Reading Text a

1. Before reading the text, try to answer the following questions.

1) What do you know about sensation and perception?

2) Can you name any foreign or Russian scientists who study the problems of sensation and perception?

3) What can you say about anticipation?

2. Read the following text paying attention to the words and word-combinations in italics.

Sensation is the stimulation of sensory receptors and the transmission of sensory information to the central nervous system (the spinal cord and brain). Sensory receptors are located in sensory organs (such as eyes and ears) and elsewhere in the body. The stimulation of the senses is automatic. It results from sources of energy like light and sound or from the presence of chemicals, as in smell and taste.

Perception is the psychological process through which we interpret sensory stimulation. Imagine that you are standing at one end zone of a football field while a play is going on. Some of the players are close and rushing toward you; other players are at the other end of the field. Those players who are far away look very small compared to those players who are barreling down on you. Still, you know that the quarterback, who has just thrown a pass from die oilier end of die field, is not actually tiny. How do you know? The answer is that you know through experience. Perception reflects learning, expectations, and attitudes.

Absolute threshold is the weakest amount of a stimulus that can be sensed. Even before you heard that first beep, the person testing you was trying different beeps, but you simply could not hear them. The first one you heard was the weakest one you were capable of hearing. Absolute thresholds for humans have been determined for the senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. However, the absolute threshold for a particular stimulus can differ from person to person.

Many psychologists, including phenomenologists and Gestalt psychologists, talk about the direct perception of the use of objects.  Perception in the broadest sense is a matter of interaction between the world and the self.  The world gives us events; we in turn give those events meaning by interpreting and acting upon them.

There are some obvious details here: we have sensations (input from the world, stimuli) and actions (output to the world, responses). There was a time when psychologists thought this was enough. Now we know better, and we add two more details, which are called anticipation and adaptation.

Anticipation is a little difficult to explain. We have certain knowledge of the world, a "model" of it. This model includes everything from small details like which shoe you put on first to complex things like how you feel about yourself and your life. We use this model to anticipate -expect, predict - what will happen in the next moment.  We also anticipate on a more long term basis: we have expectations about what college will and won't do for us, about love being forever, and the sun rising, and so on.

Anticipation is a major factor in much of perception. It also helps us understand how we manage to pay attention to some things and not others. We select things by means of anticipation. We hear the conversation that we are busily involved in, the one we are anticipating moment to moment. The rest is just noise. Likewise with the other senses: we see what we are looking for, we don’t see what we are not looking for.

There are, of course, a few exceptions: certain built-in attention-getters, e.g. loud noises, flashes of light, painful stimuli, sudden movements. These involve inborn responses.

Adaptation is also more difficult to explain. Sometimes, we don't anticipate well. For example, you think you see a friend coming at you and you prepare to give a hearty "hi!" but just as you raise your arm to wave and begin to open your mouth, you realize it's not your friend at all but a complete stranger. Whenever you make mistakes, you need to figure out what went wrong, what to do about it, how to make sense of it. As you do, you are improving your understanding of the world and your relation to it; you are improving your "model". This is adaptation.