| The
Six Psychic Senses
By Jill Emerson
Palmer
Artwork Mike
Gambino
In Spiritualism, psychic senses used by mental
mediums are sometimes defined differently
than in other paranormal fields. The term
clairvoyance, for instance, may be used by
Spiritualists to include seeing spirits and
visions instilled by spirits, whereas the
Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance"
as information derived directly from an external
physical source.
When forming your personal Paranormal
Team the powers of a psychic, medium or person
that channels ghosts is becoming a very important
valu able factor. The power or powers that
they might possess are very important in locating
and understanding a real ghost or haunting.
No matter what the depth of their ablities
it is a crucial aspect that can put your particular
investigation over the top. To understand
more of what a real Paravoyer can do you need
to undertand their abilities to each degree
and use them wisely.
Real Para- Voyant individuals
as they are called these days are like bloodhounds
to a large a degree. the see, sniff, feel
and will follow a ghost through out a location.
Highly developed
levels ESP you either have it or you don't!
Extrasensory perception (ESP)
is the apparent ability to acquire information
by paranormal means independent of any known
physical senses or deduction from previous
experience. The term was coined by Duke University
researcher J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities
such as telepathy, the sensing of thoughts
or feelings without help from the 5 known
senses, precognition, the knowledge of future
events, and clairvoyance, the awareness of
people, objects or events without the help
of the 5 known senses. ESP is also sometimes
casually referred to as a sixth sense, gut
instinct, a hunch, a weird vibe or an intuition.
The term implies sources of information currently
unexplained by science. Popular belief in
ESP is widespread, but skeptics are still
not persuaded that there truly is a sixth
sense because of the lack of reliable theories
and information.
Improve
Your Psychic Powers! http://www.hexatron.com/psi/index.html
As you progress, your performance
should improve greatly. If you get good enough,
the computer shows how likely it would be
to achieve your score by chance alone. For
example, the chance of picking 8 correct cards
in 20 trials is only 1 in 1247.
Zener cards are cards used to
conduct experiments for extra-sensory perception
(ESP), most often clairvoyance. Perceptual
psychologist Karl Zener designed the cards
in the early 1930s for experiments conducted
with his colleague, parapsychologist J. B.
Rhine. There are just five different Zener
cards: a hollow circle (one curve), a Greek
cross (two lines), three vertical wavy lines
(or "waves"), a hollow square (four
lines), and a hollow five-pointed star. There
are 25 cards in a pack, five of each design.
When Zener cards were first used, they were
made out of a fairly thin translucent white
paper. Several subjects or groups of subjects
scored very highly until it was discovered
that they had often been able to see the symbols
through the backs of the cards.
In a test for clairvoyance, the person conducting
the test (the experimenter) picks up a card
in a shuffled pack, observes the symbol on
the card, and records the answer of the person
being tested for ESP (the subject), who must
correctly determine which of the five designs
is on the card in question. The experimenter
continues until all the cards in the pack
have been tested.
Third parties may oversee or videotape an
experiment to make sure it is conducted fairly.
While it is especially important to ensure
that the subject cannot see any cards and
does not receive any vocal or visual cues
from the experimenter, other methods of cheating
are possible. To this end, physical separators
may be placed between the experimenter and
the subject. As with other ESP tests, experiments
with Zener cards have used elaborate methods
to keep the subject from seeing the cards
or the experimenter, sometimes placing the
subject in a separate room.
If the subject is informed during the test
that specific guesses were correct or incorrect,
card counting can increase their accuracy;
also, poor shuffling methods can make the
order of cards in the deck easier to predict.
In his experiments, Rhine first shuffled the
cards by hand but later decided to use a machine
for shuffling.
Online variations of Zener card tests currently
exist on the internet. If properly constructed,
tests of this nature can circumvent the issues
of bias and cheating common to standard Zener
card tests. One such online system, the Anima
Project , gathers user results into a master
database which is then analyzed using a variety
of statistical techniques.
Although Zener cards are usually used to
test for clairvoyance, they may also be used
to test for telepathy, in which case one subject
will draw a card and attempt to mentally project
the image on it to the mind of another subject.
Here, the statistical tendency of the receiver
to report a specific design must be taken
into account — for example, they might
tend to report receiving an image of a square
more than other images — so the deck
used must contain an equal number of cards
of each design.
