Communication, perception and visualization

Abstract

Humans perceive their environment through their senses. Commonly these are distinguished as an auditive system (the sense of hearing), a tactile system (the sense of touch), a kinaesthetic system (the ability to sense and coordinate movement), a vestibulary system (the sense of balance), an olfactory system (the sense of smell), a gustatory system (the sense of taste) and a visual system (the visual sense). Vision is easily the dominant component. This is underlined in everyday language by phrases such as seeing is believing and a picture is worth a thousand words, also a grand idea is a vision and we envision the future. Indeed, Bruce et al. (1996) estimated that 80 per cent of our impression of our surroundings comes from sight.