2nd-year psychology students only

Photoreceptors (purple) and bipolar cells (green) transmit to

ganglions (red).
📷 : Josh Morgan, Rachel Wong, Uni of Washington

Dicle Dövencioğl
PSY481 - Topics in Experimental
Psychology: Perception for Cognition dicled@metu.edu.t
sense.psy.metu.edu.tr

Textbook and helpful references

❖ Goldstein Sensation and Perceptio

❖ Kluender, Levi, Wolfe Sensation and Perceptio
❖ Goldstein Cognitive Psycholog
❖ Goldstein Encyclopedia of Perception

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

y

Tentative Syllabus

07/03 Syllabus Meet & Greet

14/03 Introduction to the visual system
21/03 Introduction to the auditory system
28/03 Speech Perception
04/04 Vestibular Sensation
11/04 Midterm I
18/04 Olfaction
25/04 Taste
02/05 No class (Bayram)
09/05 Haptics, Perception and Action
16/05 Multimodal Interactions - Sensory Integration
23/05 Midterm II
30/05 Perceptual Development
06/06 VR/Computational Vision

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Grading

❖ Two midterms (30% each) and a final (40%)

❖ Short essay, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and True/False questions.
Participation is encouraged but it does not affect the grade.
❖ A make-up exam will be held for students with valid excuses and it will cover all
topics discussed in class throughout the semester.
❖ Knowing the basic principles of perception (e.g. completing PSY2202) is not
necessary but it gives you an advantage.

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Sensation & Perception

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

 Sensation & Perception

Sensation is a physiological process.

Transforming chemical, mechanical, light, and sound energy in the
world into electrical activity in the brain.

Perception is the selection, organization, and interpretation of

sensations.

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Sensation

Each sense organ responds to a particular form of energy and

translates that energy into neural firing to which the brain can
respond. (known as Muller’s doctrine)

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Sensation

Transduction is the process where sense organs convert energy from

environmental events into neural activity through action potentials.

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Sensation & Perception

Sensation is a bottom-up process, transforming energy.

Perception is a top-down process, interpreting the information.

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

How to study perceptual processes?

PP - The psychophysical relationship between stimulus and

perception: Two colored patches are judged to be different.

PH1 - The physiological relationship between the stimulus

and the physiological response: A light generates a neural
response in the cat’s cortex.

PH2 - The physiological relationship between the

physiological response and perception: A person’s brain
activity is monitored as the person indicates what he is seeing.

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Psychophysics

Psychophysics is the use of quantitative methods to

measure relationships between stimuli (physics) and
perception (psycho).
Quantifying the sensations evoked by physical stimuli
A widely used method and very nice.
More reliable and accurate than introspection, because
objective and quantitative.
Results from different experiments are comparable.

Gustav Fechner, physicist, 1860

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Measuring Perception

Describing: Indicating characteristics of a stimulus.

“All of the people in the class are wearing red.”
Recognizing: Placing a stimulus in a specific category.
“Ali Koç is Fenerbahçe’s president.”
Detecting: Becoming aware of a barely detectable aspect of a stimulus. “That
goalkeeper moved slightly just before the ball was snapped.”
Perceiving magnitude: Being aware of the size or intensity of a stimulus.
“That car looks twice as big as our car.”
Searching: Looking for a specific stimulus among a number of other stimuli.
“I’m looking for Ali in the class.”
Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Thresholds

Detection threshold (Absolute threshold): smallest detectable stimulus

intensity (energy) that yields a sensory percept
– Threshold for sight (weakest detectable light): about 10 photons!
– Threshold for sound (weakest detectable air vibration): about the
diameter of an atom!
– Assumption is that there is an absolute threshold - point above which a
stimulus can always be detected and below which it can never be detected

Discrimination threshold (Difference Threshold): smallest detectable

difference between two stimuli (that yields a perceptual difference)
– Smallest detectable difference in orientation of two lines
– Smallest difference in colour corresponding to a colour category change

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Thresholds

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

How to measure thresholds?

Method of constant stimuli

Method of limits
Method of adjustment (adaptive methods)

Is the stimulus present? (e.g. did you hear the sound?) -absolute
Same/different? -discrimination

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Magnitude Estimation
The observer assigns numbers to stimuli that are proportional to perceived magnitude
Response compression: As intensity is increased, the magnitude increases, but not as
rapidly as the intensity.
Response expansion: As intensity is increased, perceptual magnitude increases more
than intensity.
Power Law: the relationship between the intensity of a stimulus and our perception of its
magnitude follows the same general equation for each sense.

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

.—

Discrimination threshold example: same or different weight?

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Weber Law (1834)
“the just noticeable increment is a constant fraction of the
stimulus”
Describes how much of a physical difference is needed between
two stimuli before people can just tell the difference (difference
threshold or “just noticeable difference”)
Works very well except at extremely low or high intensities

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Next time on PSY481…

Why is it so difficult to design a Perceiving Machine?

Information for Human Perception
Helmholtz, Gestalt, Regularities, Bayes
Neurons
Perception and Action

“Brains, it has recently been argued, are essentially prediction machines” Clark (2013)

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Tentative Syllabus

07/03 Syllabus Meet & Greet

14/03 Introduction to the visual system
21/03 Introduction to the auditory system
28/03 Speech Perception
04/04 Vestibular Sensation
11/04 Midterm I
18/04 Olfaction
25/04 Taste
02/05 No class (Bayram)
09/05 Haptics, Perception and Action
16/05 Multimodal Interactions - Sensory Integration
23/05 Midterm II
30/05 Perceptual Development
06/06 VR/Computational Vision

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022

Grading

❖ Perception notes: https://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/

lecturenotes/psychophysics/psychophysics.html
❖ CrashCourse Intro: https://youtu.be/unWnZvXJH2o

Dövencioğlu, METU, Spring 2022