If the null-hypothesis (no psychic ability)
is assumed and each card selected for testing
is chosen in a truly random fashion, a user's
success ratio is expected to approach 20%
(1 hit per 5 trials) as their number of trials
increases. The further the observed scenario
is from the expected scenario, the more cause
for believing the null-hypothesis is not true
(the results are not simply due to chance).
The existence of ESP abilities is highly
controversial, and no scientifically conclusive
demonstrations of the existence of ESP have
been given. Parapsychology explores this possibility,
and some experiments such as the ganzfeld
have been suggested as good evidence of ESP.
The existence of ESP is not generally accepted
within the scientific community.
Clairvoyance
Clairvoyance or "Clear Seeing",
is the ability to see anything which is not
physically present, such as objects, animals
or people. This sight occurs "in the
mind’s eye", and some mediums say
that this is their normal vision state. Others
say that they must train their minds with
such practices as meditation in order to achieve
this ability, and that assistance from spiritual
helpers is often necessary. Some clairvoyant
mediums can see a spirit as though the spirit
has a physical body. They see the bodily form
as if it were physically present. Other mediums
see the spirit in their mind's eye, or it
appears as a movie or a television programme
or a still picture like a photograph in their
mind.
Clairvoyance (from 17th century French with
clair meaning "clear" and voyance
meaning "visibility") is the apparent
ability to gain information about an object,
location or physical event through means other
than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory
perception. A person said to have the ability
of clairvoyance is referred to as a clairvoyant
("one who sees clear").
Claims for the existence of paranormal psychic
abilities such as clairvoyance are highly
controversial. Parapsychology explores this
possibility, but the existence of such paranormal
phenomena is not accepted by the scientific
community outside parapsychology.
Within parapsychology, clairvoyance is used
exclusively to refer to the transfer of information
that is both contemporary to, and hidden from,
the clairvoyant. It is differentiated from
telepathy in that the information is said
to be gained directly from an external physical
source, rather than being transferred from
the mind of one individual to another.
Outside of parapsychology, clairvoyance is
often used to refer to other forms of Anomalous
cognition, most commonly the perception of
events that have occurred in the past, or
which will occur in the future (known as retrocognition
and precognition respectively), or to refer
to communications with the dead (see Mediumship).
Clairvoyance is related to remote viewing,
although the term "remote viewing"
itself is not as widely applicable to clairvoyance
because it refers to a specific controlled
process.
Within the field of parapsychology, there
is a consensus that some instances of clairvoyance
are verifiable. There is also a measured level
of belief from amongst the general public,
with the portion of the US population who
believe in clairvoyance varying between 1/4
and 1/3 over the 15 year period from 1990
to 2005.
The concept of clairvoyance gained some support
from the US and Russian governments both during
and after the Cold War, and both governments
made several attempts to harness it as an
intelligence gathering tool
According to skeptics, clairvoyance is the
result of fraud, self-delusion[4], Barnum
effects, confirmatory biases, or failures
to appreciate the base rate of chance occurrences.
For example, in a scientific experiment of
clairvoyance, a purported clairvoyant participant
will inevitably make correct guesses some
of the time (i.e., during some of the trials
within the same experiment), simply because
of chance. Furthermore, because of the nature
of the statistical tests used by experimenters,
a very small proportion of all experiments
conducted will yield an overall statistically
significant result (suggesting that clairvoyance
took place at above-chance levels), again
simply because of chance. A proper summary
of the experimental evidence on clairvoyance
should include a summary of all experiments
that were conducted, taking into account their
probabilities of turning out false positive
and false negative results, and making sure
that studies are not included in the review
selectively. Some researchers on clairvoyance
have tended to purposefully exclude negative
findings from their reviews [8], thus biasing
their own conclusions.
There have been anecdotal reports of clairvoyance
and 'clear' abilities throughout history in
most cultures. Often clairvoyance has been
associated with religious or shamanic figures,
offices and practices. For example, ancient
Hindu religious texts list clairvoyance amongst
other forms of 'clear' experiencing, as siddhis,
or 'perfections', skills that are yielded
through appropriate meditation and personal
discipline. But a large number of anecdotal
accounts of clairvoyance are of the spontaneous
variety among the general populace. For example,
many people report seeing a loved one who
has recently died before they have learned
by other means that their loved one is deceased.
