I am currently enrolled in a Psychology class and we have been reviewing senses and perception this last week. I wrote a reflective paper on it based on a couple experiences I have had. The subject is one where we can experience the same stimulus that triggers certain senses but out perception of the stimuli can be completely different, it is individual. Well, those are my thoughts anyway. Here's the piece.
Senses and Perceptions
Senses is not something I always thought a lot about when growing up. I mean, I knew that there were blind people, and there were deaf people and then there were people who couldn't speak but for the most part the people I knew enjoyed the same five senses that I did. I remember moving into a new house when I was seven and having a neighbor kid come over and tell my brother and I all about a green rat that haunted the basement of the house we moved into. That had little to no effect on my brother but it scared me to death. I hated that basement and was terrified of the green rat for the four years we lived in that house. We both heard the story, I received it differently and lived in fear while he was just fine. Perception is an individual experience.
As I pondered the subject I thought about a couple of experiences I had with my son Jack. Jack is autistic and there are some things that affect him in different ways. I don't claim to be an expert on autism, far from it, but I have had a lot of experiences with Jack that allow me to see that we perceive things differently. The two areas I will touch on relate to Jack's sense of touch and his sense hearing and how I differ from him.
When Jack was three we were living in Florida. We had recognized some delays in development and a few other challenges and had taken him in to specialists. He was preparing to start school, early intervention, in the fall. We had a pool at our home and I spent a lot of time with Jack in the pool. He loved the water. As he was learning to swim and had learned how to hold his breath he got pretty brave. He watched as I would throw his older sister into the water and he decided he wanted to do the same. We started out small and we would repeat the process over and over again. Eventually I started throwing him higher and then even higher. He loved it. We noticed that when he would crash into the water he wouldn't rush back up to the surface. Rather he would plunge into the water, spread out his arms and legs and slowly float back to the surface and come back to do it all over again. We decided to put on some goggles and watch him underwater. This was a really neat discovery for us. After hitting the water Jack would spread out his arms and legs as mentioned. He also had his eyes wide open and had a huge smile on his face every time. Why was this so much fun for him? We examined further and found that upon entering the water there were thousands of tiny are bubbles that were all around his body, mostly under his body. They were just part of the process of entering the water. On the slow float to the surface those tiny air bubbles would push up against his body and that sense, that touch gave him tremendous joy.
I grew up loving the pool and had a special love for the diving boards. I entered the water many times and certainly had the same kind of bubbles floating up around me. I don't know if I was too busy trying to exit the pool so I could get back on the diving board or what but I never received those bubbles with the same kind of joy that Jack does. I felt their touch but perceived it completely differently. Jack wants to soak in every bubble and really feel it. I feel the same kind of bubbles but really don't care all that much about them. Our bubble perception is different.
One of the great challenges we face is going out to a movie as a family. We are fairly selective over what we will watch and very much so when it comes to splurging at the movie theater. One movie that Jack and his brother and sister really wanted to see was the movie Planes. There was not a trailer for the movie that Jack had not seen or studied in detail. He was excited and he was ready to see the film. We went for it and I even decided to hasten the viewing by going to the regular theater instead of waiting for it to go into the lower priced theater. This was big time for the kids and they were all excited including Jack. Something happened though as the lights dimmed and the sound cranked up. Instead of enjoying the movie and seeing these characters that he grew to love in the trailers he studied, Jack was terrified. He was 9 years old and this movie was a cartoon similar to Cars that was one of his favorites. There should have been no problem. There was a problem, a big one. The sound was piercing to Jack. I was sitting right by him and it was just movie theater sound. For Jack it was very scary to the point of tears. We went out and after he gathered himself he wanted to go back in. We did. Within a few minutes he was back to terrified. We went out. We went back in. Out, back in. Out... there wasn't anything left to leave in the restroom but as much as he wanted to Jack couldn't do it. We stood outside the theater, said a little prayer that he could be brave and make it through the movie and went back in. He was still terrified and clutched onto my hand and arm. He managed to make it through but he was exhausted by the end. It was a movie. We watched it together. His younger brother sat on the other side of me and was completely fine, loved the movie. It was the sound. For Jack it was over stimulating and was blasting in his ears. The over stimulation lead to the movie being very scary and he did not like it at all. Later when he could watch it on DVD he was just fine. The volume was lower and the movie was not nearly as scary as he perceived it to be.
It is interesting to think that we can be doing the same thing as someone else and receive it so differently. The sounds and the bubbles or the stories we are told can be the same but our perception of them is ours alone. Perception is individual.
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