Chapter 3 - Sensation and Perception

What is Sensation and Perception?

 Sensation – The process of detecting a physical stimulus, such as light, sound, heat, or pressure.
o All the raw data that enters your brain through sensory organs and receptors; the senses
 Perception - The process of integrating, organizing, and interpreting sensations.
o How you interpret the raw data; genetics and environment shape this differently for each and every one of us

Sensation

We’re accustomed to thinking of the senses as being quite different from one another. However, all our senses involve some common processes. All sensation is a
result of the stimulation of specialized cells, called sensory receptors, by some form of energy.
o Sensory Receptors - Specialized cells unique to each sense organ that respond to a particular form of sensory stimulation.
o Transduction - The process by which a form of physical energy is converted into a coded neural signal that can be processed by the nervous
system.
Sensory Thresholds
 absolute threshold - The smallest possible strength of a stimulus that can be detected half the time.
o Vision - A candle flame seen from 30 miles away on a clear, dark night
o Hearing - The tick of a watch at 20 feet
o Taste - One teaspoon of sugar in two gallons of water
o Smell - One drop of perfume throughout a three-room apartment
o Touch - A bee’s wing falling on your cheek from a height of about half an inch
 difference threshold - The smallest possible difference between two stimuli that can be detected half the time; also called just noticeable difference.
o For Example: Turning down stereo volume…you may hear a differences, your sister with a different threshold may not
 If you can hear the difference, it exceeds your threshold…if she can’t, it hasn’t exceeded hers
 Weber’s law (VAY-berz) - A principle of sensation that holds that the size of the just noticeable difference will vary depending on its relation to the
strength of the original stimulus. Developed by Ernst Weber (1795 – 1878)
o For Example: If the TV volume is high, you have to turn it down a lot to make the difference noticeable
 Sensory Adaptation - The decline in sensitivity to a constant stimulus.
o For Example:
 Getting used to cold water
 Skin touching the desk your are sitting in
 The fan in the room
o Our nervous system "pays more attention" to changing stimuli than to constant stimuli.

Signal Detection Theory

 Sensation is a judgment the sensory system makes about incoming stimulation

o A combination of sensation and decision-making processes
1. Stimulus Event
2. Neural Activity
3. Comparison with Personal Standard
4. Action (or no action)

subliminal perception - The detection of stimuli that are below the threshold of conscious awareness; unconscious perception.
o It can evoke a brain response, everyone’s threshold is different
o They do have some effect…if you are exposed to shapes subliminally and forced to pick a shape afterwards…you MIGHT pick the shape
shown to you subliminally
o Bottom line…it effects us briefly through attitudes, thoughts, preferences, and emotions
mere exposure effect - The finding that repeated exposure to a stimulus increases a person’s preference for that stimulus.

The Senses

Vision

 The receptor cells for vision respond to the physical energy of light waves and are located in the retina of the eye
 The sense organ for vision is the eye
 We are only capable of seeing a minuscule portion of the electromagnetic energy range.
o Wavelength - The distance from one wave peak to another.

 How We See – The Human Visual System

o Cornea (CORE-nee-uh) - A clear membrane covering the visible part of the eye that helps gather and direct incoming light.
 o Pupil - The opening in the middle of the iris that changes size to let in different amounts of light.
o Iris (EYE-riss) -The colored part of the eye, which is the muscle that controls the size of the pupil.
o Lens - A transparent structure located behind the pupil that actively focuses, or bends, light as it enters the eye.
o Accommodation - The process by which the lens changes shape to focus incoming light so that it falls on the retina.

