Key Learnings
o How the human nervous system interacts with its surroundings (how humans rely on their senses to survive).
o The types of stimuli and sensory receptors in the human nervous system.
o The difference between sensing and perceiving.
o The role of perception in managing, responding to and adapting to the environment.
o The existence of sensory "blind spots".
o The link between senses, natural surroundings and improved health and well-being.
Natural environments offer incredibly wide and varied opportunities for multisensory stimulation (George W. Burns). The chromatic variations of the seasons in an urban park, the smell of a flower or a sunset on the waves of the sea can trigger automatic responses such as awe, states of relaxation, sensory pleasure and happiness, promoting positive states of health and subjective well-being.
Human sensory systems, despite their complexity and capacity, are far from perfect: vision has a blind spot, only soluble odoriferous particles are captured or only frequencies in a certain range are audible, for example. Due to their characteristics, these systems can offer confusing information about the environment, generating uncertainty.
Exploring the environment with curiosity and imagination allows the development and calibration of perception obtaining more accurate information about the environment. In this way, perception makes it possible to disambiguate the inconsistencies in the received information. Exploring the environment through activities that provide people with meaningful information is an important cognitive tool to promote the construction of the world.
In conclusion, sensations are a process of capturing stimuli and perception is a psychological process in which the environment is interpreted and given meaning. Through an active cognitive process and the involvement of the motor system, humans build their "reality" conditioned, among other things, by their characteristics, the socio-cultural context and the physical environment itself. The person constructs its flower.
Key Vocabulary
Photon: each of the partices that, according to quantum physics, constitute light and, in general, electromagnetic radiation.
Cognitive: means relating to the mental process involved in knowing, learning, and understanding things (Collins Dictionary).
Competencies
o Explain, in simple terms, the mechanisms via which humans interact with their surroundings (the senses).
o List the types of stimuli and sensory receptors in the human nervous system.
o Distinguish between sensation and perception.
