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Sensation and Perception L

The document discusses sensation and perception. It defines sensation as the initial contact between organisms and their environment registered by the senses. Perception is the process of organizing, identifying and interpreting sensory information to understand it. There are several complex processes involved in perception, including attention, transduction of stimuli to the brain, and prior knowledge influencing responses. The document also discusses principles of perception like figure-ground perception, grouping, and how perception can fail through illusions.

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47 views39 pages

Sensation and Perception L

The document discusses sensation and perception. It defines sensation as the initial contact between organisms and their environment registered by the senses. Perception is the process of organizing, identifying and interpreting sensory information to understand it. There are several complex processes involved in perception, including attention, transduction of stimuli to the brain, and prior knowledge influencing responses. The document also discusses principles of perception like figure-ground perception, grouping, and how perception can fail through illusions.

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SENSATION AND

PERCEPTION
HOW WE MAKE SENCE OF THE WORLD AROUND US

● The world we inhibit is quite complicated. The process that help us make sense
out of sights,sound,smells,taste and other sensations are not as simple and
direct as we think.
● Psychological Research has shown that we understand the external world by
actively constructing our interpretation of sensory information through several
complex processes.
● Psychology distinguishes them between two key concepts: Sensation and
perception.
SENSATION- Initial contact between organisms and their physical
environment .
It states the relationship between various forms of sensory stimulation
and inputs registered by our sense organs.
Any concrete, conscious experience resulting from stimulation of a
specific sense organ, sensory nerve, or sensory area of brain.
Sensory Receptors
Transduction
● PERCEPTION- The process of Organising,identifying and interpreting sensory
information in order to represent and understand the presented information.
● This also includes how one responds to those stimuli.
● In general, there are a few steps in the formation of perception. First, there is
an external stimulus for the sensory organs to detect, for example, the barking
of a dog. In this example, the ears will be responsible to detect the stimulus. If
the individual pays attention to the bark, the attended stimulus will be
transcribed from auditory information into neurological signals and transducer
to the brain. Inside the brain, the individual will recognize it as a dog's barking.
Then according to one's knowledge and experience with a dog barking, they
will carry out a corresponding response to the situation. If the individual is
scared of dogs, they may choose to quickly leave or stay further away from the
dog.
SENSORY THRESHOLD
1. Absolute Threshold: The minimum intensity of some stimulus that a person
can notice with their senses.
For example, in an experiment on sound detention, researchers may present a
sound with varying levels of volume. The smallest level that a participant is able to
hear is the absolute threshold.
For hearing, the absolute threshold refers to the smallest level of a tone that can
be detected by normal hearing when there are no other interfering sounds
present. Whether you can detect a the ticking of a clock in a quiet room would be
an example.
DIFFERENCE THRESHOLD

● Difference Threshold: The amount by which two stimuli must differ in


order to be just noticeably different. The difference threshold is based
on how different the intensity of separate stimuli has to be in order
for a person to notice that they are different.
ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD vs DIFFERENTIAL
THRESHOLD
SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION
A subliminal message, also called a hidden message, is one that's designed to pass below
the normal limits of perception. They're inaudible to the conscious mind but audible to the
unconscious, or deeper, mind.
It first captured public’s attention in 1950s when a marketing executive announced he
had embedded subliminal messeges like “eat popcorn” and “drink coke’’ into a then
popular movie.
These messeges flashed on the sceen for seconds in frount of the audience. Audience
were not aware of them.
These incidents raise question whether we can in fact sense or be affected by stimuli that
remain outside our concious awareness.
The influence of a series of external stimulus on emotions or actions involuntarily, or in
other words, subconsciously.
PRIMING

Priming is a technique in which the introduction of one


stimulus influences how people respond to a subsequent
stimulus.

Priming works by activating an association or representation


in memory just before another stimulus or task is introduced.

This phenomenon occurs without our conscious awareness


● Brand priming is used to influence a person's immediate thoughts actions through the
name or logo of a brand.
● That can help increase revenue if the primed reaction is to buy or use the product or
service.
Signal Detection Theory
This theory predicts how and when we detect the presence of a signal amid
background stimulation.( Noise)

Assumes there is no single absolute threshold and detection depends partly on


persons experience, expectations,motivation etc.