 Visual Disorders
o Myopia (Nearsightedness) – distant objects appear blurry because the light reflected off the objects focuses in front of the retina
o Hyperopia (Farsightedness) – objects near the eyes appear blurry because light reflected off the objects is focused behind the retina
o Presbyopia – form of farsightedness during middle age that is caused when the lens becomes brittle and inflexible
o Astigmatism – an abnormally curved eyeball results in blurry vision for lines in a particular direction
o LASIK – reshaping cornea so that light rays focus more directly on the retina.
 The Retina
o Retina (RET-in-uh) - A thin, light-sensitive membrane located at the back of the eye that contains the sensory receptors for vision.
o Rods - The long, thin, blunt sensory receptors of the eye that are highly sensitive to light, but not to color, and that are primarily responsible for
peripheral vision and night vision.
o Cones - The short, thick, pointed sensory receptors of the eye that detect color and are responsible for color vision and visual acuity.
o Visual Acuity – seeing fine detail
o Fovea (FO-vee-uh) - A small area in the center of the retina, composed entirely of cones, where visual information is most sharply focused.
o Optic Disk – Area of the retina without rods or cones, where the optic nerve exits the back of the eye
o blind spot - The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, producing a small gap in the field of vision.
 Processing Visual Information
o Visual information is processed primarily in the brain. However, before visual information is sent to the brain, it undergoes some preliminary
processing in the retina by specialized neurons called ganglion cells.
 ganglion cells - In the retina, the specialized neurons that connect to the bipolar cells; the bundled axons of the ganglion cells form the
optic nerve.
 bipolar cells - In the retina, the specialized neurons that connect the rods and cones with the ganglion cells.
 From Eye to the Brain
o How is information transmitted from the ganglion cells of the retina to the brain?
 The 1 million axons of the ganglion cells are bundled together to form the optic nerve
o optic nerve - The thick nerve that exits from the back of the eye and carries visual information to the visual cortex in the brain. Same diameter as a
pencil.
o optic chiasm (KI-az-em) - Point in the brain where the optic nerve fibers from each eye meet and partly cross over to the opposite side of the brain.
 Color Vision
o First things first, color is not a property of the object, but a sensation we perceive in the brain.
o Color - The perceptual experience of different wavelengths of light, involving hue, saturation (purity), and brightness (intensity).
 Hue - The property of wavelengths of light known as color; different wavelengths correspond to our subjective experience of different
colors.
 Saturation - The property of color that corresponds to the purity of the light wave.
 Brightness - The perceived intensity of a color, which corresponds to the amplitude of the light wave.
o A person with normal color vision can discriminate from 120 to 150 color differences based on differences in hue, or wavelength, alone. When
saturation and brightness are also factored in, we can potentially perceive millions of different colors
 How We See Color
o trichromatic theory of color vision - The theory that the sensation of color results because cones in the retina are especially sensitive to red light
(long wavelengths), green light (medium wavelengths), or blue light (short wavelengths). Brought up by Hermann von Helmoltz (1821 – 1894)
 Color Blindness - One of several inherited forms of color deficiency or weakness in which an individual cannot distinguish between
certain colors.
o opponent-process theory of color vision - The theory that color vision is the product of opposing pairs of color receptors, red–green, blue–yellow,
and black–white; when one member of a color pair is stimulated, the other member is inhibited.
 Afterimage - A visual experience that occurs after the original source of stimulation is no longer present.
 The red/green cells increase their firing when red is present and decrease it when green is present.
 The yellow/blue cells have an increased response to yellow and a decreased response to blue.
 Another type of cell increases its response rate for white light and decreases in the absence of light.
o How can both theories be right? It turns out that each theory correctly describes color vision at a different level of visual processing.
o As described by the trichromatic theory, the cones of the retina do indeed respond to and encode color in terms of red, green, and blue. But recall
that signals from the cones and rods are partially processed in the ganglion cells before being transmitted along the optic nerve to the brain.
Researchers now believe that an additional level of color processing takes place in the ganglion cells. As described by the opponent-process theory,
the ganglion cells respond to and encode color in terms of opposing pairs In the brain, the thalamus and visual cortex also encode color in terms of
opponent pairs.
Hearing

