Perceptions

" Perceptions "

As children advance in age, their perceptions about their Mom alter from plus 5 to minus 5 and as children themselves start growing old their opinion swift from negative to more and more positive. This message was the centre theme brought - in , in my last mail.

What is this perception all about?

Perception is not just the sensation. Perception is sensation plus interpretation. The interpretation is done in the brain. Information is sensed by the person. Perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting and organizing sensory information.

" per " in Latin means completely and " capere " means to take and these two Latin words take the form ' perception ' in English.

The 'color' - perception play some dominant role and you may recall one of my recent mails forwarded in this connection. That was a poem written by an African child of 4 years old titled 'what is in the color "? which won the best poem prize . A 'red' apple does not emit red light. Rather it absorbs all frequencies of light shining on it except that frequency what we call as 'red'.

To distinguish the color, the three things required are (1) the object, (2)a light source (3) a deductor (eye).

We come across , ' ambiguity ' in many situations, though we see them as ambiguity, the interpretations vary from people to people. Is the glass " half full " or " half empty " ? The interpretation vividly explains the positive or negative attitude of the perceiver.

" kanalneer " in Tamil pictures an ambiguous situation. Another example is that of peacock butterflies. They bear " eye markings ' in their wings. The birds fear seeing them as ' predator ' and fly for safety zones.

The confusing ambiguity of perception is exploited in human technologies as ' CAMOUFLAGE ' and also in biology as "MIMICRY ".

Ambiguity is a stimuli and needs to be perceived either by bottom up processing or top down processing. In the former, it involves one's interference from parts of situations that are available. in the later, it involves one's ideas or conception on to the situation. For example one can conceive a group of trees as a forest which come from imposing one's conception of forest in a given situation.

This is all for the present.

pn