Example- Two pathologists from Boston,US misread the tissue biopsies of 20


patients,the doctors informed the men did not have cancer,when in fact they had the
disease. The mistakes were revealed during a review of 279 tests performed
between 1995 and 1997. The doctors error illustrate that deciding whether we have
detected a given stimuli is not always easy. These decisions involve determination of
relationship between the amount of physical energy present in the stimuli and
resulting psychological sensation.
SENSORY ADAPTATION

Sensory adaptation is a reduction in sensitivity to a stimulus after constant


exposure to it.

While sensory adaptation reduces our awareness of a stimulus, it helps free


up our attention and resources to attend to other stimuli in our
environment.

It occurs due to changes in the neural receptor cells that receive and process
sensory information.

Sensory adaptation serves an important function by helping people tune out


distractions and focus on the most relevant or important stimuli around
them.
Example- Scent: Smokers are not bothered by the smell of tobacco
smoke the way nonsmokers are, because smokers are accustomed to the
odor. Their sensory receptors respond less to the stimuli (the smell of
smoke) because they experience it often.
PERCEPTION
Perception refers to our sensory experience of the world, which
includes how an individual recognizes and interpreter sensory information.
Perception may be defined as “a process of interpretation of a present
stimulus on the basis of past experience”.
Perception involves two processes: sensation and interpretation.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines perception
as "the process or result of becoming aware of objects,
relationships, and events by means of the senses, which includes
such activities as recognizing, observing, and discriminating."
A
ORGANISING PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

In perceptual process we select a particular stimulus with our attention


and interpret it.

In the same way whenever it is necessary many discrete stimuli in our


visual field are organised into a form and perceived more meaningfully
than they appear.

This phenomenon was well explained by Gestalt psychologists.

They believed that the brain creates a clear perceptual experience by


perceiving a stimulus as a whole than perceiving discrete(individually
separate) entities.
1. FIGURE AND GROUND PERCEPTION
● According to this principle any figure can be perceived more
meaningfully in a background and that figure cannot be separated
from that background.
● Our tendency to divide the perceptual world into two distinct parts-
discrete figures and the background against which they stand.
2. GROUPING
Laws of grouping: Simple principles describing how we tend
to group discrete(individually separate) stimuli together in the
perceptual world
1. PRINCIPLE OF PROXIMITY
2. LAW OF SIMPLICITY
3. PRINCIPLE OF SIMILARITY

• Stimuli need not be nearer to each other for perception.

• If there is similarity in these objects, they are grouped

together and perceived, even if they are away


PRINCIPLE OF CLOSURE
● When a stimulus is presented with gaps, the human tendency is to
perceive that figure as complete one by filling the gaps
psychologically.
USES OF ORGANISING PRINCIPLE IN LOGO
DESIGNING
PROXIMITY
SIMILARITY

Sun Microsystem's logo intuitively uses "U" to create "S", "U" and "N". If you look
from sideways, it spells SUN just using "U"s
FIGURE GROUND PERCEPTION
WHEN PERCEPTION FAILS:
1.PERCEPTUAL CONSTANCIES
There is a tendency to maintain constancy (of size, color, and shape) in the
perception of stimuli even though the stimuli have changed.

For example, you recognize that small brownish dog in the distance as your
neighbor's large golden retriever, so you aren't surprised by the great increase in
size (size constancy) or the appearance of the yellow color (color constancy) when he
comes bounding up. And in spite of the changes in the appearance of the dog
moving toward you from a distance, you still perceive the shape as that of a
dog (shape constancy) no matter the angle from which it is viewed.
2.PERCEPTUAL ILLUSIONS
● Illusions: Instances in which perception yields false interpretation of
physical reality.
● Illusion, a misrepresentation of a “real” sensory stimulus—that is, an
interpretation that contradicts objective “reality” as defined by
general agreement.

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