While anecdotal accounts do not provide scientific
proof of clairvoyance, such common experiences
continue to motivate research into such phenomena.
The earliest record of somnambulistic clairvoyance
is credited to the Marquis de Puységur,
a follower of Mesmer, who in 1784 was treating
a local dull-witted peasant named Victor Race.
During treatment, Race reportedly would go
into trance and undergo a personality change,
becoming fluent and articulate, and giving
diagnosis and prescription for his own disease
as well as those of others. When he came out
of the trance state he would be unaware of
anything he had said or done. This behavior
is somewhat reminiscent of the reported behaviors
of the 20th century medical clairvoyant and
psychic Edgar Cayce. It is reported that although
Puységur used the term 'clairvoyance',
he did not think of these phenomena as "paranormal",
since he accepted mesmerism as one of the
natural sciences.
Clairvoyance was a reported ability of some
mediums during the spiritualist period of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries and
was one of the phenomena studied by members
of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).
Psychics of many descriptions have claimed
clairvoyant ability up to the present day.
While experimental research into clairvoyance
began with SPR researchers, experimental studies
became more systematic with the efforts of
J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University,
and such research efforts continue to the
present day. Perhaps the best-known study
of clairvoyance in recent times was the US
government-funded remote viewing project at
SRI/SAIC during the 1970s through the mid-1990s.
Some parapsychologists have proposed that
our different functional labels (clairvoyance,
telepathy, precognition, etc.) all refer to
one basic underlying mechanism, although there
is not yet any satisfactory theory for what
that mechanism may be.
Parapsychological research studies of remote
viewing and clairvoyance have produced favorable
results significantly above chance, and meta-analysis
of these studies increases the significance.
For instance, at the Stanford Research Institute,
in 1972, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ initiated
a series of human subject studies to determine
whether participants (the viewers or percipients)
could reliably identify and accurately describe
salient features of remote locations or targets.
In the early studies, a human sender was typically
present at the remote location, as part of
the experiment protocol. A three-step process
was used, the first step being to randomly
select the target conditions to be experienced
by the senders. Secondly, in the viewing step,
participants were asked to verbally express
or sketch their impressions of the remote
scene. Thirdly, in the judging step, these
descriptions were matched by separate judges,
as closely as possible, with the intended
targets. The term remote viewing was coined
to describe this overall process.
In order to explore the nature of remote
viewing channel, the viewer in some experiments
was secured in a double-walled copper-screened
Faraday cage. Although this provided attenuation
of radio signals over a broad range of frequencies,
the researchers found that it did not alter
the subject's remote viewing capability. They
postulated that extremely low frequency (ELF)
propagation might be involved, since Faraday
cage screening is less effective in the ELF
range. Such a hypothesis had previously been
put forward by telepathy researchers in the
Soviet Union.
The first paper by Puthoff and Targ on psychic
research to appear in a mainstream peer-reviewed
scientific journal was published in Nature
in March 1974; in it, the team reported some
degree of remote viewing success. One of the
individuals involved in these initial studies
at SRI was Uri Geller, a well-known celebrity
psychic at the time. The research team reported
witnessing some of Geller's trademark metal
spoon-bending performances, but admitted that
they were unable to conduct adequately controlled
experiments to confirm any paranormal hypothesis
about them.
Electroencephalography (EEG) techniques were
also used by team to examine ESP phenomena.
In these investigations, a sender, who was
isolated in a visually opaque, electrically
and acoustically shielded chamber, was stimulated
at random by bursts of strobe-light flickers
The experimenters reported that, for one receiver,
differential alpha block on control and stimulus
trials were observed, which showed that some
information transfer had occurred. In contrast,
this person's expressed statements of when
the stimulus occurred were no different than
that which would be expected by chance. The
researches were unable to identify the physical
parameters by which the EEG effect was mediated.
After the publication of these findings,
various attempts to replicate the remote viewing
findings were quickly carried out. Several
of these follow-up studies, which involved
viewing in group settings, reported some limited
success. They included the use of face-to-face
groups, and remotely-linked groups using computer
conferencing.
The various debates in the mainstream scientific
literature prompted the editors of 'Proceedings
of the IEEE' to invite Robert Jahn, then Dean
of the School of Engineering at Princeton
University, to write a comprehensive review
of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective.
His paper, published in February 1982, includes
numerous references to remote viewing replication
studies at the time.
