Psychology: an elementary text-bookEbbinghaus, Hermann
Science
Psychology: an elementary text-book
Ebbinghaus, Hermann
Psychology
A percept contains both less and more than the sensations corresponding
directly to the stimulations. According to the conditions discussed
under attention, certain sensations become focal at the expense of
others which become marginal. For example, of all things impressing
themselves upon my retina, only a few--usually, but not always, those in
the center of the field of vision--attain a high degree of
consciousness. And of these things again not all the qualities, but only
a few become highly conscious. If, as in this case, the visible things
happen to become highly conscious, the simultaneously existing audible
or tastable things are apt to remain at a low degree of consciousness.
That which is important for the needs of our daily life is specially
favored and becomes a part of the percept. That which has no practical
importance does not easily become a highly conscious part of the present
mind. The variations in color of a gown forming many folds are rarely
noticed. All parts of the gown are perceived as parts of the same
substance. That the whole gown is made of one kind of cloth is
practically important. That the various folds appear to the eye--because
of the variation of the illumination--somewhat different, is of no
practical consequence. Many quite common phenomena, after-images,
overtones, difference tones, are never known by the majority of people,
because of their practical unimportance.
But a percept contains not only less, but also much more than the
sensations corresponding to the stimuli of the moment. Numerous images
are woven into this system of sensations and thus give additional
meaning to it. We may be said to _see_ that the things are hot or cold,
rough or smooth, heavy or light, although our eyes as mere sense organs
cannot give us any such information. In the same way we may be said to
see that the things are at this or that distance from our head, and that
this thing is nearer, that thing farther from us, although our inherited
ability to see things spatially does not give us any other information
than that of shape and size in the field of vision. By incessantly
repeated experiences we have learned, at an early age, that changes in
the distance of things which in this or that way have come to our
knowledge, are regularly accompanied by definite changes in their size,
their coloring, their appearance when the right eye’s image is compared
with the left eye’s image, and many similar changes of the impression.
Whenever such signs of changes in the distance are impressed upon our
mind, we immediately supplement them by ideas of the distances
themselves. Thus our original two-dimensional perception of space is
expanded into a three-dimensional perception.
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