Perception

Perception is the set of processes by which organisms use information provided by the environment to build representations of objects and events and to plan actions. A life-span approach to understanding perception necessarily involves understanding perceptual development because there are significant changes in perceptual processing particularly early in life, due to maturation and experience in infancy and childhood. How much do infants know about their environment? How [Page 1613]do they discover the sensory information that surrounds them in determining the fundamental facts of the world?

Remarkable advances in methods, coupled with the ingenuity and curiosity of dedicated researchers, have begun to provide answers to these important questions. Even newborn infants are well equipped to make sense of their world. This early start accompanies and contributes to ...