Concept

Perception is the process of recognizing and interpreting sensory stimuli. It is a process by which individual organize and interpret their sensory impression in order to give meaning to their environment.

Perception is that first event in the chain which leads from the stimulus to action. It is a process rather being a product or outcome of some psychological phenomena.

According to psychologist silverman. "Perception is an individual awareness aspect of behavior, for it is the way each person processes the raw data from the environment, into meaningful patterns."

Perception is a highly individualized psychological process (means individual have different perception process) that help in organism is organizing and interpreting the complex patterns of sensory stimulation. For giving them the necessary measuring to his/her behavioral response.

Characteristic of Perception


  1. Perception is a process.
  2. Perception is preparation to response.
  3. Perception involves sensation.
  4. Perception provides organization.
  5. Perception is highly individualized concept.

The process of perception

  1. Bottom-up processing: Bottom-up processing consists of the progression of recognizing and processing information from individual components of a stimuli and moving to the perception of the whole.
  2. Top-down processing: In top-down processing, perception is guided by higher-level knowledge, experience, expectation, and motivation.
Bottom-up processing:                             

                                                                          Sensory input

                                                                                    ⬇️

                                                                        Selective attention

                                                                                    ⬇️ 

                                                                        Perceptual organizing

                                                                                    ⬇️

                                                                        Interpretation

                                                                                    ⬇️

                                                                       Behavioural Response

Top-down processing:

Perceptual Process: (Path ways in brain and top-down and bottom-up processing)

Perceptual process is the sequence of psychological state that a person uses to organize and interpret information from the outside world.

The perceptual process consists of six steps:

  1. The presence of object: Information encoding.
  2. Observation: Out of activities sense organ observation.
  3. Selection: After observation, just import needed information is selected by sense organ.
  4. Organization: Selected information is organizing by sense organ and store that in mind.
  5. Interpretation: In our mind there is so many information so that sense organ interrelated that, situation match information finds out situation intimation that is interpretation.
  6. Response: Interpretation behavior

Perceptual selection is determined by internal and external factors. There are to general processes involve a perception.

a) Bottom-up Approach:

            - Bottom-up processing readers to processing sensory information as it is coming in. It readers to way, to build up from the smallest pieces of sensory information. Perception that consist of recognizing and processing information about the individual component of the stimuli. 

b) Top-down Approach:

            Top down processing refers to perception that is determined by cognitive information processing guided by higher level mental processes. It includes knowledge, experience and motivation.