1. Chapter 4 Sensation & Perception

2. Sensation
The process by which stimulation of a sensory receptor produces neural impulses that the brain interprets as sound, a visual image, an odor, a taste, a pain, or other sensory images.
The registration of information.

3. Perception
A process that makes sensory patterns meaningful.

4. How Do We Interpret Sensations?
STIMULUS - energy that affects what we do.
RECEPTORS – specialized cells that convert environmental energies into signals for the nervous system.

5. How Does Stimulation Become Sensation?
The brain senses the world indirectly because the sense organs convert stimulation into the language of the nervous system: neural impulses.

6. Transduction
Transformation of one form of energy into another – especially the transformation of stimulus information into nerve impulses.

7. Sensory pathways – Bundles of neurons that carry information from the sense organs to the brain.

8. Sensory Adaptation
Loss of responsiveness in receptor cells after stimulation has remained unchanged for a while.

9. Thresholds
Absolute threshold – Amount of stimulation necessary for a stimulus to be detected.
Difference threshold – Smallest amount by which a stimulus can be changed and the difference be detected (also called just noticeable difference – JND).

10. Approximate absolute thresholds for the 5 senses:
Vision - Candle flame seen at miles on a clear, dark night.
Hearing - Tick of a watch under quiet conditions at 20 feet.
Taste - 1 Teaspoon of sugar in 2 gallons of water.
Smell - 1 Drop of perfume diffused into a three-room apartment.
Touch - A bee's wing falling on your cheek from 1 centimeter above.

11. Thresholds Weber’s law
The JND is always large when the stimulus intensity is high, and small when the stimulus intensity is low.

12. Signal Detection Theory
Signal detection theory – Perceptual judgment as a combination of sensation and decision-making processes.
Stimulus event
Neural activity
Comparison with personal standard
Action (or no action)

13. Subliminal Persuasion
Studies have found that subliminal words flashed briefly on a screen can “prime” a person’s later responses.
No controlled research has ever shown that subliminal messages delivered to a mass audience can influence people’s buying habits.

15. The Senses: Smell, Taste, & Touch

16. Position and Movement
Vestibular sense – Sense of body orientation with respect to gravity.
Tells us how our bodies are positioned.
Movement and motion.
3 semicircular canals

17. Position and Movement
Kinesthetic sense – Sense of body position and movement of body parts relative to each other.
Makes you aware when you are crossing your legs.
Provides constant sensory feedback.

18. Olfaction Sense of smell.
Smell can influence mood, memory, emotions, mate choice, and the endocrine system (hormones).

19. Olfaction
Olfactory bulbs – Brain sites of olfactory processing.

20. Olfaction

21. Olfaction Pheromones:
Chemical signals released by organisms to communicate with other members of the species.
Sexual communication

22. Taste Gustation – The sense of taste.
Taste buds – Receptors for taste (primarily on the upper side of the tongue)

23. Taste Receptors
Sweet
Salty
Sour
Bitter
Umami
Savory sensation

24. TASTE & SMELL
Our sense of smell is responsible for about 80% of what we taste.
All other flavors that we experience come from smell. This is why, when we have a cold, most foods seem bland or tasteless.
Our sense of smell becomes stronger when we are hungry.

25. The Skin Senses
Touch
Warmth
Cold
Texture
Pain

26. Review from Chapter 3!!!
Sensory information related to the skin senses is processed within which part of the brain???

27. Answer:
SOMATOSENSORY CORTEX

28. Pain Gate-control theory
An explanation for pain control that proposes we have a neural “gate” that can, under circumstances, block incoming pain signals.

29. Endorphins – neurotransmitters that inhibit the release of substance P, and therefore weaken pain sensations.
Decreasing Pain

30. Pain Placebos – Substances that appear to be drugs but are not.
Placebo effect – A response to a placebo caused by subjects’ belief that they are taking real drugs.

31. What is the Relationship Between Perception and Sensation?
Perception brings meaning to sensation, so perception produces an interpretation of the external world, not a perfect representation of it.

32. Perception and Sensation?
Percept – Meaningful product of a perception.
What we perceive.

33. The Machinery of Perceptual Processing
Feature detectors – Cells in the cortex that specialize in extracting certain features of a stimulus.

34. The Machinery of Perceptual Processing
Binding problem – A major unsolved mystery in cognitive psychology, concerning the physical processes used by the brain to combine many aspects of sensation to a single percept.

35. Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processing
Bottom-up processing – Analysis that emphasizes characteristics of the stimulus, rather than internal concepts (stimulus-driven processing).
Top-down processing – Emphasizes perceiver's expectations, memories, and other cognitive factors (conceptually-driven processing).

38. Perceptual Constancy
Ability to recognize the same object under different conditions, such as changes in illumination, distance, or location.
Size
Shape
Color

39. ILLUSIONS
An incorrect experience of a stimulus pattern, shared by others in the same perceptual environment.
Muller-Lyer Illusion

40. Ponzo Illusion

41. Muller-Lyer Illusion

42. Ambiguous Figures
Images that are capable of more than one interpretation.

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46. The Gestalt Approach
Gestalt psychology – An approach to psychology that seeks to explain how we perceive overall patterns.
Figure – Part of a pattern that commands attention.
Ground – Part of a pattern that does not command attention; the background.

47. The Gestalt Approach
Closure – Tendency to fill in gaps in figures and see incomplete figures as complete.

48. The Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Grouping
Similarity
Proximity
Continuity
Common fate
Prägnanz

49. The Gestalt Approach
Similarity – we tend to group similar objects together in our perceptions.

50. The Gestalt Approach
Proximity – we tend to group objects together when they are near each other.

51. The Gestalt Approach
Continuity – we prefer perceptions of connected and continuous figures to disconnected and disjointed ones.

52. The Gestalt Approach
Common Fate – we tend to group similar objects together that share a common motion or destination.

53. The Gestalt Approach A BIRD IN THE THE HAND Law of Prägnanz
The simplest organization, requiring the least amount of cognitive effort, will emerge as the figure. A
BIRD
IN THE
THE HAND

54. Depth Perception Visual Cliff Experiment
Develops around months of age

55. Depth Perception
Binocular cues – information taken in by both eyes that aids in depth perception, including convergence and retinal disparity.

56. Depth Perception
Monocular Cues – information about depth that relies on just one eye; includes relative size, light and shadow, interposition, relative motion, and atmospheric perspective.

57. Theoretical Explanations for Perception
Learning-based inference – View that perception is primarily shaped by learning, rather than innate factors.
Perceptual set – Readiness to detect a particular stimulus in a given context.

58. Do you see small gray squares between the black squares?
The Hermann Grid

59. The Stroop Effect

60. End of Chapter 4