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Linda Roman
Mr. Schiller
AP Psychology
3 February 2011

Chapter 5: Sensation

 Sensation: process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and
represent stimulus from our environment
 Perception: process of organizing and interpreting our sensations
 Bottom-up processing: analysis begins with sensory perception and works up to the
brain’s integration of sensory information
 Top-down processing: information processing guided by higher-level mental
processes (when someone constructs perceptions drawing on our experience
and expectations)
Thresholds
 Psychophysics: the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of
stimuli (their intensity and our psychological experience of them)
 Absolute threshold: the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus
50 percent of the time
 Signal detection theory: the theory which predicts how and when we detect the
presence of a faint stimulus (“signal”) amidst background stimulation (“noise”). The
detection depends partly on a person’s experience, expectations, motivation and level of
fatigue.
 A person’s heightened response decreases after 30 minutes
 False alarms are detected more in high responsiveness
 If a stimulus is below absolute threshold, it is subliminal
o it is detected only 50% of the time
o much of our information processing occurs automatically off the radar screen of
our conscious mind.
 Difference threshold: the lowest difference you can detect between the two stimuli
50% of the time (just noticeable difference)
 Priming: acuteness to stimuli because of exposure to a certain event or experience
 Weber’s law: the principle that, two stimuli must differ in percentages or ratios, not
amount, for a person to detect it (jnd)
Sensory Adaptation (lowered sensitivity due to constant exposure from stimulus)
 If a constant image was maintained on the eye’s inner surface, the person will first see
the complete image, then their sensory receptors will begin to fatigue and the image
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will start to vanish. The image will reappear and then disappear. This experiment
reveals that perceptions are organized by the meanings that the mind imposes.
 This adaptation allows the person to focus on informative changes, leaving out
uninformative constant stimulations
Vision
 Sensory transduction: the conversion of energy into neural energy and impulses
 light is composed of electromagnetic waves with wavelengths (distance from one peak
to another peak on a wave) and amplitudes (height of the wave)
 wavelength determines pitch; pitch determines the frequency in sound
 amplitude determines intensity and loudness in sound
 light first enters the cornea (protective layer)
 the pupil (adjustable opening) is controlled by the iris (muscle around the pupil)
 via accommodation, the lens takes shape to focus the light
Retina (the back of the eye where light is focused)
 receives upside down images
 does not read the image as a whole
 the receptor cells convert the light energy into neural impulses which are sent
to the brain, the image is constructed, and then it is perceived
 rods: detect black, white, and gray; responsible for night vision and perception
of darkness
 blind spot: point where the optical nerve leaves the eye which creates a blind
spot because there are no receptor cells there
 fovea: the central point of the retina around where the cones cluster (no rods)
Visual Information Processing
 retina processes and analyzes information before sending it via the thalamus to
the rain’s cortex
 information from the retina is received and transmitted ganglion cells
 feature detectors in the brain cortex that are sensitive to specific features like
shape, color, depth, movement, and form (Hubel and Wiesel)
 some nerve cells specialize in responding to a specific gaze, head angle, posture
(Perret)
Parallel Processing
 our brain has the capacity of processing lots of information simultaneously
 people who cannot consciously perceive can still remarkably locate objects but
are consciously unaware of how they knew
 “the individual knows more than they are aware of”
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Color Vision
 Color can be created by combining the light waves of blue, red, and green colors.
They inferred that the eye must have three types of color receptors.
 Stages of color processing:
o Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory – Light is detected by 3 types of
cones that are sensitive to red, blue, or green. When combined, they
produce intermediate colors.
o Opponent-Process theory – Color is then processed by their opponent
colors (red-green, blue-yellow, black-white). Some cells are excited by blue &
inhibited by yellow, vice versa. Therefore, you can’t see bluish-yellow.
Color Constancy
 the importance of surrounding background effects on perceived color
 colors don’t look different even in different illumination even if the light and
wavelengths change
Hearing
 hearing is highly adaptable
 Hearing frequency: (pitch) the number of waves travelling through a point in a
second; it relates to how fast the wave travels
 Hearing requires sound waves converted into neural impulses (this is done in the ear)
 Sound travels through 3 sections of the ear to the brain:
o Outer ear: auditory canal
o Middle ear: ear drum (concentrates vibrations of ear drum on the cochlea’s
window)
o Inner ear: contains the cochlea (tube that contains fluid) that contains the basilar
membrane which is lined up with hair cells that vibrate to excite nerve fibers
(fibers form auditory canal that connect to the brain)
 Loudness is determined by number of activated hair cells
Pitch
 Place theory: when specific places in our cochlea are stimulated, we hear
different pitches
 Frequency theory: we hear different pitches because the speed of neural
impulses traveling to the brain matches the speed of the sound waves
(“frequency”).
Locating sounds
 Sound waves strike one ear sooner/with more intensity than the other
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 The ear uses parallel processing to analyze the differences in the sounds
received and is able to find the source
Hearing loss and deaf culture

Conduction deafness: loss of hearing due to damage of eardrum and/or the
little bones located in the middle ear
 Sensomeural hearing loss: caused by damage to the cochlea’s receptors
 Cochlear implants are the only possible solution to nerve deafness
Touch (warmth, pain, cold, and pressure)
 Pressure is the only sense with a specific receptor
 Pressure and cold = wet
 Cold and warm = hot
 Pressure and pain = tickling itch
Pain
Phantom Limb Sensation: pain is felt in nonexistent limb. This is because the
receptor neurons previously connected to them are still there.
 Gate control theory: spinal cord has gates that open and close to transmit pain
impulses
 Small fibers open lid = pain
 Large fiber close gate = no pain
Taste (sweet, sour, salty, and bitter)
 Taste receptors regulate every 1 to 2 weeks,
 Sensory interaction: one sense affects the other
Smell
 Transmits information from nose to temporal lube
 It doesn’t first replay impulses to the Thalamus
Body Position and Movement
 Kinethesis is using sensors in muscles, tendons, and not joints
 Vatibular sense is using the fluid in your semicirculatory canal, cochlea, and vestibular
sacs in one ere.
 Mouth of these sense our position, movement, and balance