SENSATION AND

PERCEPTION
OUR SENSATIONAL SENSES

• Defining sensation and perception

• The riddle of separate senses
• Measuring the senses
• Sensory adaptation
• Sensory overload
DEFINING SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

• Sensation
• The detection of physical energy emitted or reflected by physical objects.
• It occurs when energy in the external environment or the body stimulates receptors
in the sense organs.
• Perception
• The process by which the brain organizes and interprets sensory information.
Ambiguous Figure
 Colored surface can be
either the outside front
surface or the inside
back surface
 Cannot simultaneously
be both
 Brain can interpret the
ambiguous cues two
different ways
 THE RIDDLE OF SEPARATE SENSATIONS

• Sense receptors
• Specialized cells that
convert physical energy
in the environment or
the body to electrical
energy that can be
transmitted as nerve
impulses to the brain.
SENSATION & PERCEPTION
PROCESSES
DOCTRINE OF SPECIFIC NERVE
ENERGIES
• Different sensory modalities exist because signals received
by the sense organs stimulate different nerve pathways
leading to different areas of the brain.
• Synthesia
• A condition in which stimulation of one sense also evokes another.
MEASURING SENSES

• Absolute threshold
• Difference threshold
• Signal-detection theory
 ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD

• The smallest quantity of physical energy that can

be reliably detected by an observer.
ABSOLUTE SENSORY THRESHOLDS
• Vision:
• A single candle flame from 30 miles on a dark, clear night
• Hearing:
• The tick of a watch from 20 feet in total quiet
• Smell:
• 1 drop of perfume in a 6-room apartment
• Touch:
• The wing of a bee on your cheek, dropped from 1 cm
• Taste:
• 1 tsp. Sugar in 2 gal. water
DIFFERENCE THRESHOLD

• The smallest difference in stimulation that can be reliably

detected by an observer when two stimuli are compared;
• Also called Just Noticeable Difference (JND).
SIGNAL-DETECTION THEORY

• A psychophysical theory that divides the detection of a

sensory signal into a sensory process and a decision
process.
Stimulus is Stimulus is
Present Absent
Response: Hit False Alarm
“Present”
Response: Miss Correct
“Absent” Rejection
SENSORY ADAPTATION AND
DEPRIVATION
• Adaptation
• The reduction or disappearance of sensory responsiveness when stimulation is
unchanging or repetitious.
• Prevents us from having to continuously respond to unimportant information.
• Deprivation
• The absence of normal levels of sensory stimulation.
SENSORY OVERLOAD

• Overstimulation of the senses.

• Can use selective attention to reduce sensory overload.
• Selective attention
• The focusing of attention on selected aspects of the environment
and the blocking out of others.
VISION

• What we see
• An eye on the world
• Why the visual system is not a camera
• How we see colours
• Constructing the visual world
WHAT WE SEE
• Hue
• Visual experience specified by colour names and related to the wavelength of light.
• Brightness
• Lightness and luminance; the visual experience related to the amount of light
emitted from or reflected by an object.
• Saturation
• Vividness or purity of colour; the visual experience related to the complexity of
light waves.
WHAT WE SEE

• Hue
• Brightness
• Saturation
 AN EYE ON THE WORLD
• Cornea
• Protects eye and bends
light toward lens.
• Lens
• Focuses on objects by
changing shape.
• Iris
• Controls amount of light
that gets into eye.
• Pupil
• Widens or dilates to let
in more light.
AN EYE ON THE WORLD

• Retina
• Neural tissue lining the back of the eyeball’s interior, which contains the receptors
for vision.

• Rods
• Visual receptors that respond to dim light.