Clairvoyance experiments involving Zener
cards currently exist on the internet. One
such online system, the Anima Project, gathers
user results into a master database which
is then analyzed using a variety of statistical
techniques.
Clairaudience
Clairaudience or "Clear Hearing",
is usually defined as the ability to hear
the voices or thoughts of spirits. Some Mediums
hear as though they are listening to a person
talking to them on the outside of their head,
as though the Spirit is next to or near to
the medium, and other mediums hear the voices
in their minds as a verbal thought.
These indiviuals that possess these powers
are actually hearing an EVP "ELECTRONIC
VOICE PHENOMENON" as it actually happens.
Many startling voice captures of full conversations
are ofen recorded as these persons communicate
with a spirit or ghost in a full conversation.
Some say they actually hear it in their ears
as if somone is either whispering or speaking
clearly and audiably to them. still others
say they hear it in their minds.
The ear is the sense organ that detects sounds.
The vertebrate ear shows a common biology
from fish to humans, with variations in structure
according to order and species. It not only
acts as a receiver for sound, but plays a
major role in the sense of balance and body
position. The ear is part of the auditory
system.
The word "ear" may be used correctly
to describe the entire organ or just the visible
portion. In most animals, the visible ear
is a flap of tissue that is also called the
pinna. The pinna may be all that shows of
the ear, but it serves only the first of many
steps in hearing and plays no role in the
sense of balance. In people, the pinna is
often called the auricle. Vertebrates have
a pair of ears, placed symmetrically on opposite
sides of the head. This arrangement aids in
the ability to localize sound sources.
In the field of parapsychology, clairaudience
[from late 17th century French clair (clear)
& audience (hearing)] is a form of extra-sensory
perception wherein a person acquires information
by paranormal auditory means. It is often
considered to be a form of clairvoyance. Clairaudience
is essentially the ability to hear in a paranormal
manner, as opposed to paranormal seeing (clairvoyance)
and feeling (clairsentience). Clairaudient
people have psi-mediated hearing. Clairaudience
may refer not to actual perception of sound,
but may instead indicate impressions of the
"inner mental ear" similar to the
way many people think words without having
auditory impressions. But it may also refer
to actual perception of sounds such as voices,
tones, or noises which are not apparent to
other humans or to recording equipment. For
instance, a clairaudient person might claim
to hear the voices or thoughts of the spirits
of persons who are deceased. Clairaudience
may be positively distinguished from the voices
heard by the mentally ill when it reveals
information unavailable to the clairaudient
person by normal means (including cold reading
or other magic tricks), and thus may be termed
"psychic" or paranormal.
Audition is the scientific name for the perception
of sound. Sound is a form of energy that moves
through air, water, and other matter, in waves
of pressure. Sound is the means of auditory
communication, including frog calls, bird
songs and spoken language. Although the ear
is the vertebrate sense organ that recognizes
sound, it is the brain and central nervous
system that "hears". Sound waves
are perceived by the brain through the firing
of nerve cells in the auditory portion of
the central nervous system. The ear changes
sound pressure waves from the outside world
into a signal of nerve impulses sent to the
brain.
Interaural level differences (ILDs), sometimes
called interaural intensity differences (IID),
are differences of the soundpressure level
arriving at the two ears; and are important
cues that humans and animals use to localise
higher frequency sounds. The interaural time
difference is another source of information
for sound localization. Our ears are only
sensitive to sound pressure changes.
Neurons sensitive to ILDs are excited by
stimulation of one ear and inhibited by stimulation
of the other ear, such that the response magnitude
of the cell depends on the relative strengths
of the two inputs, which in turn, depends
on the sound intensities at the ears.
In the auditory midbrain nucleus, the inferior
colliculus (IC), many ILD sensitive neurons
have response functions that decline steeply
from maximum to zero spikes as a function
of ILD. However, there are also many neurons
with much more shallow response functions
that do not decline to zero spikes.
Clairsentience
Clairsentience or "Clear Sensing",
is the ability to have an impression of what
a spirit wants to communicate, or to feel
sensations instilled by a spirit. the field
of parapsychology, clairsentience is a form
of extra-sensory perception wherein a person
acquires psychic knowledge primarily by means
of feeling or touching an object. The word
is from the French clair, “clear,”
+ sentience, “feeling,” and is
ultimately derived from the Latin clarus,
“clear,” + sentiens, derived from
sentire, “to feel”.
