exteroception
n. sensitivity to stimuli that are outside the body, resulting from the response of specialized sensory cells called exteroceptors to objects and occurrences in the external environment. Exteroception includes the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste, and exteroceptors thus take a variety of forms (e.g., photoreceptors—retinal rods and cones—for sight; cutaneous receptors—Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner’s corpuscles, Merkel’s tactile disks—for touch). Compare interoception. —exteroceptive
adj.