SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

Summary 1: The process of sensing

Sense – A system that translates information from outside the nervous system into
neural activity
Sensations – Messages from the senses that make up the raw information that
affects many kinds of behaviour and mental processes
Steps in the process of detecting information in the environment:

• Physical stimulus / energy – eg light, heat, sound – person talking, flashing

light
• Accessory structures – Structures, such as the lens of the eye, that modify a
stimulus

• Transduction – The process of converting incoming energy into neural activity

through receptors.
o Coding - Translating the physical properties of a stimulus into a pattern
of neural activity that specifically identifies those properties
o Temporal codes – Coding attributes of a stimulus in terms of changes in
the timing of neural firing. Eg. faster response to bright light than dim
o Spatial codes – Coding attributes of a stimulus in terms of the location
of firing neurons relative to their neighbours. Eg. touched hand or foot

• Sensory receptors – Specialized cells that detect certain forms of energy

• Sensory nerves – carry the output from receptors to the central nervous
system (spinal cord / brain)

• Neural signals – thalamus  cerebral cortex  sensory cortex

• Receptor potential – the physical stimulus makes the receptor cell more
permeable to electrically charged particles, and the movement of these
particles through the membrane creates a changed electrical charge, this is
called receptor potential.

Summary 2: The auditory system

Sound is a repetitive fluctuation in the pressure of a medium. such as air and water.
Acoustic stimulus is its physical stimulus.
• Sound wave
o Wavelength – the distance from one peak to the next in a wave form.
o Frequency – the number of complete waveforms, or cycles, that pass
by a given point in space every second. Measured in Hertz, this is the
pitch (high / low) of a tone. Human auditable range is 20Hz to 20kHz.
o Pressure amplitude – the difference between the peak and the
baseline of a wave form. This is the loudness and measured in decibels
(dB), which is a log scale. Increase of 10dB is doubling the loudness.
 o Timbre (“tamber”) is the quality of sound; it’s determined by the
complex wave pattern added onto the lowest (fundamental) frequency.
Eg. flute and clarinet sounded different.
o Phase full cycle of a sound wave = 360 degree phase angle. When the
same wave is 180 deg out of phase, it eliminates each other, this
principle is used in active noise suppression systems. Eg. headphones
used in aircrafts
• The Ear
o Outer ear (accessory structures) – pinna and auditory (ear) canal
funnels and channels sounds into the middle ear. The sound waves
strikes the eardrum (tympanic membrane) setting up vibrations.
o Middle ear (accessory structures) – The ossicles are the three smallest
bones in the human body. They are contained within the middle ear
space and serve to transmit sounds from the air to the fluid-filled
labyrinth (cochlea). They are the malleus (hammer), incus (anvil) and
stapes (stirrup). They amplify the changes in pressure by focusing the
vibrations of the eardrum onto a smaller membrane, the oval window.
o Inner ear – where transduction occurs.

 Oval window – the membrane interacts between the middle and

inner ear. After sound passes thru, it reaches the cochlea (a
coiled spiral).

 Basilar membrane forms the floor of the long tube that coils into
the cochlea. When the sound wave passes thru the fluids in the
tube, it moves the basilar membrane, and this movement bends
hair cells of the organ of Corti, a group of cells that rests on the
membrane.
 These hair cells connect with fibres from the auditory nerve.
 The tectorial membrane is on top of the layer of hair cells.
 The auditory neurons / nerve are connected to the hair cells,
and the bundle of axons that goes into the brain. When the hair
cells bend, they stimulate neurons in the nerve to fire in a
pattern that sends the brain a coded message about the
amplitude and frequency of the incoming sound wave.
o Because mechanical movement of the hairlike projections (cilia)
produce the changes in the membrane of the hair cells that create the
(electrical) receptor potential, this is known as mechano-electrical
transduction.
o Deafness

 Conduction deafness – caused when the three ossicles fuse

together, preventing accurate reproduction of vibrations. Can
surgically break the bones apart, or replace with plastic ones.
Hearing aids to amplify incoming sound will also help.

 Nerve (sensorineural) deafness – the nerve, or more commonly

the hair cells are damaged. Damages could be old age or
resulted by extended exposures of noise. Potential to regrow
 human hair cells. Hearing aids are artificial cochlea as implants
that stimulate the auditory nerve.
• Coding of sound
o Place theory / travelling wave theory – hair cells at a particular place
on the basilar membrane respond most to a particular frequency of
sound. Supports high freq hearing loss in older people – the cells
nearer the middle ear are responsible for higher freq, and they wear
out first because they are involved in all sounds.
o Frequency matching theory / volley theory / temporal / timing – the
view that some sounds are coded in terms of the frequency of neural
firing.
o Frequency matching at low frequencies; place mechanisms at high
frequencies.

