What Is Perceptual Adaptation?
Perceptual adaptations occur on an ongoing basis, and play a part in most every activity a person engages in throughout the day. These are mainly automatic processes that require the body and mind to receive and process incoming stimuli and react accordingly. Space, time and visual stimuli are a few of the areas in which adaptations take place.
Identification
Perceptual adaptation is a concept based on sensory awareness and how it changes to fit changing stimuli. In its most basic form, it begins with a threshold impression, which is the degree of stimulation required for awareness of a stimulus to register. Continued contact causes sensory receptors to become acclimated to its presence. When this happens, receptors have adapted, and so become less sensitive and less aware of the stimulus. Adaptations made within the context of the everyday world are more complex. Space, time, body schema, auditory and visual adaptations are ongoing processes that take place throughout the day.
Spatial Adaptations and Body Schemas
Spatial adaptations and body schemas are the most automatic adaptations, since these sensory processors are trained and conditioned at a young age. Spatial orientation is needed for a person to move about. Spatial adaptations occur when walking up an incline, or through a crowded room. Spatial sensory input is continuous and changing throughout the course of a day.
Body schemas have to do with a person's awareness of her body image and where it is positioned in relation to the objects around her. As a person moves through a room, this schema awareness works with the sensory receptors of sight, touch and sound.
Time Adaptations
Time adaptations are also automatic, working together with daylight and nightfall cycles as the framework in which these adaptations take place. Within the course of a day, individuals structure their activities according to the day's length, and survival needs like earning money. The body, too, has its own biological clock, called circadian rhythms; these rhythms correspond with daylight and nighttime schedules. The body's circadian rhythms are associated with its sleep cycles and overall energy levels. An example of how disruptions in time adaptations affect the body can be seen when a person travels from one time zone to another. The term "jet lag" is used to describe how the body feels until its internal clock adapts to the change in time zones.
Visual Adaptations
Visual adaptations have to do with the eyes' ability to adjust to changes in light intensity in bright, dim or pitch-dark settings. This happens as a result of a series of chemical reactions that take place within the rods and cones inside the eyes. Adaptation effects can be seen when a person goes from a brightly lit setting to one of complete darkness. The time it takes to adjust to the dark is the time it takes for a chemical called rhodopsin to fill the rods and cones. When a person goes from a dark setting to a light one, the process reverses.
Brain Plasticity
Brain plasticity---also known as neuroplasticity---represents the brain's ability to acquire new knowledge and skills through instruction or experience. This is a form of adaptation that requires the neural circuitry inside the brain to reorganize so that new sensory experiences can be experienced and learned. These processes take place within the cerebral cortex portion of the brain. Cognitive functions---logic, reasoning, judgment---rely on the brain's ability to accommodate new experiences. Brain plasticity also affects a person's memory capacity, and their ability to learn new information.
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