 Auditory sensation, or hearing, results when sound waves are collected in the outer ear, amplified in the middle ear, and converted to neural messages in the
inner ear.
o Audition - The technical term for the sense of hearing.
 What We Hear – The Nature of Sound
o Sound Waves – the physical stimuli that produce our sensory experience of sound.
 Our perception of sound is directly related to the physical properties of sound waves
 Characteristics of Sound Waves
o Loudness - The intensity (or amplitude) of a sound wave, measured in decibels.
o Amplitude - The intensity or amount of energy of a wave, reflected in the height of the wave; the amplitude of a sound wave determines a sound’s
loudness.
o Decibel (DESS-uh-bell) - The unit of measurement for loudness.
o Pitch - The relative highness or lowness of a sound, determined by the frequency of a sound wave.
o Frequency - The rate of vibration, or the number of sound waves per second.
o Timbre (TAM-ber) - The distinctive quality of a sound, determined by the complexity of the sound wave.
 How We Hear - The Path of Sound
o outer ear - The part of the ear that collects sound waves; consists of the pinna, the ear canal, and the eardrum.
o Eardrum - A tightly stretched membrane at the end of the ear canal that vibrates when hit by sound waves.
o middle ear - The part of the ear that amplifies sound waves; consists of three small bones: the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup. The stirrup
transmits the sound onto the oval window (separates the middle and inner ear)
o inner ear - The part of the ear where sound is transduced into neural impulses; consists of the cochlea and semicircular canals.
 Cochlea (COCK-lee-uh) – The coiled, fluid-filled inner-ear structure that contains the basilar membrane and hair cells
 Basilar Membrane (BAZ-uh-ler) – membrane within the cochlea of the ear that contains the hair cells
 Hair Cells – the hair-like sensory receptors for sound

 Types of Deafness
o If the tiny bones of the middle ear are damaged or become brittle, as they sometimes do in old age, conduction deafness may result. Conduction deafness
can be helped by a hearing aid, which amplifies sounds.
o Damage to the hair cells or auditory nerve can result in nerve deafness, which cannot be helped by a hearing aid. Exposure to loud noise can cause nerve
deafness
 Distinguishing Pitch
 o Basilar Membrane is the key structure is distinguishing pitch
o Two Theories:
 Frequency Theory - The view that the basilar membrane vibrates at the same frequency as the sound wave.
 Place Theory - The view that different frequencies cause larger vibrations at different locations along the basilar membrane.

The Chemical and Body Senses

Smell

 Smell is better known as it’s technical name – olfaction

o It is a chemical sense that uses molecules in the air that are submitted by the substance we are smelling.
o These come in contact with millions of olfactory receptor cells located high in the nasal cavity
 These olfactory receptor cells are being constantly replaced and each cell only lasts for 30-60 days, each being specialized for certain
molecules
o When the cells are stimulated by molecules they send a neural impulse along their axons - which bundle to make the olfactory nerve
 How We Smell
o Olfactory nerves connect directly to the olfactory bulb
 Olfactory Bulb – The enlarged ending of the olfactory cortex at the front of the brain where the sensation of smell is registered
o Axons from the olfactory bulb form the olfactory tract
 They project onto the temporal lobe and areas of the limbic system
 Smelly Facts
o We reach a maximum adaptation to an odor in about a minute
 We continue to smell the odor, but we become roughly 70% less sensitive to it
o Olfactory tends to decline with age
 Half of those 65 to 80 have significant loss of olfaction function – a number that increases to 2/3rds people aged 80 and above
o Humans have about 12 million receptor cells
o Dogs have about 200 million
o If you actually stop and smell certain things and experience the world through smell more often – your sense of smell will improve
 Do Pheromones Influence Human Behavior?
o Pheromones – Chemical signals that provide information about social and sexual status of other members of the same species
 Marking territories, warning signals, paths taken (snails, ants, snakes) regulation sexual attraction, mating, and reproductive behavior
o Human pheromones (human chemosignals) can…
 Help women who spend elongated time with each other become on the same menstrual cycle
 Can effect mood and emotional state – exposure to women's tears can women’s tears reduce sexual motivation, sexual arousal, and
testosterone levels in men

Taste

 Taste is better known as its technical term – gustation

o It results from the stimulation of special receptor cells in the mouth called taste buds
 Taste Buds – specialized sensory receptor for taste that are located on the tongue and inside the mouth and throat
 Each taste bud contains about 50 receptor cells that are specialized for taste
 o The stimuli that produce the sensation of taste are chemical substances in whatever you eat or drink – they are dissolved by saliva, allowing the
chemical to activate the taste bud

 5 Different Tastes
o Sweet
o Sour
o Salty
o Bitter
o Umami (Yummy, Delicious, Savory)
 Monosodium Glutamate
 Meat or Protein-rich foods
 Aged cheeses
 Mushrooms
 seaweed