Summary 3: The visual system

Light is a form of energy known as electromagnetic radiation (spectrum). Visible light
has wavelength b/w 400 nanometres (violet) to 750 nanometres (red) (10-6).
Wavelength changes in colour and intensity is experienced as brightness.
• The eye
o Cornea – the curved, transparent, protective layer through which light
rays enter the eye.
o Iris – the colourful part of the eye, which constricts or relaxes to adjust
the amount of light entering the eye, passing to the pupil.
o Pupil – an opening in the eye, just behind the cornea, through which
light passes.
o Lens – the part of the eye behind the pupil that bends light rays,
focusing them on the retina
o Retina – the surface at the back of the eye onto which the lens focuses
light rays. This is the ‘net’ of cells.

 Photoreceptors – nerve cells in the retina that code light

energy into neural activity. They contains photopigments,
chemicals that break when light strikes, changing the
membrane potential of the photoreceptor cells.

• Rods – contains rhodopsin (row-DOP-sin), only 1

pigment so cannot discriminate colours. More sensitive
to light, this is what we see with in the dark.

• Cones – contains varieties of iodopsin, they provide the

basis of colour vision. They are concentrated in the
centre of the retina, called fovea. Concentrated cones
also allow for details.
 Analysing before passing to the brain

• Bipolar cells – They can synapse with either rods or

cones (but not both), and they also accept synapses
 from horizontal cells. The bipolar cells then transmit the
signals from the photoreceptors or the horizontal cells,
and pass it on to the ganglion cells through action
potentials.

• Interneurons – they are cells that make sideways, or

lateral, connections between photoreceptors. Used for
comparisons between the photoreceptors – lateral
inhibition amplifies the differences by reducing the
responsiveness of its neighbour.

• Ganglion cells – to travel long distance to the brain,

these cells generate the action potential.
o As people get older, the lens loses its flexibility, making
accommodation more difficult. Hence older people become
“farsighted”.
o Cones allow for details but they are not good in dim lights. Rods are,
but the colour and details of the vision is scarified.
o Dark adaptation – for 30 mins in a darken room, the ability to see in the
dark increases.
o Blind spot – there are no photoreceptors at the point where optic nerve
exits the eye ball, hence a blind spot.
o Colour blindness

• Trichromatic theory (Young-Helmholtz theory) – only 3 type of cones – blue

(short), green (medium) and red (long wavelengths). Not a single, but all three
in ratios indicates what colour is sensed. This describes the properties of the
photometers.

• Opponent-process theory – a theory of colour vision stating that colour

sensitive visual elements are grouped into red-green, blue-yellow, and black-
white elements. Mixing lights of complementary colours produces grey
(cancelling each other). This describes the properties of the ganglion cells.

• Colour-blindness – people who are born with only 2 of the 3 possible colour-
sensitive pigments. They discriminate fewer colours than other people.
• Neural processing – preparation for perceiving objects
o Contrast enhancement – coding to detect edges via lateral inhibition
o Feature detectors – sensing orientation and visual texture
o Perceiving contours – recognise objects. Snow blindness; Hermann grid
with grey smudges.

Summary 4: Touch – the skin senses

• Skin receptors
o free nerve endings, without small bulb nor capsules on the end near
the epidermis.
 o Encapsulated endings, with small capsules on the end nearest the
epidermis.
• Theories
o Specificity theory states that each of the different kinds of receptors
responds exclusively to only one kind of physical stimuli (eg pain), and
each kind of receptor is therefore responsible for only one kind of
sensation.
o Pattern theory suggests that the pattern of nerve impulses determines
sensation. Each kind of receptor responds to many different kinds of
stimulation, but it response more to some than to others.
o Melzack and Wall (1962) incorporated aspects of each theory into their
proposal. Their paper is now regarded as a landmark in the theory of
skin sensitivity, and the basic assumptions of the theory still appear
correct.
• The four categories based on combination of speed and adaptation
o Rapidly adapting (RA) receptors good at picking up vibrations on the
skin.
o Slowly adaption (SA) receptors are good at pickup up constant
pressure.
o Size large / small
o Pacinian corpuscles are the largest sensory end organs on the body. It
is a large RA best to detect vibrations, but with high density in some
areas, it can also detect the roughness of the surfaces.
• Haptic perception is the perception of objects by touch. It is best with active
touch (moving fingers around the object), and regardless of where the passive
touch is against, the result is very similarly poor.
• Visual information takes precedence over touch
• Reading Braille requires active touching

• Using the Tadoma method for speech perception, a deaf or deaf-blind person
places their hand on the lips and jaw of the speaker to pick up tactile
sensations of speech such as airflow, lip and jaw movement, and vibration.

