Scientific and Clinical Models of Perception

SCIENTIFIC MODELS

This page is designed to enumerate and summarize major theoretical and clinical models related to perception.

The purpose of this page is to:

• Distinguish between what is known to be true about perception based on current best scientific evidence and what remains an empirical question.
• Distinguish between how perception is conceived in the scientific domain and how it is conceived in the clinical domain

CONSTRUCT SUMMARY

In this section, we summarize major differences in the way the the construct of perception is defined across healthcare disciplines, theoretical groups, and regions.  

Key considerations  - clinical v. theoretical models:

• There is a tendency to conflate the concepts 'sensation' and 'perception' in clinical contexts (in the context of perceiving sensory stimuli)
• There is a tendency to conflate the concepts 'perception' and broader cognitive concepts such as 'belief', 'attitude', and 'self concept' (i.e., in the context of 'social perception', 'self perception')

SCIENTIFIC MODELS

CLINICAL MODELS

Clinically, the term perception is used when describing both perception of sensory phenomena (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, temperature) and social perception (perception of self, perception of others). 

The concepts sensation and perception of often conflated

PHENOMENOLOGY

From a phenomenological perspective, to perceive some thing is to experience it as if the thing being perceived were actually detected by a sensory organ.  The phenomenological experience of "hearing" while having an auditory hallucination of a baby crying is phenomenologically identical to the phenomenological experience of "hearing" an actual baby crying.  The mental representation (identification) of the stimulus is the same regardless of what a person believes about the actual existence of an objectively present or objective non-existent stimulus.