Sensation & Perception

Sensation: The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and
represent stimulus energies from our environment.

Perception: The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information enabling us to

recognize meaningful events and objects.
 Bottom-up processing

Our bottom-up processing starts at the sensory receptors and works up to higher levels of
processing.
 Top-down processing

 Our top-down processing constructs perceptions from the sensory input by drawing on
our experience and expectations.
Sensation vs Perception
 Basic principles to sensation

 transduction

 Thresholds

 Sensory adaptation

 Perceptual set
 Can you read this

Tihs si teh casls of pyshcolghy yuo aer raenindg on a sidle. Aer ouy wnoedrnig aoubt
your udnersatnidng? Ralley? Tihs is due teh pocresisng of yuor mnid.
 Assignment 1

What do you think? Our behavior is a product of our nature or nurture? Or you think
something else? Critically evaluate the nature and nurture debate in psychology.
 Transduction

 receive sensory stimulation, often using specialized receptor cells.

 transform that stimulation into neural impulses.

 deliver the neural information to your brain.

 Threshold

 Absolute threshold

 Signal detection theory

 Subliminal

 Priming.
 Absolute Threshold

To some kinds of stimuli we are exquisitely sensitive. Standing atop a mountain on an

utterly dark, clear night, most of us could see a candle flame atop another mountain 30
miles away. We could feel the wing of a bee falling on our cheek. We could smell a single
drop of perfume in a three - room apartment
 Absolute Threshold

Absolute thresholds—the minimum stimulation necessary to detect a particular light, sound,

pressure, taste, or odor 50 percent of the time. To test your absolute threshold for sounds, a
hearing specialist would expose each of your ears to varying sound levels. For each tone, the
test would define where half the time you could detect the sound and half the time you could
not. That 50-50 point would define your absolute threshold.
 Difference Threshold

 To function effectively, we need absolute thresholds low enough to allow us to detect

important sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells.

 the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the
time. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference (or jnd).
 Sensory adaptation

 A musty odor

 A noisy road

 A moving train
 Perceptual Set

As everyone knows, to see is to believe. As we less fully appreciate, to believe is to see.

Through experience, we come to expect certain results. Those expectations may give us a
perceptual set, a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that greatly affects (top - down)
what we perceive. Perceptual set can influence what we hear, taste, feel, and see.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/forensic-psychology/7/steps/229050
 Vision and Eye

 Our eyes receive light energy and transduce (transform) it into neural messages that our
brain then processes into what we consciously see.
 Eye is the sensory organ for the light stimulus.

 When you look at a bright red tulip, what strikes your eyes is not particles of the color red
but pulses of electromagnetic energy that your visual system perceives as red.
The Eye
 Light rays reflected from a candle pass through the cornea, pupil, and lens.

 The curvature and thickness of the lens change to bring nearby or distant objects into focus on
the retina.

 Rays from the top of the candle strike the bottom of the retina, and those from the left side of
the candle strike the right side of the retina.

 The candle’s image on the retina thus appears upside - down and reversed.
 Inside the eye

 pupil the adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters.

 iris a ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and
controls the size of the pupil opening.

 lens the transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on
the retina.
 Inside the eye

 retina the light - sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers
of neurons that begin the processing of visual information.

 accommodation the process by which the eye’s lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the
retina.

 rods retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision,
when cones don’t respond.

 cones retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in
daylight or in well - lit conditions. The cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.
Rods and Cones
 The Neural Impulse of the eye

 optic nerve the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.

 blind spot the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a “blind” spot
because no receptor cells are located there.

 fovea the central focal point in the retina, around which the eye’s cones cluster.