Sensation and Perception

Sensation and Perception

 Sensation is the stimulation of

sense organs. Simply, sensation is
the process through which we
receive information through our
senses.
 E.g. Your eyes are receiving the light
in your screen that enables you to
see the picture on the right, your
ears may also be sensing ‘tick tock,
tick tock’ in the background.
 Perception involves organizing and
translating sensory input into
something meaningful.
 E.g. After the light enters your eyes,
you perceive the yellow and green
object as a pineapple. You perceive
the background sound as the ticking
of the clock.
 Thresholds: Looking for Limits

 Sensation begins with a

stimulus, any detectable
input from the
environment.
 What counts as detectable,
though, depends on who or
what is doing the detecting.
 For instance, you may be
able to hear the faint sound
of the ice cream cart from
outside but your
grandfather may not. This
means he has a higher
threshold for sound than
you.
 Thresholds: Looking for Limits
Absolute Threshold
It is the minimum stimulus
intensity for a sensory input that
an organism can detect.
• E.g. Imagine a candle placed on
a table in a dark, open space. If
you keep moving away from
this candle there will be a point
when you stop seeing the
candle flame. Right before this
point when you could see the
faintest bit of the flame is the
minimum stimulus intensity
for you to see there is light.
Just Noticeable Threshold
It is the smallest difference in
stimulus intensity that a specific
sense can detect.
• E.g. let's say I asked you to put your
hand out and in it I placed a pile of
sand. Then, I add tiny amounts of
sand to your hand and ask you to
tell me when you notice any change
in the overall weight. As soon as
you can detect any change in the
weight, that difference between the
weight of the sand before I added
that last bit of sand and the amount
of sand after I added it, is the just
noticeable difference.
 Sensory Adaptation

 Sensory adaptation is a
gradual decline in sensitivity
to prolonged stimulation.
 When you are exposed to a
stimulus for a prolonged time,
you get used to it.
 E.g. When you step out in the
bright sun, you squint your
eyes but after a while it
doesn’t bother you.
 Similarly, if you jump
reluctantly into a pool of cold
water, you’ll probably find
that the water temperature
feels fine in a few moments
after you adapt to it.
Our Sense of Sight: How our
eye works
 The Visual System
1. Light enters the eye
through a transparent
layer at the front, the
cornea. It helps your
eye to focus the light to
make it look sharp.
2. It then falls onto the
pupil (the black circular
part) which is the
opening surrounded by 3. Next light falls on the lens.
the iris (colored ring of The lens is the transparent
muscle). Iris controls the eye structure behind the
pupil. It focuses the light on
amount of light entering the back of the eye on the
the eye and pupil allows retina. Retina is the neural
light to pass into the back tissue lining the inside back
chamber. surface of the eye.
4. Retina absorbs light, processes
images and sends visual
information to the brain.
The optic nerve connects the
eye to the brain. It takes the
information from the retina to
the brain. The optic disk is a
hole in the retina where optic
nerve fibers exit the eye.
There are specialized cells in the
retina called rods and cones.
 Cones play a key role in daylight
vision and color vision.
 A process called accommodation
takes place at the lens.
 Accommodation occurs when the lens
adjusts itself according to the distance
of the visual stimulus.
 When you focus on a close object, the
lens of your eye gets fatter (rounder)
to give you a clear image.
 When you focus on distant objects,
the lens flattens out to give you a
better image of them.

 Rods play a key role in night

vision and peripheral vision.

Watch ‘How the Human Eye works’: Working of the eye or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC5ylPsJkM4
Perceiving forms, patterns and
shapes
 Reversible Figures
 What do you see in the
figure on the right?
 Do you see a seal
balancing a ball on its
nose and a trainer holding
a fish and a whip Or
 Do you see a costumed
man and woman? She’s
handing him a hat, and he
has a sword in his right
hand.
 This is an example of a
reversible figure.
 Reversible Figures
(Differences in Perception)

 A reversible figure is a
drawing that is
compatible with two
interpretations that can
shift back and forth.
 So this shows that the
same visual input can
result in radically  What do you see in the
different perceptions. image above?
 This is why people’s  A Rabbit or a Duck?
experience of the world is
subjective.
 Feature Analysis

 How do you recognize objects and forms? How do you

know that this ‘T’ is the capital letter t?
 According to some theories, perceptions of form and
pattern involve feature analysis.
 Feature analysis is the process of detecting specific
elements in visual input and assembling them into a
more complex form.
 E.g. You would have looked at the elements of ‘T’ which
are 1 vertical and 1 horizontal line and then mentally
put them together to perceive it as the capital letter T.
 Feature analysis assumes that form perception involves
bottom up processing (details in the following slide).
Two Models of Form Perception
Bottom-up processing
Bottom-up processing, is
a progression from
individual elements to the
whole.
• E.g. you look at the picture
above and see its elements
red unconnected structures
arranged in a circular order.
Then you are able to put
these together and perceive
it as a whole (rose).
Top-down processing
Top-down processing,
is a progression from the
whole to the elements.
• E.g. you look at the
picture above and
perceive it as a whole and
recognize it as a rose, then
you look at its individual
components to verify what
you’ve perceived.
 Gestalt Principles

