Perception is the act of receiving, interpreting and understanding through the psyche the sensory signals that come from the five organic senses. This is why perception, although it appeals to the body and physical issues, is directly linked to the psychological system of each individual, which makes the result completely different in another person. It is also the instance from which the individual makes that stimulus, signal or sensation something conscious and transformable.
Coming from Latin, from the word perceptio, which means receiving, collecting or taking possession of something, perception is understood by psychology as the first moment of cognitive elaboration, that is, the first instance in which the information received is transformed into a knowable and understandable element. Always starting from the data provided by the five senses (sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing), it is said that the person perceives the information when they have already made a process of assimilation and understanding of it, which is , obviously, immediate, but that implies its own elaboration.
In order for an individual to be able to carry out the perception process adequately, the mind resorts to elements such as memory, home to a large part of already processed information that will make the task comparatively easier. Although human perception is much more developed than that of animals, they also perform a process of interpreting the stimuli received through the senses and this will always have to do with the possibility of adaptation that will allow us to know what type of food eat, what kind of protection to look for, what behaviors to avoid, etc.
Perception is undoubtedly an important element for the analysis of the psychology of a human being since, as said before, each individual performs a unique perceptual process different from that of others. In this sense, the Gestalt psychological theory is one that has become famous for being interested in the study of human perception of certain figures, structures, drawings and shapes in order to understand the psychic systems of patients.
