Distinction Between Sensation And Perception

Perception is not the same as sensation. Sensation is transformation of energy from external stimuli into neural signals within our bodies (Schacter, Gilbert, Nock, & Wegner, 2016). Because the energies of the external stimuli are intrinsic properties of the stimuli themselves, different people have more or less the same “sensory” response. However, perception is the interpretation of these sensory neural signals and imbues sensation with meaning. Oftentimes, perception can be prone to errors and assumptions, such that our experience of the world is different from the world itself (Schacter et al., 2016). Recently, a picture of a dress brought the distinction between sensation and perception to the forefront of the internet. The picture …show more content…
Despite the different color perceptions people experienced, the sensory input everyone experienced was the same (assuming people viewed the same picture on the same computer brightness, which is not true, but which simplifies the situation greatly). Clearly then, the different interpretations of the color of the dress had to do with people’s perception rather than their sensation. A study conducted by Pascal Wallisch indicates that the divergent color interpretations are primarily due to “color constancy” shading effects (referred to in PSYCUN1001 as the “perception of constancy”). Namely, he concludes that people’s perceptions of the shading and background light in the dress picture determine their perceptions of the color of the dress. Wallisch’s study was not the first to conclude this, but his study goes a step further to suggest that people’s sleep schedules determine the type of shading and background light they see in the picture, which in turn predicts their perceptions of the dress’s color (Wallisch, 2017). This study is summarized in a The Sun article by Jasper Hamill, but this article is missing a full description of methodology and the reasons why people’s sleep schedules influence their perceptions of the color of the dress …show more content…
Wallisch’s study indicates that people tend to assume an unknown light source is the same as their “typical” light source (for night owls, incandescent [low wavelength] light and for early risers, natural [high wavelength] light). Therefore, night owls believe the illumination in the picture stems low wavelength light, while early risers believe the illumination stems from high wavelength light. This causes them to perceive different dress colors as they attempt to find the “true” color of the dress by “discounting” the type of illumination they believe is present from the dress color (as a result of color constancy). Namely, night owls perceive a blue/black dress and early risers perceive white/gold dress. Hamill mentions that people with different circadian rhythms tend to perceive different dress colors, but he never explicitly mentions why this is the case. Instead, he includes a few direct quotations from the study itself that do not fully connect the dots between one’s typical experience of light and the mechanism behind why this affects dress color