Sensation and Perception

• Sensation is the process of receiving,

converting, and transmitting information
from the outside world.
– Sensory organs contain receptors that
transduce sensory energy into nerve impulses
that are carried to the brain.
• Top-down processing versus bottom-up
processing

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Sensation/Perception

• Transduction: sensory receptors convert

a physical energy into nerve impulses

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Understanding Sensation: Processing

Three Types of Processing:

1. Transduction: converts sensory stimuli into

neural impulses that are sent on to the brain

2. Sensory Reduction: filters and analyzes

incoming sensations before sending on to the
brain

3. Coding: converts particular sensory input into

a specific sensation sent to differing parts of
the brain
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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Sensory Thresholds
• Psychophysics: testing limits and changes

• Absolute Threshold: smallest amount of a

stimulus we can detect

• Difference Threshold: minimal difference

needed to detect a a stimulus change; also
called the just noticeable difference (JND)

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Signal Detection Theory

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 Modification of Sensation
• A key function of sensory systems is to
detect change within the environment.
– Movement in the peripheral aspects of the eye
may signal food or danger.
– Constant pressure of an object on the skin may
not be important.
• A stimulus that moves across the skin may be a
snake or a spider.
• The skin adapts to constant pressure.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Sensory Adaptation
• Sensory adaptation refers to the fact
that repeated or constant stimulation
decreases the number of sensory
messages sent to the brain, which
causes decreased sensation.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Gate-Control Theory of Pain
• Pain sensations are processed and
altered by mechanisms within the spinal
cord.
– Endorphins relieve pain by inhibiting pain
perception.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Vision
• External light falls on receptors within the
eye to generate the visual message.
• Light = electromagnetic radiation
– Wavelength of light determines color

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Physical/Perceptual properties of light

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Properties of Light

– wavelength: distance between peaks

• perceived as hue
• some wavelengths beyond human
sensation

– amplitude: height of wave

• perceived as brightness

– purity: mixture of wavelengths

• perceived as saturation
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 Anatomy of the Eye

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Glaucoma: Open and Closed Angle

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Accommodation
• Accommodation refers to automatic
adjustments of the eye, which occurs
when muscles change the shape of the
lens so that it focuses light on the retina
from objects at different distances.
– Nearsightedness
– Farsightedness

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Eye as optical instrument
Light refraction

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Three layers of eye

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Structure of the Eye: Retina

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 Structure of the Eye: Retina

Rods
– sensitive to even dim light, but not color
– function well in low illumination
– humans have ≈ 120 million rods
Cones
– respond to color
– operate best under high illumination
– humans have ≈ 6 million cones
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 Retinal Photoreceptors
• Light passes through the
retinal layers to reach the
photoreceptors at the inner
retinal surface.
• Photoreceptors and bipolar
cells conduct potentials to
the ganglion cells, which in
turn initiate action potentials
which are transmitted to the
thalamus.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Visual System

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Color Perception
• Humans are able to discriminate 7 million different hues.
• Colors convey important information:
– Ripeness of food
– Danger signals
• Trichromatic theory
– Eye contains 3 different color sensitive elements
• Blue, green or red elements
• Trichromatic theory accounts for color mixing of lights.
• Opponent-Process theory
– Visual system is organized into red-green, blue-yellow and black-
white units.
• Theory can account for negative color afterimages.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Sensory Coding

• Activation of retinal
cells by light results in
action potentials that
travel along neurons
that project to the
occipital cortex

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Properties of Sound

Wavelength (distance between peaks)

- determines frequency
- perceived as pitch
- some wavelengths cannot be perceived

Amplitude (height of wave)

- perceived as loudness

Mixture of Wavelengths; Complex Sounds

- perceived as timbre / tone saturation
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 Sound Loudness (dB)

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Anatomy of the Ear

(Sound Waves)

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Cross-
section
of
cochlea

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Theories of Hearing

Place Theory of Pitch Perception

– location of stimulation is important
– only explains perception of high frequencies

Frequency Theory of Pitch Perception

– frequency of nerve firing
• limitations of neuronal firing rate
– volley principle
• cell clusters can exceed limitations of firing rate

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 Hearing Loss
• Conduction deafness: Middle-ear
deafness resulting from problems with
transferring sound waves to the inner-
ear.
• Nerve Deafness: Inner-ear deafness
resulting from damage to the cochlea,
hair cells, or auditory nerve.

© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Olfaction
• Receptors are embedded in a mucus-coated
membrane called the olfactory epithelium.
• When chemical molecules in the air pass
through the nose, the receptors initiate a neural
impulse which travels to the olfactory bulb,
where most olfactory information is interpreted.
• Lock-and-Key Theory: humans can smell
various odors because each three-dimensional
odor molecule fits into only one type of receptor.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Gustation
• Taste receptors are located on the
tongue and are sensitive to five major
tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and
umami.
• Taste receptors respond differentially to
the varying shapes of food and liquid
molecules.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 The Body Senses
• Skin Senses: there are three basic skin
sensations: touch, temperature, and pain.
• Vestibular Sense: sense of body orientation
with respect to gravity and three-dimensional
space
– The semicircular canals provide the brain with balance
information.
• Kinesthetic Sense: sensory system for body
posture, orientation and movement
– Kinsethetic receptors are found throughout the muscles,
joints, and tendons of the body.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Perception
• Perceptual processes include:
– Selection refers to choosing
which of many stimuli that will be
processed.
– Organization involves collecting
the information into some pattern.
– Interpretation involves
understanding the pattern.
• Perceptions can be in error
– Illusions are visual stimuli that are
misinterpreted .

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Horizontal-Vertical Illusion

WHICH LINE IS LONGER?

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Selection
• Selective attention: filtering out and attending
only to important sensory messages.
• Feature detectors: specialized cells in the
brain that respond only to certain sensory
information
• Habituation: tendency of the brain to ignore
environmental factors that remain constant

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Form Perception
• Gestaltists proposed laws of
organization that specify how people
perceive form.
• Figure and ground are basic
organizational themes for perception.
– Figure is perceived as distinct from the
background.
– Figure is closer to the viewer than the
background.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Visual Perception: Depth

Monocular Cues – Pictorial

Cues
• familiar size
• height in the field of view
• linear perspective
• overlap
• shading
• texture gradients
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 Monocular Cues:
Shading, Texture Gradient

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 Monocular Cues:
Linear Perspective, Height in Field

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 Gestalt Organizational Principles

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Perceptual Constancies
• Perceptual Constancy is the tendency
for the environment to be perceived as
remaining the same even with changes
in sensory input.
– Size constancy
– Shape constancy
– Color constancy
– Brightness constancy

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Depth Perception
• Depth perception is the ability to perceive
three-dimensional space and to accurately
judge distance.
• Binocular cues include retinal disparity and
convergence.
• Monocular cues include linear perspective,
interposition, relative size, texture gradient,
aerial perspective, light and shadow,
accommodation and motion parallax.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Interpretation
• Interpretation is influenced by:
perceptual adaptation
perceptual set
individual motivation
frame of reference

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Subliminal Perception
• Subliminal stimuli are stimuli presented
below the threshold of awareness; the
effect on behavior is uncertain.

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Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E
 Extrasensory Perception
• ESP refers to the ability to perceive
stimuli that are outside the 5 senses
– Telepathy: the ability to read minds
– Clairvoyance: the ability to perceive objects
or events
– Precognition: the ability to predict the future
– Psychokinesis: the ability to move objects

© 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Huffman: PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION, 7E