Sensation and Perception

CHAPTER OUTLINE
1 How We Sense and Perceive the World
2 The Visual System
3 The Auditory System
4 Other Senses
5 Sensation, Perception, and Health and Wellness

Vision and our other senses connect us to the world. We see a beloved friend’s
face, feel a comforting hand, and hear our name called. Our ability to sense and
perceive the world is what allows us to reach out into life in the many ways we do
every day.
Like other animals, we use our senses to survive. But we differ from animals in
that we also use our noses, tongues, eyes, ears, and skin for many other purposes.
The best and the worst aspects of the world around us compete for the title of our
favorite (or most detested) smell, flavor, artwork, or song. And, of course, our senses
also determine which we prefer - a back rub or a foot rub! ●

1. HOW WE SENSE AND PERCEIVE THE WORLD

● Ophthalmology, the study of the eye’s structure, function, and diseases;

● Audiology, the science concerned with hearing;

● Neurology/Neuroscience, the scientific study of the nervous system;

The Processes and Purposes of Sensation and Perception

Specialized receptor cells in the sense organs - eyes, ears, skin, nose, and tongue -
detect physical energy such as light, sound, and heat. When the receptor cells
register a stimulus, the energy is converted to an electrochemical impulse or action
potential that relays information about the stimulus through the nervous system to
the brain. When it reaches the brain, the information travels to the appropriate area
of the cerebral cortex. The brain gives meaning to sensation through perception

● Sensation: The process of receiving stimulus energies from the external

environment and transforming those energies into neural energy.
● Perception: The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information so
that it has meaning and makes sense.
− Perception is a very subjective interpretation of the information.

BOTTOM-UP AND TOP-DOWN PROCESSING

● Bottom-up processing: The operation in sensation and perception in which

sensory receptors register information about the external environment and send it
up to the brain for interpretation.
● Top-down processing: The operation in sensation and perception, launched by
cognitive processing at the brain’s higher levels, that allows the organism to sense
what is happening and to apply that framework to information from the world.

THE PURPOSES OF SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

● The purpose of sensation and perception is adaptation that improves a species’

chances for survival.

Sensory Receptors and the Brain

● Sensory receptors: Where all sensation begins, specialized cells that detect
stimulus information and transmit it to sensory (afferent) nerves and the brain. That
afferent nerves bring information to the brain from the world.

● Sensation involves detecting and transmitting information about different kinds of

energy:
Sensory
Receptor Vision Hearing Touch Smell Taste
Cells
 Photoreception Mechanoreception Mechanoreception Chemoreception Chemoreception
Type of : detection of : detection of : detection of : detection of : detection of
Energy light, perceived vibration, pressure, chemical stimuli, chemical stimuli,
Reception as sight perceived as perceived as touch perceived as perceived as
hearing smell taste
Sense
Eyes Ears Skin Nose Tongue
Organ

● There are rare cases in which the senses can become confused:

− Synaesthesia: An experience in which one sense (say, sight) induces an

experience in another sense (say, hearing).

Example: a person might “see” music or “taste” a color. One woman was
able to taste sounds, so that a piece of music, to her, tasted like tuna fish.
− Phantom limb pain: The sensory receptors in the amputated limb is gone but
the areas of the brain and nervous system that received information from
those receptors are still there causing confusion with alarming and puzzling
pain.

● The certain areas of the cerebral cortex are specialized to handle different sensory
functions:
− Visual: The occipital lobes
− Hearing: The temporal lobes
− Pain, touch, and temperature: The parietal lobes

Thresholds

ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD

● Absolute threshold: The minimum amount of stimulus energy that a person can
detect.

− Noise is the term given to irrelevant and competing stimuli—not just sounds
but any distracting stimuli for our senses.
− The approximate absolute thresholds of five senses:
1. Vision: A candle flame at 30 miles on a dark, clear night
2. Hearing: A ticking clock at 20 feet under quiet conditions
 3. Smell: One drop of perfume diffused throughout three rooms
4. Taste: A teaspoon of sugar in 2 gallons of water
5. Touch: The wing of a fly falling on your neck from a distance of 1 cm

DIFFERENCE THRESHOLD

● Difference threshold: The degree of difference that must exist between two
stimuli before the difference is detected.

− Weber’s law: (discovered by E. H. Weber >150 years ago) The principle that
two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion to be perceived as different.

SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION
● Subliminal perception: The detection of information below the level of conscious
awareness.
− James Vicary (1957); Strahan, Spencer, & Zanna (2002) experiment shown
that the brain responds to information that is presented below the
conscious threshold and such information can influence behavior.

Signal Detection Theory

● Signal detection theory: An approach to perception that focuses on decision
making about stimuli under conditions of uncertainty. The detection of sensory
stimuli depends on a variety of factors, include individual and contextual variations,
besides the physical intensity of the stimulus and the sensory abilities of the
observer, such as fatigue, expectations, and the urgency of the moment.
− 4 possible outcomes:
Observer’s Response
“Yes, I see the signal” “No, I don’t see the signal”
Signal Miss (mistake): He or she would have said
Hit (correct): You ask, and he or she says yes.
Present yes, but you don’t ask.
False alarm (mistake): You think the individual Correct rejection (correct): You don’t ask
Signal
seemed interested, but your offer is politely the person out, and he or she would have
Absent
declined—ouch. said no—whew.
− 2 main components decision making in signal detection theory:
1. Information Acquisition: The gathering of relevant indicators.
2. Criterion: The decision maker’s assessment of the stakes involved in each
possible outcome.
Perceiving Sensory Stimuli
2 important factors in perceiving sensory stimuli are attention and perceptual set.
ATTENTION
● Attention: The process of focusing awareness on a narrowed aspect of the
environment.
− Selective attention: The act of focusing on a specific aspect of experience
while ignoring others.
1. The cocktail party effect: The ability to concentrate on one voice among
many in a crowded airline terminal or noisy restaurant.
2. The stroop effect (John Ridley Stroop, 1935): The way that automatically
reading a color name can make it difficult to name the color in which the
word is printed.
− Shiftable: We can attend selectively to one stimulus and shift readily to
another indicates that we must be monitoring many things at once.
− Certain features of stimuli draw attention to them:
1. Novel stimuli: Those are new, different, or unusual.
2. Size, color, and movement: That are large, vividly colored, or moving get
more attention than that are small, dull-colored, or stationary.
3. Emotional stimuli
 The emotion-induced blindness: When we encounter an emotionally
charged stimulus, we often fail to recognize a stimulus that is
presented immediately after it.
 Inattentional blindness: The failure to detect unexpected events
when our attention is engaged by a task.
PERCEPTUAL SET
● Perceptual set: A predisposition or readiness to perceive something in a particular
way.

Sensory Adaptation
● Sensory adaptation: A change in the responsiveness of the sensory system based
on the average level of surrounding stimulation.

Extrasensory Perception
● ESP— extrasensory perception: That a person can detect information from the
world without receiving concrete sensory input.

2. THE VISUAL SYSTEM

Source:

1. King, L.A. (2014). The Science of Psychology: An Appreciative View. (3rd Ed.). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill International Edition. (Text Book)

2. King, L.A. (2011). The Science of Psychology: An Appreciative View. (2nd Ed.). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill International Edition. (E-Book)