The Skin and Body Senses

Touch
 Largest and heaviest sense organ – skin
o Skin on an average adult = 20 square feet and weighs 6 pounds
 Many different kinds of sensory receptors on skin
o Specialized to respond to just one kind of stimulus (warmth, cold, pressure)
o Others receptors respond to more than one type of stimulus
 One important type of receptor is the Pacinian Corpuscle
o Located beneath the skin, when stimulated by pressure, it coverts stimulation into neural message that is relayed to the brain
o Constant pressure = sensory adaptation
 Hands, face, lips are more sensitive to touch than your arms, back, and legs – more densely packed with receptors
Pain
 A wide variety of stimuli can trigger pain
o Pain - The unpleasant sensation of physical discomfort or suffering that can occur in varying degrees of intensity.
o Nociceptors - Specialized sensory receptors for pain that are found in the skin, muscles, and internal organs. Small sensory fibers, also called
free nerve endings.
 Your fingertips have 1,200 per square inch, muscles and joints are fewer, and organs are fewest
 Pain helps you survive, warns you about potential or actual injury, prompting you to pay attention and stop what you are doing
o Withdrawal Reflex – jerking back from the object or stimulus that is injuring you
 Fast and Slow Pain Systems
o Two types of nocieptors
 A delta-fibers – fast pain system; myelinated fibers that transmit the transmit sharp, intense, but short-lived pain of the immediate
injury
 C fibers – represent the slow pain system. As the sharp pain subsides, C fibers transmit the longer-lasting throbbing, burning pain of
the injury. The throbbing pain carried by the C fibers gradually diminishes as a wound heals over a period of days or weeks.
 Most C fibers produce a pain enhancer called substance P
 Substance P – Neurotransmitter that is involved in the transmission of pain messages in the brain
o They are transferred to the spinal cord, then the brain
 Fast pain travels to the thalamus and somatosensory cortex (morphine and opiates don’t work for this)
  Slow pain From the spinal cord, the slow pain messages travel first to the hypothalamus and thalamus, and then to limbic system
structures, such as the amygdala. Its connections to the limbic system suggest that the slow pain system is more involved in the
emotional aspects of pain. (morphine and opiates do work for this)
 Factors that Influence Pain “Gates”
o gate-control theory of pain - The theory that pain is a product of both physiological and psychological factors that cause spinal gates to open
and relay patterns of intense stimulation to the brain, which perceives them as pain.
 Psychological Factors
 Fear, Anxiety, helplessness, depression, sadness, smelling terrible odors
 All intensify pain, opening the gates of pain even more
 Sense of control, good smelling odors, cultural beliefs
 All dull pain, closing the gates of pain
 Ways to Deal With Pain
o The release of natural painkillers in the brain
 Endorphins and enkephaline (produced in the brain and spinal cord) both of them inhibit the transmission of pain signals , including
the release of substance P
o Biofeedback –Technique that involves using auditory or visual feedback to learn to exert voluntary control over involuntary body functions, such
as heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow, and muscle tension.
o Acupuncture – Ancient Chinese medical procedure involving the insertion and manipulation of fine needles into specific locations on the body
to alleviate pain and treat illness; modern acupuncture may involve sending electrical current through the needles rather than manipulating
them.
 Sensitization: Unwarranted Pain
o Pain can continue after the injury is healed
 Phantom Limb Pain – person continues to experience intense painful sensations in a limb that has been amputated
 Sensitization – opposite of sensory adaptation where pain pathways to the brain become increasingly more responsive
over time
 Chronic Pain – it continues after all indications are that the injury has healed
 Pain circuits undergo sensitization, pain begins to occur in the absence of any sensory input
Movement, Position, Balance

 Kinesthetic Sense (kin-ess-THET-ick) - The technical name for the sense of location and position of body parts in relation to one another.
o Example: phone vibrates, you reach into your pocket, pull it out, put it to the side of your face without looking at it
o Involves specialized sensory neurons called proprioceptors
 Proprioceptors (pro-pree-oh-SEP-ters) - Sensory receptors, located in the muscles and joints, that provide information about body
position and movement.
 Vestibular Sense (vess-TIB-you-ler) - The technical name for the sense of balance, or equilibrium.
o Involves two sources of vestibular sensory information that are filled with fluid and lined with hair-like receptor cells that shift in results of
changes in gravity, motion, and body position.
 Semicircular Canal
 Vestibular Sacs
o Examples:
 Gravity: falling
 Motion: rocking of a boat
 Body Position: diving for a baseball
Perception

 Perception - The process of integrating, organizing, and interpreting sensations.