 Gestalt psychologists (who stressed that the whole is more

important than the individual components) described
principles of form perception that are known as Gestalt
Principles.
 Top-down processing is clearly at work in these principles.
 Some of these laws are:
1. Law of Figure and Ground
2. Law of Proximity
3. Law of Closure
4. Law of Similarity
5. Law of Simplicity
6. Law of Continuity
Video:
For a simple explanation of these laws watch: Gestalt Principles or
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=221&v=LlzuJqZ797U&feature=emb_logo
 Gestalt Principles

Closure
Figure and Ground
Viewers tend to supply
Elements are seen as
missing elements to close
either figure (elements of
or complete a familiar
focus) or ground (the
Proximity figure.
background).
In the reversible figure Elements that are close
above you can either to one another tend to
perceive a white vase as the be grouped together.
figure or two black faces.

Similarity
Elements that are similar
tend to be grouped
together. E.g. Because
of similarity of color, you
see dots organized into the
number 2.
Simplicity
Viewers tend to organize
elements in the simplest
way possible.
You could view this as a
complicated 11-sided figure,
but given the preference for
simplicity, you are more
likely to see it as an
overlapping rectangle and
triangle.
Continuity
Lines are seen as following the
smoothest path
In the image on the right, the top branch
is seen as continuing the first segment of
the line. This allows us to see things
smoothly without breaking into multiple
parts.
 Depth Perception
 More often than not, forms and  Example 2: If there are separate
figures are objects in space. same size objects, we know that the
 Spatial considerations add the larger ones are seen as closer.
element of depth perception to
visual perception.
 Depth perception involves
interpretation of visual cues
that indicate how near or far
away objects are.
 Example 1: you may notice when
driving along a highway that
nearby objects (such as fence posts
along the road) appear to move by
more rapidly than objects that are
farther away (such as trees in the
distance).
 So from the speed at which objects
are moving you can tell if they’re
near or far.
 Our Other Senses
This section provides a brief overview of our
other four senses

•H E A R I N G
•T A S T E
•S M E L L
•T O U C H
 The Ear: How do we hear?
 The human ear can be divided
into three sections: the outer
ear, the middle ear, and the
inner ear.
1. Sound waves enter the
outer ear and travel
through a narrow
passageway called the ear
canal, which leads to the
eardrum.
2. The eardrum vibrates from
the incoming sound waves
and sends these vibrations
to three tiny bones in the
middle ear. These bones
are called the hammer, anvil
and stirrup.
3. The bones in the middle ear amplify, or increase, the
sound vibrations and send them to the cochlea, a snail-
shaped structure filled with fluid, in the inner ear. An
elastic partition runs from the beginning to the end of the
cochlea, splitting it into an upper and lower part. This
partition is called the basilar membrane because it
serves as the base, or ground floor, on which key hearing
structures sit.
4. Once the vibrations cause the fluid inside the cochlea to
ripple, a traveling wave forms along the basilar
membrane. The fluid transmission vibrates the hair cells
(sensory cells sitting on top of the basilar membrane).
The hair cells move up and down, creating an electrical
signal.
5. The auditory nerve carries this electrical signal to the
brain, which turns it into a sound that we recognize and
understand.
 Our Sense of Taste

 The sensory system for taste is

called the gustatory system.
 The physical stimuli for the sense
of taste are chemical substances that
are soluble (dissolvable in water).
 The gustatory receptors are
clusters of taste cells found in the
taste buds that line the trenches
around tiny bumps on the tongue.
 The taste buds are sensitive to four
basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter,
and salty.
 Taste preferences are largely learned
and are heavily influenced by one’s
cultural background.
 The perception of flavor is influenced
greatly by the odor of food.
 Our Sense of Smell

 Like taste, smell is a chemical sense.

 Chemical stimuli activate receptors, called olfactory cilia,
hairlike structures that line the nasal passages.
 Most of these receptors respond to more than one odor.
 Smell is the only sense that is not routed through the
thalamus (structure in the brain).
 Humans can distinguish among about 10,000 different odors.
 Our Sense of Touch

 Sensory receptors in the skin respond to pressure, temperature,

and pain.
 Touch involves converting the sensation of physical stimuli into a
psychological experience.
 Sensory stimuli can produce perceptions of tactile stimulation
(the pressure of touch against the skin), warmth, cold, and pain.
 The perception of pain is highly subjective and may be influenced by
mood, attention, and culture.
 Our Other Senses

I n A d d i t i o n To T h e F i v e S e n s o r y S y s t e m s H u m a n s A l s o
Have Other Sensor y Syst em s:

1. T h e K i n e s t h e t i c S ys t e m : I t m o n i t o r s p o s i t i o n s o f t h e
b o d y. I t t e l l s u s w h e r e o u r b o d y p a r t s a r e a n d i t s
receptors are located in our muscles and joints.

2. T h e Ve s t i b u l a r S y s t e m : I t p r o v i d e s i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t
where our body is in space. It is fundamental in keeping
our balance and posture.
 Source

Weiten, W. (2007). Psychology: Themes and

variations: Themes and variations. Belmont, CA:
Cengage Learning.