Sensation and Perception
Naveed Ahmed Khan
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 sorting out, interpretation, analysis and
integration of stimuli by the sense organs and
brain
The process by which the brain organizes and
interprets sensory information.
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
Psychophysics
The study of the relationship between the
physical aspects of stimuli and our
psychological experience of them.
Measuring Senses
Absolute threshold
Difference threshold
Sensory Adaptation
Sensory overload
Absolute Threshold
The smallest quantity of physical energy that can be reliably
detected by an observer.
The smallest intensity of a stimulus that must be present for the
stimulus to be detected.
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.
The smallest level of added or reduced
stimulation required to sense that a change
in stimulation has occurred.
Also called Just Noticeable Difference
(JND).
Weber’s law
States that the size of a just noticeable
difference is a constant proportion of the
size of the initial stimulus.
The Weber fraction for lifting weights is
approximately 1/30.
Sensory Adaptation
Adaptation
The reduction or disappearance of sensory
responsiveness when stimulation is
unchanging or repetitious.
Prevents us from having to continuously
respond to unimportant information.
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.
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.
There are three kinds of cones
in the retina, each of which
responds primarily to a
specific range of wave lengths
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
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.
Wavelength
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
Knob like 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
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.
To be Continued . . . . . .
THANKYOU
Gestalt principles/ Laws of
organization
Gestalt principles describe the brain’s
organization of sensory building blocks
into meaningful units and patterns.
Gestalt laws of Organization, a series of
principles that describe how we organize
bits and pieces of information into
meaningful wholes.
Elements that are close to one another tend to be grouped
together.
Viewers tend to supply missing elements to close or complete
a familiar figure.
Elements that are similar tend to grouped together.
Viewers tend to see elements in ways that produce smooth
continuation
Gestalt laws of Organization?
A B
C D
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?
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
Depth and Distance Perception
Depth perception
The ability to view the world in three dimensions
and to perceive distance.
Perceptual Constancy
Our understanding that physical objects are
unvarying and consistent even though sensory
input about them may vary.
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.
Monocular Cues:
Visual cues to depth or distance that can be used
by one eye alone.
Relative Size
Texture Gradient
Light &Shadow
Linear Perspective
Height in plane
Motion Parallax
ILLUSIONS
An illusion is a distortion of the senses,
which can reveal how the human brain
normally organizes and interprets sensory
stimulation. Generally shared by most people.
Perceptual experiences in which information
arising from “real” external stimuli leads to an
incorrect perception, or false impression, of
the object or event from which the stimulation
comes.
Visual
Illusions
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!
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
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.
Cultural Influences
2D vs. 3D drawings (Deregowski,1973)
Depth Cues (Hudson,1960)
Taste ( Blood, warms, fish eye)
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.
THANK YOU