o How you interpret the raw data; genetics and environment shape this differently for each and every one of us
 bottom-up processing - Information processing that emphasizes the importance of the sensory receptors in detecting the basic features of a stimulus in the
process of recognizing a whole pattern; analysis that moves from the parts to the whole; also called data-driven processing.
o Example: Noticing a flower in a field
 If your attention is drawn to a flower in a field, it may be simply that the flower is more visually outstanding than the surrounding
field….you didn’t have to think about it
 top-down processing - Information processing that emphasizes the importance of the observer’s knowledge, expectations, and other cognitive processes in
arriving at meaningful perceptions; analysis that moves from the whole to the parts; also called conceptually driven processing.
o Many of our perceptions are driven by top-down processing because of our…
 Past experiences
 Memories
 Knowledge
 Cultural background
 ESP, or extrasensory perception, means the detection of information by some means other than through the normal processes of sensation.
o Telepathy—direct communication between the minds of two individuals
o Clairvoyance—the perception of a remote object or event, such as sensing that a friend has been injured in a car accident
o Psychokinesis—the ability to influence a physical object, process, or event, such as bending a key or stopping a clock, without touching it
o Precognition—the ability to predict future events
 Parapsychology – scientific investigation of claims of paranormal phenomena

Gestalt Psychology
 Gestalt psychology (geh-SHTALT) - A school of psychology founded in Germany in the early 1900s that maintained that our sensations are actively processed
according to consistent perceptual rules that result in meaningful whole perceptions, or gestalts.
o Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) - Arguing that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts, Wertheimer founded Gestalt psychology.
Wertheimer and other Gestalt psychologists began by studying the principles of perception but later extended their approach to other areas of
psychology.
 A school of psychology that no longer formally exist
 Gestalt Psychologists established many basic perceptual principles

The Perception of Shape

 Looking around your world you don’t see random edges, curves, colors, or splotches of light and dark.
 Rather, you see countless distinct objects against a variety of backgrounds
 We primarily rely on shape to tell what an object is, rather than size, color, and texture
o figure–ground relationship - A Gestalt principle of perceptual organization that states that we automatically separate the elements of a perception
into the feature that clearly stands out (the figure) and its less distinct background (the ground).
 People tend to notice the shape of the figure and not the background
Perceptual Grouping
 The Gestalt Principles of Organization
o The law of similarity - is the tendency to perceive objects of a similar size, shape, or color as a unit or figure. Thus, you perceive four horizontal
rows rather than six vertical columns of holiday cookies.
o The law of closure - is the tendency to fill in the gaps in an incomplete image. Thus, you perceive the curved lines on the clock as smooth,
continuous circles, even though they are interrupted by workers and the clock’s hands.
o The law of good continuation - is the tendency to group elements that appear to follow in the same direction as a single unit or figure. Thus, you
tend to see the curved sections of the highways as continuous units.
o The law of proximity - is the tendency to perceive objects that are close to one another as a single unit. Thus, you perceive these five people as
one group of two people and one group of three people.
o The law of Pragnanz – or the law of simplicity states when several perceptual organizations of an assortment of visual elements are possible,
the perceptual interpretation that occurs will be the one that produces the “best, simplest, and most stable shape” You probably perceived this
image as three overlapping squares rather than two six-sided objects and one four-sided object.

Depth Perception
 Perception of distance and motion helps us gauge the position of stationary objects and predict the path of moving objects.
o Being able to perceive the distance of an object has obvious survival value, especially regarding potential threats, such as snarling dogs or
oncoming trains. But simply walking through your house or apartment also requires that you accurately judge the distance of furniture, walls, other
people, and so forth.
o depth perception - The use of visual cues to perceive the distance or three-dimensional characteristics of objects.