In addition to parapsychology, the term also
plays a role in some religions. For example:
clairsentience is one of the six human special
functions mentioned or recorded in Buddhism.
It is an ability that can be obtained at advanced
meditation level. Generally the term refers
to a person who can feel the vibration of
other people. There are many different degrees
of clairsentience ranging from the perception
of diseases of other people to the thoughts
or emotions of other people. The ability differs
from third eye in that this kind of ability
cannot have a vivid picture in the mind. Instead,
a very vivid feeling can form.
Psychometry is related to clairsentience.
The word stems from psyche and metric, which
means "to measure with the mind".
Psychometry (Greek: psukhe, "spirit,
soul"; + metron, "measure")
is a form of extra-sensory perception in which
a psychic is said to be able to obtain information
about an individual through paranormal means
by making physical contact with an object
that belongs to them. In recent years, the
term has been superseded in favor of "token-object
reading" so as to avoid potential confusion
with the psychological term, "psychometry".
The term psychometry was coined by Joseph
Rodes Buchanan in 1842. Buchanan developed
the theory that all things give off an emanation.
"The past is entombed in the present,
the world is its own enduring monument; and
that which is true of its physical is likewise
true of its mental career. The discoveries
of Psychometry will enable us to explore the
history of man, as those of geology enable
us to explore the history of the earth. There
are mental fossils for psychologists as well
as mineral fossils for the geologists; and
I believe that hereafter the psychologist
and the geologist will go hand in hand, the
one portraying the earth, its animals and
its vegetation, while the other portrays the
human beings who have roamed over its surface
in the shadows, and the darkness of primeval
barbarism. Aye, the mental telescope is now
discovered which may pierce the depths of
the past and bring us in full view of the
grand and tragic passages of ancient history..
The concept of psychometry is a popular theme
for stage act and Séance; with participants
being asked to provide a personal object to
be "read" by a medium or psychic.
It was used as the basis for Johnny Smith's
visions in Stephen King's 1979 novel The Dead
Zone and its subsequent 2002 television adaption.
Clairalience
Clairalience or "Clear Smelling"
is the ability to smell a spirit. Some people
claim to smell exotic perfume or flowers or
cigar smoke, things like that, when a real
ghost is near.
Yvonne Brown a Florida Resident who can smell
when ghosts where around her. This phenomena
has been reported by many who search for the
lost souls of the dead in the paranormal zone.
In Browns view ghosts have various odors associated
with them and no to specters or spooks smell
the same.
Many famous ghosts have been known for their
fragrances associated with their hauntings.
Perfumes, food smells, or unnatural these
odors are often encountered at the sites where
they haunt. A group in California, The Ghost
Hunter of Para- Haunt research recently went
hunting for Marilyn Monroe's ghost. They said
they encountered the smell of roses and disinfectant.
Their group psychic medium Mary Simmons said
that ghosts she has encountered recently are
more fragrant when their more famous. In her
opinion the ghosts that smell the best are
the most sought after. She also told me that
when hunting for the ghost of james dean she
could smell a sexy manly smell of men's cologne.
And when searching for the ghost of John Belushi
she encountered the heavy odor of almonds
and chewing gum.
Why? Simmons says she does not really know.
Her explanation is that this is what the particular
spirits that haunted the location wanted her
to experience.
Dylan Merchant a ghost hunter from the UK
tells me that the ghost of Henry VIII (28
June 1491 – 28 January 1547) King of
England, smells like burning parchment paper,
and wax and his wives each have distinctively
different smells.
Please see : The
Real Scent Of A Ghost! Also see:
I
Smell Dead People... I mean Ghosts!
Olfaction, the sense of smell, the ability
of humans and other animals to perceive odors.
As described by the Roman philosopher Lucretius
(1st Century BCE), different odors are attributed
to different shapes and sizes of odor molecules
that stimulate the olfactory organ. The modern
counterpart to that theory was the cloning
of olfactory receptor proteins by Linda B.
Buck and Richard Axel (who were awarded the
Nobel Prize in 2004), and subsequent pairing
of odor molecules to specific receptor proteins.
Each odor receptor molecule recognizes only
a particular molecular feature or class of
odor molecules. Mammals have about a thousand
genes expressing for odor reception. Of these
genes, only a portion are functional odor
receptors. Humans have far fewer active odor
receptor genes than other mammals and primates.
