Chap 3 & 4: Sensation and Perception

Sensation vs. Perception

Sensation Perception
The process by which our sensory receptors and The process of organizing and interpreting sensory
nervous system receive and represent stimulus information, enabling us to recognize meaningful
energies from our environment.” Or objects and events.” Or

It is the process of detecting, receiving, converting & Perception: the sorting out, interpretation, analysis,
transmitting information resulting from stimulation of and integration of stimuli by the brain

sensory receptors.

Sensing and Perceiving the World:

Sensation: is the activation of the sense organs by physical energy of a stimulus.
It is the process of detecting, receiving, converting & transmitting information resulting from stimulation of sensory
receptors.

Sensation perception
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The brain receives input from the The brain makes sense out of the input
sensory organs from sensory organs
Sensation involves three steps:

1. Sensory receptors detect stimuli.

2. Sensory stimuli are transduced into electrical impulses
3. Electrical impulses move along neural pathways to specific parts of the brain wherein the impulses are
decoded into useful information (perception).
For any sensation to occur there must be a stimulus.
Stimulus: A physical energy that produces a response in a sense organ. Light, sound, and chemicals are all stimulus
to different human senses.

Sensations shape our behavior and mental process by providing link between self and the world outside the brain.

The study of how physical stimuli from the environment are perceived by the brain is known as psychophysics
Psychophysics played a central role in the development of the field of psychology

• Two essential questions

1. Absolute threshold: The minimum strength of a physical stimulation that we can notice
2. Relative threshold (just noticeable difference): The smallest detectable difference between two stimuli.

Weber’s law for psychophysics states that-

• The higher the intensity, the bigger the just noticeable difference
Examples of absolute thresholds for various senses:
 Sight: a candle flame can be seen from 30 miles away on a dark and clear night.
 Hearing: the ticking of a watch can be heard 20 feet away under quiet conditions.
 Taste: sugar can be tasted when 1 teaspoon is dissolved in 2 gallons of water.
 Smell: perfume can be detected when one drop is present in a 3-room apartment.
 Touch: A bee’s wing falling from a distance of 1 centimeter can be felt on the cheek.

Sense organ: is an organ of the body that is able to respond to a stimulus from inside or outside

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E.g. eyes, ears, tongue
Sense: is a biological system used by an organism for sensation.
E.g. smell, taste, sight, hearing, and touch.

Sensory processing
Sensory reduction, transduction, and adaptation are all important processes involved in sensory
perception. Let's take a closer look at each of these processes.
a. Sensory reduction - filtering and analyzing of sensations before messages are sent to the brain.

b. Sensory Transduction - process of converting receptor energy into electrical signals (neural impulses)
the brain can understand

c. Sensory Adaptation- decreased sensory response to continuous stimuli. Look these examples

 A person jumps into a cool pool – at first uncomfortable but because of remaining in water his/her skin
receptors are less sensitive to the cold water
 Another example is that you enter a movie theater or bar, and the smell of cigarettes assaults you. A few
minutes later, though, you barely notice the smell.
The reason you acclimate to the odor is sensory adaptation.

Perception: the sorting out, interpretation, analysis, and integration of stimuli by the brain.

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The process of perception allows us to interpret what we see, hear or touch as objects, events, people and situations.

3 Steps of Perceptual Process

1. Selection: choosing where to direct out attention.
2. Organization: having selected incoming information, we organize it into patterns & principles that will
help us understand the world.
3. Interpretation: the brain uses the selected and organized information to explain and make judgments about
the external world.

Perceptual Organization
Perceptual organization is the process of organizing the inputs into identifiable objects. A person’s perceptual
process organizes the incoming information into meaningful whole. In other words, perceptual organization is the
process of grouping visual elements together (organization) so that one can more readily determine the meaning of
the visual as a whole (perception)

• In fact we can look at the same figure in more than one way.

Perceptual organization is best explained by the principles of Gestalt psychology

According to Gestalt psychology, the whole is different from the sum of its parts. This means “the brain
immediately perceives a stimulus as a whole, rather than focusing on the individual sensations”.
Based upon this belief, Gestalt psychologists developed a set of principles to explain perceptual organization, or
how smaller objects are grouped to form larger ones.

Principles of perceptual Organization (the Gestalt Laws of Perceptual

Organization)

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 – Def: a series of principles that describe how we organize bits and pieces of information into a
meaningful whole. These laws are:
– Proximity Rule: Objects close together form a group. Or

– Elements that are closer together are more likely to be perceived as belonging together. As a result,
we tend to see pairs of dots rather than a row of single dots as shown here in figure “a”.

-Similarity Rule: elements that are similar in appearance (such as size, shape or color) are grouped together. We
see, then, horizontal rows of circles in the figure below instead of vertical mixed columns.

-Closure Rule: Objects are perceived as whole even if they are not complete.

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We tend to mentally fill in missing parts of incomplete objects. I.e. we tend to ignore the breaks & concentrate on
the overall form.
I.e. Every stimulus is perceived in its most simple form & our brain interprets ambiguous or complex images as
the simplest form possible.

-Figure–ground: when we perceive a visual stimulus, part of what we see is the center of our attention, the figure,
and the rest is distinct background, the ground.

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Continuity Rule: We tend to perceive objects as forming smooth continuous patterns.

Our brain detects what we experience or see as continuous even if it is, in reality, disjointed. The eye is compelled
to move through one object and continue to another object.

Continuation occurs in the example above, because the viewer's eye will naturally follow a line or curve. The
smooth flowing crossbar of the "H" leads the eye directly to the maple leaf.

Perceptual Processing
These are two different ways along which perception precedes

1. Top-down: perception is guided by higher-level knowledge, experience, expectations, and

motivations

2. Bottom-up: perception that consists of recognizing and processing information about the
individual of the stimuli

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 Top down Processing

Making sense to the world

Top-down
processing:
What am I seeing?
using models,
ideas, and
expectations to
interpret sensory
information
Bottom-up
processing:
taking sensory
information and Is that something I’ve seen before?

then assembling
and integrating it

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Perceptual constancy
• Perceptual constancy is the perception in which objects maintain their brightness, size, shape, color, and
other properties despite changes in their retinal image.

Perception of Distance and Depth

 Depth perception is the capability to see the world in three dimensions even though the visual information
we receive from it is projected onto two–dimensional retinas.
 Depth perception, in turn, is made possible partly by stimulus cues provided by the environment and partly
by the properties of our visual systems.
It divide into two Binocular Cues and Monocular Cues

Binocular Cues divided into

i. Binocular disparity _ the closer the object the more disparity

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 ii .Convergence__ The closer an object the more the eyes rotate inwards to focus the object

Monocular Cues divided into three types:

i. Occlusion __An object partly hidden by another object must be behind it

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ii. Texture gradient __The texture of an objects changes with distance

iii. Motion parallax __ when moving, the object closer to you moves fast

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 End!

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