8 Sensation & Perception
Our sensory systems are crucially important for our ability to interact with the world around us. Every sense functions at birth—newborns use all of their senses to attend to everything and every person. We will begin this section by exploring how infants’ senses develop and how sensory systems like hearing and vision operate, and how infants take in information through their senses and transform it into meaningful information. While some sensory systems undergo changes throughout the lifespan, the most drastic changes in sensory functioning occurs in late adulthood. We will examine the most common types of changes to the sensory systems that older adults experience, and will discuss ways to slow and cope with these changes.