• Cones
• Visual receptors involved in colour vision. Most humans have 3 types of cones.
THE STRUCTURES OF THE RETINA
WHY THE VISUAL SYSTEM IS NOT A
CAMERA
• Much visual processing is done in the brain.
• Some cortical cells respond to lines in specific orientations (e.g. horizontal).
• Other cells in the cortex respond to other shapes (e.g., bulls-eyes, spirals, faces).
• Feature-detectors
• Cells in the visual cortex that are sensitive to specific features of the environment.
HUBEL & WIESEL’S EXPERIMENT
HOW WE SEE COLOURS

• Trichromatic theory
• Opponent process theory
TRICHROMATIC THEORY

• Young (1802) & von

Helmholtz (1852) both
proposed that the eye
detects 3 primary
colours:
• red, blue, & green
• All other colours can
be derived by
combining these three.
OPPONENT-PROCESS THEORY

• A competing theory of
colour vision, which
assumes that the visual
system treats pairs of
colours as opposing or
antagonistic.
• Opponent-Process
cells are inhibited by a
colour, and have a
burst of activity when
it is removed.
AFTERIMAGES
TEST OF COLOUR DEFICIENCY
 CONSTRUCTING THE VISUAL
WORLD
• Form perception
• Depth and distance perception
• Visual constancies: When seeing is believing
• Visual illusions: When seeing is misleading
FORM PERCEPTION

• Gestalt principles describe the brain’s organization of sensory building

blocks into meaningful units and patterns.
 FIGURE AND GROUND

• Proximity
• Seeing 3 pair of lines in A.
• Similarity
• Seeing columns of orange
and red dots in B.
• Continuity
• Seeing lines that connect 1
to 2 and 3 to 4 in C.
• Closure
• Seeing a horse in D.
DEPTH AND DISTANCE PERCEPTION

• Binocular Cues:
• Visual cues to depth or distance that require the use of both eyes.
• Convergence: Turning inward of the eyes, which occurs when they focus on a
nearby object.
• Retinal Disparity: The slight difference in lateral separation between two objects as
seen by the left eye and the right eye.
DEPTH AND DISTANCE PERCEPTION

• Monocular Cues:
• Visual cues to depth or distance that can be used by one eye alone.
THE AMES ROOM

• A specially-built room
that makes people seem
to change size as they
move around in it
• The room is not a
rectangle, as viewers
assume it is
• A single peephole
prevents using binocular
depth cues
 VISUAL CONSTANCIES

• The accurate perception of objects as stable or unchanged despite

changes in the sensory patterns they produce.
• Shape constancy
• Location constancy
• Size constancy
• Brightness constancy
• Colour constancy
SHAPE CONSTANCY

• Even though these images cast shadows of

different shapes, we still see the quarter as round
VISUAL
ILLUSIONS

• Illusions are valuable in understanding perception

because they are systematic errors.
• Illusions provide hints about perceptual strategies.
• In the Muller-Lyer illusion (above) we tend to
perceive the line on the right as slightly longer than
the one on the left.
THE PONZO ILLUSION

• Linear perspective
provides context
• Side lines seem to
converge
• Top line seems farther
away
• But the retinal images of
the red lines are equal!
FOOLING THE EYE

• The cats in (a) are the same size

• The diagonal lines in (b) are parallel
• You can create a “floating fingertip frankfurter” by holding hands
as shown, 5-10” in front of face.
HEARING

• What we hear
• An ear on the world
• Constructing the auditory world
WHAT WE HEAR

• Loudness
• The dimension of auditory experience related to the intensity of a pressure wave.
• Pitch
• The dimension of auditory experience related to the frequency of a pressure wave.
• Timbre (pronounced “TAM-bur”)
• The distinguishing quality of sound; the dimension of auditory experience related to the
complexity of the pressure wave.
AN EAR ON THE WORLD
AUDITORY LOCALIZATION

• Sounds from different

directions are not identical
as they arrive at left and
right ears
• Loudness
• Timing
• Phase
• The brain calculates a
sound’s location by using
these differences.
OTHER SENSES

• Taste: savoury sensations

• Smell: The sense of scents
• Senses of the skin
• The mystery of pain
• The environment within
TASTE: SAVOURY SENSATIONS

• Papillae
• Knoblike elevations on the tongue, containing the taste
buds (Singular: papilla).
• Taste buds
• Nests of taste-receptor cells.
TASTE BUDS
• Photograph of tongue
surface (top),
magnified 75 times.
• 10,000 taste buds line
the tongue and mouth.
• Taste receptors are
down inside the “bud”
• Children have more
taste buds than adults.
 FOUR TASTES

• Four basic tastes

• Salty, sour, bitter and sweet.

