perception

toc Read here about perception, a critical concept in researching scale that has a long and rich history in philosophy, psychology, and medicine.

=Overview= Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the organization, identification and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment (Wikipedia). All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sensory fabrics. Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals, but is profoundly shaped by the structure of the sensory fabric itself, learning, memory and expectation.

=Apperception= In psychology, apperception is "the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole." [Dictionary of philosophy] In short, it is to perceive new experience in relation to past experience. The term is found in the early psychologies of Herbert Spencer, Hermann Lotze, and Wilhelm Wundt. It originally means passing the threshold into consciousness, i.e., to perceive. But the percept is changed when reaching consciousness due to the contextual presence of the other stuff already there, thus it is not perceived but apperceived.

According to Johann Friedrich Herbart apperception is that process by which an aggregate or "mass" of presentations becomes systematized (apperceptions-system) by the accretion of new elements, either sense-given or product of the inner workings of the mind. He thus emphasizes in apperception the connection with the self as resulting from the sum of antecedent experience. Hence in education the teacher should fully acquaint himself with the mental development of the pupil, in order that he may make full use of what the pupil already knows.

Apperception is thus a general term for all mental processes in which a presentation is brought into connection with an already existent and systematized mental conception, and thereby is classified, explained or, in a word, understood; e.g. a new scientific phenomenon is explained in the light of phenomena already analysed and classified. The whole intelligent life of man is, consciously or unconsciously, a process of apperception, inasmuch as every act of attention involves the appercipient process.

Example: A rich child and a poor child walking together come across the same ten dollar bill on the sidewalk. The rich child says it is not very much money and the poor child says it is a lot of money. The difference lies in how they apperceive the same event – the lens of past experience through which they see and value (or devalue) the money. —Christopher Ott (The Evolution of Perception and the Cosmology of Substance, 2004.)

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