The distal stimulus (or distal object), the proximal stimulus, and percept are three concepts used to describe perception.
The distal stimulus is the stimulus of an object as it actually exists in the real world.
The distal stimulus provides information for the proximal stimulus. The proximal stimulus registers (onto sensory receptors) the information given by the distal stimulus, and may also refer to the neural activity which results from the sensory transduction of the physical stimulation. A mental recreation of the distal stimulus in the mind of the perceiver is the percept.
An example would be a person looking at a shoe on the floor. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. The light reflected from the shoe and projected onto the person's retina (sensory receptor) is the proximal stimulus, along with the resultant neural activity (but not the more abstract mental representation derived from that activity). The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example would be a telephone ringing. The ringing of the telephone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating our auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus, and the interpretation of the stimulation as the ringing of a telephone, by our brain, is the percept.
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