Sensation

Input about the physical world provided

by our sensory receptors

The sensitivity of our sensory organs to

external stimuli varies
Absolute threshold- the smallest
magnitude of the stimulus that can be
reliably discriminated from no stimulus
at all 50% of the time.

Stimuli below threshold: Can they have

an effect?

Subliminal messages can be powerful

source of persuasion.

The ability to see a stimulus that is

below the threshold for a conscious
experience.

Attention
The process through which certain
stimuli are selected from a group
of others is generally referred to
as attention

Factors affecting attention

motion, size, intensity, novelty,
incongruity, emotion, personal significance
and social cues

Motion: Adults and children are more

likely to pay attention to an object with
there is motion involved.
Example: Children are more drawn to toys

that move such as toy cars.

Size: Objects or text that are larger gain more

attention than normal or small objects.
Example: Traffic signs are large and are usually
in all capital letters.
Intensity: Intense objects or text garner attention.
Example: Bright colors attract more attention
than plain black text.
Novelty: "Stimuli that are novel or unusual is some
way tend to draw people's attention."
Example: A person will pay attention to a twoheaded goat before a one-headed goat,
because a two-headed is not something that a
person see every day.

Emotion: Words with strong emotional

connections seem to gain more attention than
others.
Personal Significance: A person is more likely
to pay attention to a person or concept that
hold personal significance to them.
Social cues: "People are more likely to pay
attention to things they see others looking at
or reacting to.

A process-oriented view divides it

into two types, namely selective
and sustained.
Factors influencing selective attention
1.Internal- in the individual- motivational (
needs) and cognitive ( interest, attitude
and preparatory set)
2. External- factors related to the stimuli

Theories of selective attention

1. Filter theory Broadbent (1956).

Many stimuli simultaneously enter our receptors

creating a kind of bottleneck situation.

Only one stimulus passes through for higher levels

of processing.

Other stimuli are screened out at that moment of

time.

Thus, we become aware of only that stimulus, which

gets access through the selective filter.

Filter-attenuation theory Triesman (1962) modifying

Broadbents theory.

This theory proposes that the stimuli not getting

access to the selective filter at a given moment of
time are not completely blocked.

The filter only attenuates (weakens) their strength.

Thus some stimuli manage to escape through the

selective filter to reach higher levels of processing.

It is indicated that personally relevant stimuli (e.g.,

ones name in a group) can be noticed even at a very
low level of sound. Such stimuli, even though fairly
weak, may also generate response occasionally by
slipping through the selective filter.

Multimode theory --Johnston and Heinz

(1978).

This theory believes that attention is a flexible system that

allows selection of a stimulus over others at three stages.

Stage one the sensory representations (e.g., visual

images) of stimuli are constructed;

Stage two the semantic representations (e.g., names of

objects) are constructed;

Stage three the sensory and semantic representations

enter the consciousness.

More processing requires more mental effort. When the

messages are selected on the basis of stage one
processing (early selection), less mental effort is required
than when the selection is based on stage three
processing (late selection)

Sustained attention

Sustained attention is concerned with concentration(

vigilance)

Sometimes people have to concentrate on a

particular task for many hours.

Air traffic controllers and radar readers provide us

with good examples of this phenomenon.

They have to constantly watch and monitor signals

on screens. The occurrence of signals in such
situations is usually unpredictable, and errors in
detecting signals may be fatal.

Factors Influencing Sustained

Attention
Sensory modality is one of them.

Performance is found to be superior when

the stimuli (called signals) are auditory than
when they are visual.

Clarity of stimuli is another factor.

Intense and long lasting stimuli facilitate

sustained attention and result in better
performance.

Temporal uncertainty is a third factor.

When stimuli appear at regular intervals of

time they are attended better than when they
appear at irregular intervals.

Spatial uncertainty is a fourth factor.

Stimuli that appear at a fixed place are

readily attended, whereas those that appear
at random locations are difficult to attend.

Span of attention

Our attention has a limited capacity to receive

stimuli. The number of objects one can attend to at a
brief exposure (i.e. a fraction of a second) is called
span of attention or perceptual span.

More specifically, the span of attention refers to the

amount of information an observer can grasp from a
complex array of stimuli at a single momentary
exposure.

Is there a magic number?

Why motorbikes or cars are given a number plate

that contains only four digit numbers with some
alphabets?

Divided attention
In day-to-day life we attend to several things at the same time.
You must have seen people driving a car and talking to a friend .

If we watch them closely, we will notice that they are still allocating more
effort to driving than to other activities, even though some attention is
given to other activities. It indicates that on certain occasions attention
can be allocated to more than one thing at the same.
However, this becomes possible only with highly practiced activities,
because they become almost automatic and require less attention to
perform than new or slightly practiced activities.

Automatic processing has three main characteristics;

(i) It occurs without intention,
(ii) It takes place unconsciously, and
(iii) It involves very little (or no) thought processes (e.g., we can read
words or tie our shoelaces without giving any thought to these
activities).

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

This is a very common behavioural disorder found among children.
It is characterised by
1.
impulsivity,
2.
excessive motor activity, and
3.
an inability to attend.
Such children
are highly distractible;
they do not follow instructions,
have difficulty in getting along with parents, and
are negatively viewed by their peers.
they do poorly in school,
show difficulties in reading or learning basic subjects in schools
in spite of the fact that there is no deficit in their intelligence.
The disorder is more prevalent among boys than among girls.

Perception Defined

The process by which we become aware of objects and

events in the external world.

The process of making sense of the world around us.

Perception involves deciphering meaningful patterns in
the jumble of sensory information and is the brain's
process of organizing and making sense of sensory
information. Perception begins with a real world object
which activates our sensory system. We never
experience the stimulus directly but our perception is
usually very accurate.

Many people ignore the fact that all of us are different

and that these differences equip us to view the world
from our very own vantage points. Usually we spend
more energy defending our own position than

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Processing

Bottom-Up Processing
Combining raw stimuli into a percept

Top-Down Processing
Expectations affect perception

phrase processing
word processing

letter processing
feature processing

Bottom Up

comprehension

Top Down

The plasticity of perception

Is it innate or learned?
Mixed evidence

Perceptual Organization
Visual environment has lots of information
Figure-ground differentiation is critical!!( our

tendency to divide the perceptual world into two distinct parts:

1.the discrete figure
2.the background against which they stand out

Rubin vase and figural ambiguity

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Perceptual Organization

Gestalt Psychology
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Absent features do not disrupt perception of the
whole figure
Evidence from illusory contours

22

Gestalt Psychology (
continued)
Tendency to see stimuli as well
organized wholes rather than as
separate, isolated parts.
observation that we often experience
things that are not a part of our simple
sensations.

The original observation was Wertheimers, when

he noted that we perceive motion where there is
nothing more than a rapid sequence of individual
sensory events.

we are built to experience the structured

whole as well as the individual
sensations.
And not only do we have the ability to
do so, we have a strong tendency to do
so.
We even add structure to events which
do not have gestalt structural qualities.

Visual Illusions

Visual Illusions
Misperception of image due to competing cues
Mller-Lyer Illusion

Ponzo Illusion

25


1.
2.

Two kinds of illusions:

Illusion of size
Illusion of shape or area.

They have multiple causes.

Illusions are not limited to visual
processes.