Transcript Sensory and Perception

Chapter 3 Vocabulary
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Sensation
Perception
Receptor Cell
Absolute Threshold
Adaptation
Weber’s Law
Subliminal Messages
Visual Acuity
Bipolar Cells
Ganglion Cells
Optic Nerve
Color Blindness
• Trichormats
• Monochromats
• Dichromats
Decibel
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Olfactory Bulb
Pheromone
Taste Buds
Kinesthetic Senses
Vestibular Senses
Gate Control Theory
Constancy:
– Size Constancy
– Color Constancy
Aerial Perspective
Stereoscopic Vision
Perceptual Illusion
Autokinestic Illusion
Phi Phenomenon
BellWork
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Copy down the graphic organizer in your notes.
Sense
Vision
Hearing
Smell
Taste
Touch
Description of
How Brain
Processes Sense
Absolute
Threshold
Group Activity
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Interview each other
about the events of
September 11, 2001.
Ask these important
questions:
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Who
What
When
Where
Why
How
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In your questions and
answers, try to focus on
the sensations (seeing,
hearing, tasting, smelling,
touching) as well as
emotions you felt as you
witnessed the events of
September 11, 2001.
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Is there a difference between the
individual memories and the collective
memory of the class?
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How did hearing your interviewee's
recollection of the event affect your own
memory, if at all?
September 11, 2001
Eyewitness Interviews and Reactions
 Men and women from diverse ethnic and
socioeconomic backgrounds, a crosssection of America.
 Included are interviews with people who
were in the World Trade Center, but the
majority of the interviews are from other
parts of the country, from those who first
heard the news on television or radio
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What events does each of the
eyewitnesses recount?
 How are their accounts different? How are
they similar?
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What role did technology play in how the
eyewitnesses experienced the events of
September 11? In what ways, if any, did
technology help people? In what ways, if
any, did technology fail to help people?
What emotional responses do the
eyewitnesses describe?
 Which emotions seemed to be the most
commonly experienced immediately after
the attacks?
 Which were most common days or weeks
after the events?
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How do the eyewitness accounts add to
your understanding of what you previously
knew about the events of September 11,
whether from seeing the events on
television, reading about them, or learning
about them in school?
 Describe what you believe to be the
unique value of eyewitness accounts of
major historical events.
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What do these accounts reveal about the
values of the individuals describing the
events of the morning of September 11?
How might these values affect the way in
which they recall the events? What other
factors might affect their recollection of
the events?
Reactions to 9/11
Billie Jo McAfee, South Lake Tahoe,
California
 Peter V.Z. Roudebush, Fort Dodge, Iowa
 Melanie Jean Whipple, East Lansing,
Michigan
 Patti Chapman, San Diego, California
 Cindy Mediavilla, Los Angeles, California
 David Harmon, Portland, Maine
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Compare the psychological and emotional
responses of these individuals with those
of eyewitnesses. What similarities do you
note? What differences?
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Do people’s emotions and fears seem to
vary according to where they lived—in the
country’s interior or near a coast, in a
small town or a big city?
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What are these interviewees’ perspectives on
the media’s coverage of the events?
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How do you, as a listener and student of history,
respond to the eyewitness accounts versus
those of people who watched the events on
television? How might your response to the
accounts influence the way you construct a
historic account of September 11?
BellWork
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Copy these questions on a separate sheet of paper. You will use
these later during the video. Leave space so you will have room to
write the answers.:
______ _______ capture energy and convert it into signals that can
be recognized by the brain.
What are the three colors the eyes see?
In the eyes, the cones are responsible for perceiving ________.
What is the language of the brain?
If you are hit on the back of your head, you are likely to see what?
What are the three areas of the visual part of the cortex?
If the ______ _______ ______ is damaged, a person can
experience blind sight.
What is blind sight?
When a blind person reads Braille, the _____ cortex is being
activated.
Sensory and Perception
Chapter 3
Exploring Psychology
Helen Keller had been blind and deaf since she was
two years old. For the next four years, Helen was “wild
and unruly.” Then when she was six, Anne Sullivan, a
teacher, entered her life. Using the sense of touch as
the link between their two worlds, Anne tried again and
again, by spelling words into Helen’s hand, to make
Helen grasp the connections between words and the
things they stood for. The breakthrough came one day
as Anne spelled the word water into Helen’s hand as
water from a spout poured over it. “I stood still, my whole
attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers,” Helen
remembered. “Suddenly I felt…a thrill of returning
thought;
and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to
adapted from ABC’s of the Human Mind, Reader’s Digest, 1990.
me.”
The Questions
What senses were unavailable to Helen
Keller?
 How did she learn to compensate?
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An Eskimo or Native American?
What’s Up?
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In the next few seconds, something
peculiar will start hap pening to the
material youa rereading. Iti soft ennotre
alieze howcom plext heproces sof rea ding
is.