• Different people have different tastes based on:

• Genetics
• Culture
• Learning
• Food attractiveness
SMELL: THE SENSE OF SCENTS

• Airborne chemical molecules enter the nose and

circulate through the nasal cavity.
• Vapors can also enter through the mouth and pass into nasal
cavity.
• Receptors on the roof of the nasal cavity detect these
molecules.
OLFACTORY SYSTEM
SENSITIVITY TO TOUCH
GATE-CONTROL THEORY OF PAIN

• Experience of pain
depends (in part) on
whether the pain
impulse gets past
neurological “gate” in
the spinal cord and thus
reaches the brain.
 NEUROMATRIX THEORY OF PAIN

• Theory that the matrix

of neurons in the brain
is capable of generating
pain (and other
sensations) in the
absence of signals from
sensory nerves.
THE ENVIRONMENT WITHIN

• Kinesthesis
• The sense of body position and movement of body parts; also called
kinesthesia.
• Equilibrium
• The sense of balance.

• Semicircular Canals
• Sense organs in the inner ear, which contribute to equilibrium by
responding to rotation of the head.
PERCEPTUAL POWERS: ORIGINS AND
INFLUENCES
• Inborn abilities
• Critical periods
• Psychological and cultural Influences on perception
 THE VISUAL
• Glass surface, with CLIFF
checkerboard underneath at
different heights
• Visual illusion of a cliff
• Baby can’t fall
• Mom stands across the gap
• Babies show increased
attention over deep side at age
2 months, but aren’t afraid
until about the age they can
crawl (Gibson & Walk, 1960)
THE VISUAL CLIFF
CRITICAL PERIODS
• If infants miss out on
experiences during a crucial
period of time, perception
will be impaired.
• When adults who have been
blind since birth have vision
restored, they may not see
well
• Other senses such has
hearing may be influenced
similarly.
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL
INFLUENCES ON PERCEPTION
• We are more likely to perceive something when
we need it.
• What we believe can affect what we perceive.
• Emotions, such as fear, can influence perceptions
of sensory information.
• Expectations based on our previous experiences
influence how we perceive the world.
• Perceptual Set
• A habitual way of perceiving, based on expectations.
• All are influenced by our culture.
PERCEPTUAL SET

• What you see in the centre figures depends on the

order in which you look at the figures:
• If you scan from the left, see an old woman
• If you scan from the right, see a woman’s figure
CONTEXT EFFECTS

• The same physical

stimulus can be
interpreted differently
• We use other cues in
the situation to resolve
ambiguities
• Is this the letter B or
the number 13?
PUZZLES OF PERCEPTION

• Subliminal Perception
• Extrasensory Perception: Reality or Illusion?
SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION

• Perceiving without awareness

• visual stimuli can affect your behaviour even when you are unaware
that you saw it
• nonconscious processing also occurs in memory, thinking, and
decision making
• these effects are often small, however, and difficult to demonstrate
and work best with simple stimuli
SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION

• Perception versus Persuasion

• there is no empirical research to support popular notions that
subliminal persuasion has any effect on a person’s behaviour
• persuasion works best when messages, in the form of advertising or
self-help tapes, are presented above-threshold, or at a supraliminal
level
EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION

• Extrasensory Perception (ESP):

• The ability to perceive something without ordinary sensory information
• This has not been scientifically demonstrated

• Three types of ESP:

• Telepathy – Mind-to-mind communication
• Clairvoyance – Perception of remote events
• Precognition – Ability to see future events
PARAPSYCHOLOGY

• The study of purported psychic phenomena such as ESP and mental

telepathy.
• Persinger suggests that psychic phenomena are related to signs of
temporal lobe epilepsy in otherwise neurologically normal individuals.
• Most ESP studies produce negative findings and are not easily
replicated.
PARAPSYCHOLOGY

• J. B. Rhine conducted many experiments on ESP using

stimuli such as these.
• Rhine believed that his evidence supported the
existence of ESP, but his findings were flawed.