Background

The goal of sensation and perception is to guide us through our environment. We use visual information to avoid obstacles while walking around campus or driving on the highway. When it is completely dark, we avoid obstacles by touch. We feel our way by touching the obstacles in front of us. In this way, most of us can negotiate our own homes at night with the lights off by just using touch. We use auditory information to determine what people are saying and whether or not the phone is ringing. We use olfactory (smell) information to determine if we want to eat something or avoid any contact with it. We use information about temperature on our skin to determine if we want to wear a sweater or a T-shirt. Thus, perceiving what is around us guides us to action. We can define action as any motor activity. Action includes moving one’s eyes along the page of a book as well as a baseball player swinging his bat at incoming fastball. It includes turning your head when you hear the voice of a friend or a concert pianist’s fingers darting across her piano keyboard. Any movement we make can qualify as action. If that movement is directed by something we perceive in the environment, then we can see it is perception-guided action. In sum, one of the chief goals—if not the goal—itself is to guide functional action.

Our actions seem so easily controlled by our senses that it is easier to see how our senses control action by distorting our sensory input. Watch a few videos that illustrate how the distortion of visual input affects our actions and how we respond to these distortions.

Goggles First On

Used to Goggles

After Goggles

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