ABSTRACT
Perception is the process by which individuals become aware of, organize, and interpret information received though their senses. One of the first ways humans discover the recognizable patterns in a stimulus is almost automatically initiated by their brains. Gestalt psychologists discovered several ways the brain groups visual and vocal stimuli into patterns and called them laws of organization. This chapter looks at three laws of organization: proximity, similarity, and closure. Interpretation is the process of attaching meaning to words, acts, or events in our environment and using the meaning to make predictions about future events or behaviors. There are physiological factors that affect our perceptions by interfering with accurate perception of stimuli. Researchers are actively engaged in studying how a man’s cerebral cortex processes emotional stimuli differently than a woman’s. Physiological factors that play a role in perception include gender, physical characteristics, and health.