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iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat
ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can
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istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
What is sensation?
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What occurs when a stimulus activates a
receptor?
– Response
Stimuli - any change in the environment to
which an organism responds
 Stimulus  Response
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What is a perception?
Combined sensations with past
experiences.
 How we, as INDIVIDUALS, interpret our
sensations
 Organization of sensory information into
meaningful experiences
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Psychophysics
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The study of the relationships between sensory
experiences and the physical stimuli that caused them.
– How much energy is required for someone to hear a sound or
see a light?
– How much of a scent must be in a room before one can smell it?
– Absolute Thresholds of the senses
Absolute Threshold
The weakest amount of stimulus
required to produce a sensation.
 Person can detect the stimulus 50% of the
time.
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The Absolute Thresholds…
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Sight – a candle flame 30 miles away on a clear
night.
Hearing – hearing a watch ticking 20 feet
away.
Taste – tasting 1 teaspoon of sugar dissolved in
2 gallons of water.
Smell – smelling 1 drop of perfume in a 3-room
house.
Touch – feeling a bee’s wing falling a distance
of 1 centimeter onto your cheek.
Sensory Adaptation
Allows us to notice differences in
sensations and react to the challenges of
different or changing stimuli.
 Our senses adjust to the overall level of
stimulation
 More stimulation, less sensitive
 Less stimulation, more sensitive
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Stroop Effect
Pink
Red
Blue
Pink
Green
Orange
Yellow
Blue
Red
Light Blue
Green
Black
Brown
Pink
Orange
Red
Black
Green
Purple
Red
White
Green
Read the following list
of colors.
 Say the color of each
word aloud.
 Which does your mind
see? The color of the
word or the color the
word REPRESENTS?
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The Stroop Effect
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/words.html
Weber’s Law
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What is Weber’s law?
– Difference Threshold/ Just Noticeable
Difference is a constant proportion of the
stimulation being judged.
Weber’s Law
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JND Constants:
– Hearing 0.3% (very sensitive)
– Taste 20%
Subliminal Messages
www.sublymonal.com
 Can people be influenced by information
they are not consciously aware?
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ESP: Real or Imagined?
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Extrasensory Perception
– Response to an unknown event not presented
to any known sense
– Clairvoyance: awareness of an unknown
object or event
– Telepathy: knowledge of someone else’s
thoughts or feelings
– Precognition: forehand knowledge of future
events
– Parapsychology
Inside Out Sensation
The Five Senses
Or maybe SIX?
Senses
Seeing
Hearing
 Smelling
 Tasting
 Touching
 Internal
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– Vestibular
– Kinesthetic
Vision
Process of Vision
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Light = Stimulus for sense of sight
– Light enters the eye through the cornea
– Passes through the pupils (contracts)
– Moves through a lens and focuses on the
retina (lining of the eye containing the
receptor cells)
– Fovea is the part of the eye that focuses
images
Visual Receptor Cells
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Rods
– 120 million in each retina
– Respond to intensity of light and dark
– Responsible for night vision
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Cones
– 8 million in each retina
– Respond to colors
– Less sensitive to light than rods
From the Eyes to the Brain
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Ganglion cells
– Neurons that connect the bipolar cells in the
eyes to the brain
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Optic Nerve
– Carries messages from each eye to the brain
Color Vision
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Color Blindness
– Trichromats- people with normal color vision
– Monochromats- most severe type of
colorblindness (less common)
 Only shades of gray
– Dichromats- blind to either red-green or blueyellow shades of light and dark (more
common)
Binocular Vision
Two eyes, one image
 Retinal Disparity
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– Visual system receives two images on the
retinas
Vision
Smell and Taste
Known as chemical senses because the
receptor cells are sensitive to chemical
molecules
 Smell and Taste are interrelated
 Smell is thought to be 10,000 times more
sensitive than taste
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Smell
Process of Smell
Chemical molecules (vapors) enter your
nose
 Olfactory Nerve
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– Carries smell impulses from the nose to the
brain
– Located in the membrane in the upper part of
the nasal passage
The Olfactory Nerve
Taste
Process of Taste
9,000 taste buds on tongue
 Liquid chemical molecules stimulate the
taste buds (taste receptor cells)
 Information/Data is sent to the brain
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– Includes information about temperature and
texture of the substance
What Makes Up Taste?
Sour
 Salty
 Bitter
 Sweet
 Flavor
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Ice cream
– The combination of taste, smell, and touch
– You can detect flavors anywhere on the
tongue
Hearing
“If a tree falls in the forest and on
one is there, does the tree make a
sound?”
