Perception

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Perception, in humans, the process whereby sensory stimulation is translated into organized experience. That experience, or percept, is the joint product of the stimulation and of the process itself. Relations found between various types of stimulation (e.g., light waves and sound waves) and their associated percepts suggest inferences that can be made about the properties of the perceptual process; theories of perceiving then can be developed on the basis of these inferences. Because the perceptual process is not itself public or directly observable (except to the perceiver himself, whose percepts are given directly in experience), the validity of perceptual theories can be checked only indirectly. That is, predictions derived from theory are compared with appropriate empirical data, quite often through experimental research.

Historically, systematic thought about perceiving was the province of philosophy. Indeed, perceiving remains of interest to philosophers, and many issues about the process that were originally raised by philosophers are still of current concern. As a scientific enterprise, however, the investigation of perception has especially developed as part of the larger discipline of psychology.

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