 monocular cues (moe-NOCK-you-ler) - Distance or depth cues that can be processed by either eye alone.
o Relative size. If two or more objects are assumed to be similar in size, the object that appears larger is perceived as being closer.
o Overlap. When one object partially blocks or obscures the view of another object, the partially blocked object is perceived as being farther away. This
cue is also called interposition.
o Aerial perspective. Faraway objects often appear hazy or slightly blurred by the atmosphere.
o Texture gradient. As a surface with a distinct texture extends into the distance, the details of the surface texture gradually become less clearly
defined. The texture of the surface seems to undergo a gradient, or continuous pattern of change, from crisp and distinct when close to fuzzy and
blended when farther away.
o Linear perspective. Parallel lines seem to meet in the distance. For example, if you stand in the middle of a railroad track and look down the rails,
you’ll notice that the parallel rails seem to meet in the distance. The closer together the lines appear to be, the greater the perception of distance.
o Motion parallax. When you are moving, you use the speed of passing objects to estimate the distance of the objects. Nearby objects seem to zip by
faster than do distant objects. When you are riding on a commuter train, for example, houses and parked cars along the tracks seem to whiz by,
while the distant downtown skyline seems to move very slowly.
o Accommodation. It utilizes information about changes in the shape of the lens of the eye to help us estimate distance. When you focus on a distant
object, the lens is flat, but focusing on a nearby object causes the lens to thicken.
 binocular cues (by-NOCK-you-ler) - Distance or depth cues that require the use of both eyes.
o convergence—the degree to which muscles rotate your eyes to focus on an object. The more the eyes converge, or rotate inward, to focus on an
object, the greater the strength of the muscle signals and the closer the object is perceived to be.
 Hold your pencil 6 inches away from your face, now arms length
o binocular disparity - Because our eyes are set a couple of inches apart, a slightly different image of an object is cast on the retina of each eye. When
the two retinal images are very different, we interpret the object as being close by. When the two retinal images are more nearly identical, the object
is perceived as being farther away
 Hold a pencil just in front of your nose. Close your left eye, then your right. These images are quite different—that is, there is a great deal
of binocular disparity between them. Thus you perceive the pencil as being very close. Now pick an object across the room and do the
same.
o stereogram - is a picture that uses the principle of binocular disparity to create the perception of a three-dimensional image
The Perception of Motion

 In addition to the ability to perceive the distance of stationary objects, we need the ability to gauge the path of moving objects, whether it’s a baseball whizzing
through the air, a falling tree branch, or an egg about to roll off the kitchen counter.
o As we follow a moving object with our gaze, the image of the object moves across the retina. Our eye muscles make microfine movements to keep
the object in focus. We also compare the moving object to the background, which is usually stationary. When the retinal image of an object enlarges,
we perceive the object as moving toward us. Our perception of the speed of the object’s approach is based on our estimate of the object’s rate of
enlargement. Neural pathways in the brain combine information about eye-muscle activity, the changing retinal image, and the contrast of the
moving object with its stationary background. The end result? We perceive the object as moving.
 induced motion - an illusion of visual perception in which a stationary or a moving object appears to move or to move differently because of other moving
objects nearby in the visual field. It is interpreted in terms of the change in the location of an object due to the movement in the space around it. The object
affected by the illusion is called the target, and the other moving objects are called the background or the context … first studied by Gestalt psychologist Karl
Duncker in the 1920s
 stroboscopic motion - is a visual phenomenon caused by aliasing that occurs when continuous motion is represented by a series of short or instantaneous
samples. It occurs when the view of a moving object is represented by a series of short samples as distinct from a continuous view, and the moving object is in
rotational or other cyclic motion at a rate close to the sampling rate. It also accounts for the "wagon-wheel effect", so-called because in video or film, spoked
wheels on horse-drawn wagons sometimes appear to be turning backwards.

Perceptual Consistency
 perceptual constancy - The tendency to perceive objects, especially familiar objects, as constant and unchanging despite changes in sensory input.
o size constancy - The perception of an object as maintaining the same size despite changing images on the retina.
o shape constancy - The perception of a familiar object as maintaining the same shape regardless of the image produced on the retina.

Perceptual Illusions
 perceptual illusion - The misperception of the true characteristics of an object or an image.
o Müller-Lyer illusion - A famous visual illusion involving the misperception of the identical length of two lines, one with arrows pointed inward,
one with arrows pointed outward.
o moon illusion A visual illusion involving the misperception that the moon is larger when it is on the horizon than when it is directly overhead.
The Effects of Experience on Perceptual Interpretations
 Our educational, cultural, and life experiences shape what we perceive.
 Learning experiences can vary not just from person to person but also from culture to culture.
 Perception can also be influenced by an individual’s expectations, motives, and interests.
 perceptual set - The tendency to perceive objects or situations from a particular frame of reference.