Chapter 4 of NCERT Class 11 Psychology, titled Sensory, Attentional and Perceptual Processes, explains how we experience the world through our senses, how we pay attention to certain things, and how our brain interprets what we see, hear, or feel. This chapter covers topics like sensation, the five senses, attention and its types, and perception, including illusions and depth perception. It helps students understand how basic psychological processes work in our daily lives.
I’m writing about this topic because this chapter is not only an important part of the psychology syllabus but also something that helps us understand how the human mind functions in a practical way. Every day, we use our senses to navigate the world, whether it’s reacting to a loud noise or noticing someone’s facial expression. But we rarely stop to think about how it all works behind the scenes. For students, this chapter builds a base for more complex concepts like cognition and memory in future chapters. It’s also helpful for understanding conditions where these processes don’t work normally, such as in sensory disorders or attention problems. By reading this chapter carefully and revising it with the help of the PDF, students can not only prepare for exams but also make better sense of their own mental experiences.
What This Chapter Covers
Chapter 4 is packed with basic but important psychological concepts. It introduces students to the foundational processes that help us take in information and understand the world. Here’s a breakdown of the key areas covered:
1. Sensation
- Sensation refers to the process through which we detect stimuli from the environment
- Our sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin) help us receive this sensory information
- This part of the chapter includes types of sensations and sensory thresholds (e.g., absolute threshold and difference threshold)
2. Attention
- Attention is the process of focusing on specific stimuli while ignoring others
- The chapter explains selective attention, divided attention, and sustained attention
- Examples are used to show how attention works in real life, such as listening to a teacher while ignoring outside noise
3. Factors Influencing Attention
- Internal factors: motivation, interest, mental state
- External factors: intensity, movement, size, contrast of the stimulus
- The chapter gives examples like why a moving object grabs more attention than a still one
4. Perception
- Perception is how the brain interprets sensory information
- It’s more than just sensing; it involves giving meaning to what we sense
- The chapter explains the role of past experiences, expectations, and context in shaping our perception
5. Organisation in Perception
- Includes Gestalt principles like figure-ground, proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity
- These rules show how we automatically organise sensory input into meaningful patterns
- For example, we see a face in a group of dots due to closure and similarity
6. Depth and Distance Perception
- How we perceive the three-dimensional world from two-dimensional retinal images
- The chapter explains monocular and binocular cues like relative size, linear perspective, and retinal disparity
7. Illusions and Errors in Perception
- Optical illusions are used as examples to show that perception is not always accurate
- The Müller-Lyer illusion is one of the examples explained in the book
Download NCERT Class 11 Psychology Chapter 4 PDF
To help with easy revision, here is the direct download link to the official NCERT PDF of Chapter 4