Each olfactory receptor neuron expresses
only one functional odor receptor. Odor receptor
nerve cells function like a key-lock system:
If the airborne molecules of a certain chemical
can fit into the lock, the nerve cell will
respond. There are, at present, a number of
competing theories regarding the mechanism
of odor coding and perception. According to
the shape theory, each receptor detects a
feature of the odor molecule. Weak-shape theory,
known as odotope theory, suggests that different
receptors detect only small pieces of molecules,
and these minimal inputs are combined to form
a larger olfactory perception (similar to
the way visual perception is built up of smaller,
information-poor sensations, combined and
refined to create a detailed overall perception).
An alternative theory, the vibration theory
proposed by Luca Turin, posits that odor receptors
detect the frequencies of vibrations of odor
molecules in the infrared range by electron
tunnelling. However, the behavioral predictions
of this theory have been called into question.
As of yet, there is no theory that explains
olfactory perception completely.
However, research is still being done, and
institutes like the Monell Chemical Senses
Center are working to uncover the secrets
of olfactory perception.
Clairgustance
Clairgustance or "Clear Tasting"
is the ability to receive taste impressions
from a spirit. In the field of parapsychology,
clairgustance is defined as a form of extra-sensory
perception that allegedly allows one to taste
a substance without putting anything in one's
mouth. It is claimed that those who possess
this ability are able to perceive the essence
of a substance from the spiritual or ethereal
realms through taste.
Taste (or, more formally, gustation) is a
form of direct chemoreception and is one of
the traditional five senses. It refers to
the ability to detect the flavor of substances
such as food and poisons. In humans and many
other vertebrate animals the sense of taste
partners with the less direct sense of smell,
in the brain's perception of flavor. In the
West, experts traditionally identified four
taste sensations: sweet, salty, sour, and
bitter. Eastern experts traditionally identified
a fifth, called umami (savory). More recently,
psychophysicists and neuroscientists have
suggested other taste categories (umami and
fatty acid taste most prominently, as well
as the sensation of metallic and water tastes,
although the latter is commonly disregarded
due to the phenomenon of taste adaptation.
Taste is a sensory function of the central
nervous system. The receptor cells for taste
in humans are found on the surface of the
tongue, along the soft palate, and in the
epithelium of the pharynx and epiglottis.
For a long period, it has been commonly accepted
that there are a finite number of "basic
tastes" by which all foods and tastes
can be grouped. Just like with primary colors,
these "basic tastes" only apply
to the human perception, ie. the different
sorts of tastes our tongue can identify. Up
until the 2000s, this was considered to be
a group of four basic tastes. More recently,
a fifth taste, Umami, was added by a large
number of authorities in this field.
Umami is the name for the taste sensation
produced by compounds such as glutamate, and
are commonly found in fermented and aged foods.
In English, it is also described as "meatiness",
"relish", or "savoriness".
The Japanese word comes from umai for yummy,
keen, or nice. Umami is now the commonly used
term by taste scientists. The same taste is
referred to as xianwèi in Chinese cooking.
Umami is considered a fundamental taste in
Chinese and Japanese cooking, but is not discussed
as much in Western cuisine.
Humans have taste receptors specifically
for the detection of the amino acids, e.g.
glutamic acid. Amino acids are the building
blocks of proteins and are found in meats,
cheese, fish, and other protein-heavy foods.
Examples of food containing glutamate (and
thus strong in umami) are beef, lamb, parmesan
and roquefort cheese as well as soy sauce
and fish sauce. The glutamate taste sensation
is most intense in combination with sodium
ions, as found in table salt. Sauces with
umami and salty tastes are very popular for
cooking, such as worcestershire sauce for
Western cuisines and soy sauce and fish sauce
for Asian cuisines.
Basic Tastes
Bitterness
Saltiness
Sourness
Sweetness
Umami
The tongue can also feel other sensations,
not generally called tastes per se or included
in the five human tastes. These are largely
detected by the somatosensory system.
Dryness
Metallicness
Prickliness or hotness
Coolness
Numbness
Heartiness (Kokumi)
Temperature
Claircognizance
Claircognizance or "Clear Knowing",
is the ability to know something without receiving
it through normal or psychic senses. It is
a feeling of "just knowing". Often,
a medium will claim to have the feeling that
a message or situation is "right"
or "wrong." Knowledge acquisition
involves complex cognitive processes: perception,
learning, communication, association and reasoning.