• Smell (olfaction) – stimuli are molecules in the air, suspect a lock-and-key

process with the receptors. These neurons are continuously replaced with new
ones, with a life of only 2 months.

• Taste (gustation) – made up of four primary qualities – sweet, sour, bitter and
salty and can be mapped to different regions of the tongue. Receptors
normally respond to two or more of these stimuli, but some are stronger over
the others. Two other taste qualities umami, a taste enhancer associated with
proteins and monosodium glutamate (MSG) and astringent, a taste associated
with tannis in teas. Spicy / hot are actually pain stimuli.

Summary 5: Methods underlying the study of perception

Physiologic methods – are used to investigate processes in the sensory receptors and
the brain that are associated with sensory stimulation and perceptual experience.
Psychophysical methods – are used to investigate the relationship between the
physical attributes of the sensory stimuli and the sensations or perceptual
experiences produced by these stimuli.
• Absolute threshold refers to the faintest detectable stimulus
• Difference threshold refers to the smallest detectable change in a stimulus.
o Method of limits
o Method of constant stimuli
o Method of adjustment
• The threshold is a statistical concept, rather than a distinct boundary between
detection and non-detection.
• Weber’s (“VAY-ber”) law states that the smallest detectable difference in
stimulus energy is a constant fraction of the intensity of the stimulus.
o Just noticeable difference (JND) = KI (K is Weber’s constant for a
particular sense) (I is the amount / intensity of the stimulus)

• Signal detection theory – a mathematical model of what determines a

person’s report that a near-threshold stimulus has or has not occurred. The
proportions of false alarm, hit, miss and correct rejection depends not only on
a person’s sensitivity, but also their response biases (criterion).

• Fechner’s law: S (sensation magnitude) = c (constant) log M (physical

quantity) attempts to address the relationship between changes in stimulus
magnitude and the magnitude of the resultant sensation. However, the
sensation / magnitude cannot be measured directly.

• Steven’s power low: S = cMp where p is the power to which the magnitude
must be raised. If p=1 then the sensory experience directly matches the
magnitude of the stimulus. if p<1 then S increase slower as M increase (eg.
perceived brightness). If p>1 then S increase more rapidly with small change
in M (eg. pain with electric shock)

Summary 6: Perceiving patterns and recognising objects

• Bottom-up processing – aspects of recognition that depend first on the
information about the stimulus that comes to the brain from the sensory
receptors.
• Top-down processing – aspects of recognition that are guided by higher-level
cognitive process and psychological factors such as expectations.
• Perceptual organisation
o Gestalt principles (relatively ‘bottom’ level)
 Proximity – closer objects or events
 Similarity – similar elements (pattern)
 Continuity – create continuous form
 Closure – fill in missing contours to complete objects
 Common fate – objects moving same direction
  Synchrony – occur at the same time
 Common region – located within some boundaries
 Connectedness
o Cognitive approach – effect of the past experience creates a perceptual
set
o Depth perception

 Binocular depth cues are convergence and retinal or binocular

disparity.
• Convergence is a cue from the eye muscles when they
turn the eyes inward to focus on a nearby object.
 Monocular cues comprise interposition (or occlusion), relative
size, linear perspective, motion parallax, height on the visual
field, texture gradient, linear perspective, aerial perspective
(clarity), and highlights and shadows.
 Depth cues help transport this image into a 3D mental
representation.

 For some process in perception of depth occur before object

recognition takes place. Eg. used in 3D movies.
o Movement perception. Movement/motion can be detected:
 From the optical flow of information.
 When there’s a change in the relative displacement between
objects
 Can e simulated by appropriate temporal sequencing of
stationary images, eg. phi phenomenon, stroboscopic; the
apparent movement effect; or as a consequence of continual
movement giving rise to after effects of movement in stationary
objects.
o Perceptual constancies – the perception of objects as constant in size,
shape, colour and other properties despite changes in their retinal
image.
 Size – estimates of size and distance are related in a process
called constancy scaling. Emmert’s Law: perceived size is a
function of the retinal size multiplied by its perceived distance.
 Shape
 Colour & brightness – retinal illuminance of an object is due to
external illuminance (source) and reflectance (proportion of
light reflected).
• Brightness (lightness) constancy is based on the ratio
principle of light b/w different regions of illuminance on
the retina.

• Colour constancy is due to the nature of the illuminance

falling on the object and on surrounding areas.