#psy. Examples of Sensory Adaptation, (which is in my experiences)

There are three examples of sensory adaptation, which is in my experiences. The first example is about ambulance sound. About nine years ago, my family and I moved into our house, where we currently live. One of the most distinctive features of this house is that it is quite close to the hospital. As a result, we were subjected to a lot of ambulance noise every day. For the first time when we moved into this house, my mother would whisper raucously, “may God help them,” every time she heard an ambulance. As time passed, the ambulance’s sound did not attract any of us anymore -it’s like we can’t hear the ambulance. Of course, my mother’s whispers decreased and almost disappeared. The second one is that, as in the first experience, we experienced a state of habituation; in other words, sensory adaptation as a family when the police moved into our apartment next door. Some mornings when he returned from his shift when his friends drove him home in a police car, we exposed to that flashing red and blue light inside our room. This situation, which seems quite strange when you are not used to it, has over time turned into another adaptation that we can’t realize anymore. The last example is related to sacrificial meat. When my father brought the meat of the sacrificed animal to the kitchen for the first time, the smell of fresh blood was disturbing, but after spending more time in the kitchen to cut the meat into pieces, etc., I couldn’t smell blood after a while. To summarize, all these examples related to different sensory adaptations such as hearing, vision, and smell.

Sena Sarıtaş

Middle East Technical University, Psychology Major Student.