The term knowledge is also used to mean the
confident understanding of a subject with
the ability to use it for a specific purpose
if appropriate.
Symbolic representations can be used to indicate
meaning and can be thought of as a dynamic
process. Hence the transfer of the symbolic
representation can be viewed as one ascription
process whereby knowledge can be transferred.
Other forms of communication include imitation,
narrative exchange along with a range of other
methods. There is no complete theory of knowledge
transfer or communication.
In psychology and the cognitive sciences,
perception is the process of attaining awareness
or understanding of sensory information. It
is a task far more complex than was imagined
in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted
that building perceiving machines would take
about a decade, a goal which is still very
far from realizable. The word perception comes
from the Latin perception, percepio, , meaning
"receiving, collecting, action of taking
possession, apprehension with the mind or
senses."
What one perceives is a result of interplays
between past experiences, one’s culture
and the interpretation of the perceived. If
the percept does not have support in any of
these perceptual bases it is unlikely to rise
above perceptual threshold.
Perception gives rise to two types of consciousness;
phenomenal and psychological. The difference
everybody can demonstrate to himself/herself
by simple opening and closing his/her eyes.
Phenomenal consciousness is full of rich sensations
that are hardly present when eyes are closed.
Psychological consciousness is well researched
and measured. It occurs half a second after
a stimulus starts. If a weak stimulus lasts
less, it is unlikely to be perceived. The
capacity of psychological consciousness is
also well measured. Depending on methods used
the capacity ranges between seven and forty
symbols or percepts at one time.
There are two basic theories of perception:
Passive Perception (PP) and Active Perception
(PA). The passive perception (conceived by
René Descartes) is addressed in this
article and could be surmised as the following
sequence of events: surrounding ? input (senses)
? processing (brain) ? output (re-action).
Although still supported by mainstream philosophers,
psychologists and neurologists, this theory
is nowadays losing momentum. The theory of
active perception has emerged from extensive
research of sensory illusions, most notably
the works of Richard L. Gregory. This theory
is increasingly gaining experimental support
and could be surmised as dynamic relationship
between “description” (in the
brain) ? senses ? surrounding.
Perception is one of the oldest fields in
psychology. The oldest quantitative law in
psychology is the Weber-Fechner law, which
quantifies the relationship between the intensity
of physical stimuli and their perceptual effects.
It was the study of perception that gave rise
to the Gestalt school of psychology, with
its emphasis on holistic approach.
In the case of visual perception, some people
can actually see the percept shift in their
mind's eye. Others who are not picture thinkers,
may not necessarily perceive the 'shape-shifting'
as their world changes. The 'esemplastic'
nature has been shown by experiment: an ambiguous
image has multiple interpretations on the
perceptual level.
Just as one object can give rise to multiple
percepts, so an object may fail to give rise
to any percept at all: if the percept has
no grounding in a person's experience, the
person may literally not perceive it.
The processes of perception routinely alter
what humans see. When people view something
with a preconceived idea about it, they tend
to take those preconceived ideas and see them
whether or not they are there. This problem
stems from the fact that humans are unable
to understand new information, without the
inherent bias of their previous knowledge.
The extent of a person’s knowledge creates
their reality as much as the truth, because
the human mind can only contemplate that which
it has been exposed to. When objects are viewed
without understanding, the mind will try to
reach for something that it already recognizes,
in order to process what it is viewing. That
which most closely relates to the unfamiliar
from our past experiences, makes up what we
see when we look at things that we don’t
comprehend.
This confusing ambiguity of perception is
exploited in human technologies such as camouflage,
and also in biological mimicry, for example
by Peacock butterflies, whose wings bear eye
markings that birds respond to as though they
were the eyes of a dangerous predator. Perceptual
ambiguity is not restricted to vision. For
example, recent touch perception research
(Robles-De-La-Torre & Hayward 2001) found
that kinesthesia-based haptic perception strongly
relies on the forces experienced during touch.
This makes it possible to produce illusory
touch percepts.
Types of perception
Amodal perception
Color perception
Depth perception
Visual perception
Form perception
Haptic perception
Speech perception
Perception as Interpretation
Numeric Value of Perception
Pitch perception
Harmonic perception
Rhythmic perception.
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