AP Psychology

Week#6: 8 Oct, 2022

Teacher: Andrew Trigg
Topics: Introduction to sensation and
perception (main concepts)
Basics: sensation
and Perception

 We do not actually experience the world directly, but instead experience it

through a series of “filters” we call senses.

 The brain senses the world indirectly because the sense organs convert
stimulation into the language of the nervous system: neural messages

 The study of these sense and their effect on our behavior is called sensory
psychology.
 Sensation

 Sensation: The
process by which our
stimulated sensory
receptors (eyes,
ears…) and nervous
system receive
stimulus from the
environment.
Our Senses
 You may notice that all our sense organs are very similar.
 They all transform physical stimulation (such as light or sound
waves) into the neural impulses that give us sensations (such as
light and dark).
Perception
Do you see faces or vases?

 Perception: The process of

bringing meaning to sensations,
by way of collecting, organizing,
and interpreting raw data.
 Perception creates an
interpretation of sensation.
 Perception’s main task is
primarily packaging raw sensory
data into recognizable objects
(people, things, etc.)
 Sensation and Perception

 Perception is essentially an interpretation & elaboration of sensation.

 Sensation refers to the initial steps in the processing of a stimulus.

These pictures
should look similar
The true picture
The famous Mona Lisa… Frown
or Smile?
The famous Mona Lisa…
Frown or Smile?
What if we could sense
everything?

o Life would hurt.

o So we can only take in a “window” of what’s out there.
o This is the study of psychophysics: relationship between physical
stimuli and our psychological experiences to them.
o Essentially the relationship between objective reality and our
subjective experience of it…
 Transduction: Changing
Stimulus to Sensation
Transduction with Hearing

 Sensory receptors: specialized forms

of neurons stimulated by different
kinds of energy (e.g. light, vibrations,
and pressure)
 Sensory receptors convert incoming
stimuli information into
electrochemical signals—neural
activity.
 Transduction: The sensory process
that converts energy, such as light or
sound waves, into neural messages.
 Transduction

Remember: information goes

from the senses to the
thalamus, then to the various
areas in the brain…

In the movie Sky High:

The student in orange changes his body to
slime.
1. Solid to liquid form.
2. One form of energy to another.
(Click the picture to watch the video of
power placement)
 The Process of Transduction

Transduction begins with:

1. Detection by a sensory neuron of a physical stimulus.

2. When the appropriate stimulus reaches the sense organ, it

activates specialized neurons called receptors.

3. The receptors respond by converting their excitation into a

nerve signal.

 Think of this as like the way a bar-code reader converts a

series of lines into an electrical signal that a computer
can match with a price.
Transduction

 How is this important when studying sensation?

Stimulus energizes & converts to

neural impulses.
For example:
o Light energy to vision.
o Chemical energy to smell and
taste.
o Sound waves to sound.
How our senses are alike

 Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, pain and body position are
all similar for three reasons.

First, they all transduce stimulus energy into neural

impulses.
Second, they are all more sensitive to change than to
constant stimulation.
Third, they all provide us with information about the
environment we are in.
 How our senses are different
 With the exception of pain, all the senses tap a different form of
stimulus.
 Each sends the information it gathers to a different part of the
brain.
 The senses all operate in much the same way, but each extracts
different information and sends it to its own specialized
processing region of the brain.
See a bell or hear a bell?

 Different sensations occur because different areas of the brain

become activated.

 Whether you hear a bell or see a bell depends ultimately on

which part of the brain receives stimulation.
Processing
 The neural impulse carries a code of the sensory event in a form
that can be further processed by the brain

Light Waves
Neural Signals
 A Simple Example

 Close both of your eyes. Press gently in the corner of one eye. You
should “see” a pattern caused by pressure of your finger, not by light.

 These light sensations are phosphenes: visual images caused by fooling

your visual system into thinking it sees light.
Sensory Adaptation

 Sensation is critically influenced by change. Thus, our sense organs

are change detectors.

 Their receptors specialize in gathering information about new and

changing events.
Sensory Adaptation

 Sensory adaptation is the diminishing responsiveness of our sensory

systems to prolonged stimulation.

 Unless it is quite intense or painful, stimulation that persists without

change in intensity usually shifts to the background of our awareness.

 Until now, many of you are probably unaware that your sense of
touch had adapted to the pressure of the chair against your legs.

Do you feel your shoe all day?

Sensory adaptation applies to all
of our senses.

Sensory thresholds: The point at which sensations begin and end

 Absolute Threshold
 The lowest level of stimulation that a person can consciously
detect 50% percent of the time the stimulation is present.
Difference Threshold
 The minimum difference that a person can detect between two stimuli
(50% of the time)

 Also known as Just Noticeable Difference (JND)

Laws of sensation:
Weber’s Law
 Ernst Weber noted that for people to really perceive a difference, the
stimuli must differ by a constant "proportion" not a constant
"amount". 
Weber’s Law: example

If you are buying a new computer that costs $1,000 and you want to
add more memory that increases the and the price $200 (a 20%
increase), you might consider this too much additional money to spend.

However, if you were buying a $300,000 house a $200 feature may

seem like nothing. It might take an additional $10,000 to make you stop
and think if it's too much to spend.

In this example, the amount stays the same ($200), but the proportion
changes and that's what makes the perceptual difference.
Homework
 Answer the MC and FRQ questions for Module 16

 Research the “Cocktail Party Effect” (sometimes there are AP questions

about this).

 [Optional] Try the NY Times distracted driver simulation:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/19/technology/20090719-driving
-game-.html?_r=0

 [Optional] Read about Harvard’s implicit association tests:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html