a mental representation of the world from light reflected by objects. The physiological components that enable this process are collectively called the visual system. In humans, vision is a particularly well-developed sense.

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