Editing Perception (section)

=== Effect of experience ===
{{main|Perceptual learning}}With experience, [[organism]]s can learn to make finer perceptual distinctions, and learn new kinds of categorization. Wine-tasting, the reading of X-ray images and music appreciation are applications of this process in the [[human]] sphere. [[Research]] has focused on the relation of this to other kinds of [[learning]], and whether it takes place in peripheral [[Sensory perception|sensory]] systems or in the brain's processing of sense information.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sumner |first1=Meghan |last2=Samuel |first2=Arthur G. |url=https://web.stanford.edu/~sumner/Publications/2009_Sumner_JML.pdf |title=The Effect of Experience on the Perception and Representation of Dialect Variants |journal=Journal of Memory and Language |publisher=[[Elsevier Inc.]] |date=May 2009 |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=487–501 |doi=10.1016/j.jml.2009.01.001 |access-date=3 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160202011511/https://web.stanford.edu/~sumner/Publications/2009_Sumner_JML.pdf |archive-date=2 February 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Empirical]] [[research]] show that specific practices (such as [[yoga]], [[mindfulness]], [[Tai chi|Tai Chi]], [[meditation]], Daoshi and other mind-body disciplines) can modify human perceptual modality. Specifically, these practices enable perception skills to switch from the external (exteroceptive field) towards a higher ability to focus on internal signals (''[[proprioception]]''). Also, when asked to provide verticality judgments, highly self-transcendent [[yoga]] practitioners were significantly less influenced by a misleading visual context. Increasing self-transcendence may enable yoga practitioners to optimize verticality judgment tasks by relying more on internal (vestibular and proprioceptive) signals coming from their own body, rather than on exteroceptive, visual cues.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fiori |first1=Francesca |last2=David |first2=Nicole |last3=Aglioti |first3=Salvatore Maria |date=2014 |title=Processing of proprioceptive and vestibular body signals and self-transcendence in Ashtanga yoga practitioners |journal=[[Frontiers in Human Neuroscience]] |volume=8 |pages=734 |doi=10.3389/fnhum.2014.00734 |pmc=4166896 |pmid=25278866 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Past actions and events that transpire right before an encounter or any form of stimulation have a strong degree of influence on how sensory stimuli are processed and perceived. On a basic level, the information our senses receive is often ambiguous and incomplete. However, they are grouped together in order for us to be able to understand the physical world around us. But it is these various forms of stimulation, combined with our previous knowledge and experience that allows us to create our overall perception. For example, when engaging in conversation, we attempt to understand their message and words by not only paying attention to what we hear through our ears but also from the previous shapes we have seen our mouths make. Another example would be if we had a similar topic come up in another conversation, we would use our previous knowledge to guess the direction the conversation is headed in.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Snyder |first=Joel |date=31 October 2015 |pmc=4628108 |title=How previous experience shapes perception in different sensory modalities |journal=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |volume=9 |pages=594 |pmid=26582982 |doi=10.3389/fnhum.2015.00594 |doi-access=free }}</ref>