Hearing
Sound Waves
Loudness, determined by the amplitude
of the sound wave (decibel)
 Pitch, determined by the frequency of
the sound wave
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Process of Hearing
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Sound waves strike the eardrum
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Hammer, Anvil, and Stirrup
– Sequence of tiny bones in the middle ear that carry
the vibrations to the inner ear
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Vibrations hit against the cochlea
– Contains fluids and Auditory nerves
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Auditory nerve: turn sound vibrations into
neuronal signals
– Found in the inner ear
– Tiny hair-like cells
Deafness
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Types:
– Conduction
 Occurs when anything hinders physical motion through the
outer or middle ear or when the bones of the middle ear
become rigid and cannot carry sound.
 Usually a hearing aid will help.
– Sensorineural
 Occurs from damage to the cochela, the hair cells, or the
auditory neurons.
 A cochlear implant will be needed to hear sound.
Tactile Senses
The Skin Senses
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Your skin is your largest sense organ.
Most sensitive skin areas are your face and fingertips
Very sensitive:
– 0.00004 of an inch of skin displacement will cause a sensation of
pressure!
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Four kinds of information:
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Pressure
Warmth
Cold
Pain
Process of Touch
Stimulus
Receptor Cells send
electrical signals
Medulla
Thalamus
Touch and Pressure
Arousing or Calming
the Nervous System
OW!
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Pain
Gate Control Theory of Pain:
– Lessen some pains by focusing our attention
away from the pain impulses
– OR sending sensation signals to compete with
the pain signals
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Two Types:
– Sharp, localized felt immediately after an
injury
– Dull, generalized felt later after an injury
Touch
The Sixth Senses
 Vestibular
– Three semicircular canals located in the
inner ear that provide a sense of
balance.
 Kinesthetic
– The sense that provides information
about the position and movement of
individual body parts.
Perception
Trying to Catch a Fly
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The frog’s bug detector shows the rigidity of reflexive
behavior. If you sever the frog’s optic nerve, it will grow
back together, and the bug detector will still work fine.
If you sever the optic nerve and then rotate the frog’s
eye 180 degrees, the nerve will still heal and reestablish
all the old connections; however, this time the results
will not be so good. The bug detector does not know
that everything has been rotated, so it miscomputes a
bug’s location. If the bug is high, the frog shoots its
tongue low. If the bug is to the right, the tongue goes
to the left. The frog never learns to compensate for the
changed situation.
from A Second Way of Knowing: The Riddle of Human Perception by
Edmund Blair Bolles, 1991
Inside Out: Perception
The Question
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Where does perception occur: in the
sensory organ, in the nerve, or in the
brain?
Perception
The brain receives information from the
senses and organizes and interprets it into
meaningful experiences – unconsciously.
 Our brains fill in the gaps…
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Perceptual Organization
Each whole that is organized by the brain
Gestalt
is called a _________
 The brain creates a coherent perceptual
experience
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– More than the sum of all sensations
Principles that people use in
organizing such patterns:
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Proximity
– When we see a number of similar objects, we tend to perceive
them as groups or sets of those that are close to each other.
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Continuity
– We tend to see continuous patterns, not disrupted ones.
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Similarity
– When similar and dissimilar objects are mingled, we see the
similar objects as groups.
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Simplicity
– We see the simplest shapes possible.
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Closure
– When we see a familiar pattern or shape with some missing
parts, we fill in the gaps.
Proximity
       
ABCD
EFG
HIJK
LMNOP
QRS
TUV
WX
YZ
Sing your ABC’s… does the pattern you
learned your ABC’s fit the pattern of the dots?
You learned your ABC’s in groups of letters, to
fit the tune “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”
Continuity
B
C
D
A
Two curves or two pointed
objects?
Similarity
Simplicity
Closure
STAR
Figure-Ground Perception
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The ability to discriminate properly
between a figure and its background.
Perceptual Inference
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Filling in the gaps.
Synesthesia
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Hearing Colors:
– All of her life, a woman, finally diagnosed with
Synesthesia, had seen colors when she heard
words or letters. She always saw yellow with
hints of green when se heard the word king.
– Synesthesia is the mingling or swapping of
sensory information in which stimulating one
sense triggers conscious experience in
another sense.
– 1 out of 25,000 people, result of a “crossed
wire” in the brain?
Subliminal Perception
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Subliminal perception occurs whenever
stimuli presented below the threshold of
awareness are found to influence
thoughts, feelings, or actions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMzbwa6PvEE
Depth Perception
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Monocular Depth Cues
– Used to perceive distance and depth.
– Can be perceived with only one eye.
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Binocular Depth Cues
– Depends upon the movement of both eyes.
Constancy
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The tendency to perceive certain objects
in the same way regardless of changing
angle, distance, or lighting.
Illusions
Perceptions that misrepresent physical
stimuli.
 They are created when perceptual cues
are distorted so that our brains cannot
correctly interpret space, size, and depth
cues.
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