Chapter 5

Sensation

1
Ms. Garcha
AP Psych 12
2 Discussion Question
If you had to give up one of your senses, which one would it be?
Vision
Smell
Touch
Hearing
Taste

Vision is the most studied

Largest area of cerebral cortex devoted to vision
3 Transduction
Sensory info stimuli comes from millions of
sensory receptors in our eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, skin, muscles, joints, and tendons
Different receptors detect diff types of physical
energy. Ex. Light waves, mechanical energy,
chemical energy, and heat energy
Receptors transduce energy from one form into
another
In sensation, transduction = transformation
of stimulus energy to the electrochemical
energy of neural impulses
4 Sensation/Perception

Transduction: sensory receptors convert a physical energy into

nerve impulses
 Transmission of Sensory
5
Information
Different areas of the cerebral cortex translate
neural impulses into different psychological
experiences, such as odor or touch
Ex:
Visual info is processed in occipital lobes
(primary sensory center) in the back of the
cortex results of that project to other areas
in cortex (the association areas) more
abstract processing and you connect new info
with old info stored in your memory
Hearing first processed in temporal lobes
(primary sensory center) association area
for more abstract processing to connect new
info with old info
 Sensation and Perception
6
Species have developed special
sensory mechanisms for gathering
info essential for survival:
Sensation is the detection of
physical energy emitted or
reflected by physical objects
Perception is the process that
organizes sensory input & makes it
meaningful
Psychophysics is the study of the
relationship between physical
energy & psychological experiences
 Sensation and Perception
Attention is when you choose from among various stimuli
7 bombarding your senses at an instant. You focus your awareness on
a limited aspect of all youre capable of experiencing = selection
attention
We learn through experience to convert sensations into accurate
perceptions. Some people argue that we use bottom- up processing
OR top- down processing, some argue we use both so detection of
features (lines, angles, letters, faces) and integration into a whole
occur in 2 stages:
Bottom-Up Processing (detection of features)
analysis that begins with the sense receptors and works up to the
brains integration of sensory information. So sensory receptors
detect external stimulation & sends raw data to brain for analysis
Top-Down Processing (integration of features)
information processing guided by higher-level mental processes
So taking what you already know about particular stimulation,
what you remember about the context in which it appears, and
how you label and classify it, to give meaning to your
perceptions.
8 Sensation & Perception: Top-
Down & Bottom-Up Processing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLHlfPTRekA

2 min 30 s
9 Bottom up vs Top down
processing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWWrlsfgM0A

4 min 26 s
10Bottom-Up:

what is this a picture of?

11Top-Down:

read this as fast as you can when it

appears
 How many THEs did you see when you first glanced at this figure? Why?

12

How we perceive the world is determined at

least in part by our mental set, or our
expectations about the world.
13
Measuring the Senses

Absolute Thresholds
An Absolute Threshold is the
smallest amount of energy that a
person can detect reliably,
essentially the weakest level of a
stimulus that can be correctly
detected at least the time
By studying these thresholds
psychologists have found that our
senses are very sharp
14 Absolute Thresholds
Absolute threshold for vision - You can see
a candle flame on a clear, dark night from
30 miles away
Absolute threshold for hearing/audition -
You can hear a ticking watch in a perfectly
quiet room from 20 feet away
Taste/ gustation - You can taste a
teaspoon of sugar in two gallons of water
Smell/ olfaction - You can smell a drop of
perfume in a three room apartment
Touch - You can feel the wing of a bee
falling on your cheek from a height of 1
centimeter
 Our Sensational Senses
15
Measuring the Senses
The Difference Threshold or Just
Noticeable Difference (JND) is the smallest
noticeable difference in stimulation that a
person can detect reliably (half the time)
When you are just barely aware of a change
in stimulus
Ex. Increase in volume of your TV
Ex. Increase or decrease in brightness of
your computer screen
Ex. Comparing the weight of two blocks
Ex. Comparing the brightness of two lights
Ex. Comparing the saltiness of two liquids
16 Difference Thresholds

- The larger the object is, the greater

the change must be before you can
detect a difference
For example: If your are comparing
the weights of two pebbles, you might
be able to detect a difference of only
a fraction of a kilogram, but you
would not be able to detect such a
subtle difference if you were
comparing two massive boulders
17
When do we detect something?
Sensory Adaptation
Receptor or nerves cells higher up in the sensory
system get tired and fire less frequently when
repeatedly stimulated
The resulting decline in sensory responsiveness is called
sensory adaptation
This is useful, because it spares us from having to
respond to unimportant information
Essentially when stimulation is unchanging, you become
less sensitive to the stimulus. Sensory adaptation
permits you to focus your attn on informative changes
in your enviro without being distract by irrelevant data
such as odors or background noises
18
When do we detect something?
Sensory Adaptation examples:
When wearing a new piece of jewelry after a
while we get use to it
Some Exceptions (things we cant ignore):
the pain from a toothache
the odor of a skunk
the heat of the sun
19
When do we detect something?
Signal Detection Theory
- There is no actual absolute threshold
because the threshold changes with a
variety of factors including fatigue, attn,
expectations, motivation, and emotional
distress. It also varies from person to person
i.e. stimulus detection (whether we
consciously hear/see/smell/taste/feel
something) is a decision-making process of
determining whether a signal exists against
a background of noise
20 The Senses

Vision Bees can see

Hearing ultraviolet
Taste light
Touch
Smell

Bats can
hear
ultrasoni
c sound
21 Vision

What and how we see

22 Visual Pathway
Millions of rods and cones are the
photoreceptors that convert light energy to
electrochemical neural impulses
Your eyeball is protected by an outer
membrane composed of the sclera (tough,
white connective tissue that contains the
opaque white of the eye) and the cornea
(the transparent tissue in the front of your
eye)
The stimulus for vision is light
 Light is a wave
24
Wave properties result in
Hue - frequency/wavelength of
light
Brightness (or intensity) varies
with the amplitude
Saturation (purity of light) how
much of the light is at the exact
wavelength you are looking at
25 The Eye:
Receptor for Vision
Cornea outer shell of eye (protection)
Pupil opening through which light
enters eye
Iris colored part of the eye that
expands or contracts controlling the
size of the pupil to let more or less light
in depending on light intensity
Lens - changes shape
(accommodation) to bring image into
focus on the retina
26 The Eye:
Receptor for Vision
Optic Nerve formed of fibers
from ganglion cells; leaves the eye
and starts back toward other parts
of the brain
Fovea small area of retina with
the best visual acuity. It is packed
with cones cells (no rods!).
Blind spot where nerve impulses
from rods and cones leave the eye
 Anatomy of the Eye
27

In the back of
the eye,
objects
appear
upside down.
 28

The Retina

Cones handle colour

Rods monochromatic
Note that light does not fall directly on the rods and cones. It
must first pass through the cornea, the lens, the vitreous
humor (a jelly-like substance that fills the eyeball) and the
outer layers of the retina. Only about half of the light that
 In keeping with the
principle of cross
laterality, stimuli
29
from the left visual
field are sent to the
right occipital lobe
for further
processing,
whereas stimuli
from the right
visual field are sent
to the left occipital
lobe.
30 Photoreceptors
Photoreceptors are light-sensitive cells found
within the retina.
Rods are sensitive to light, but not color,
and are active under low-light conditions.
Cones are sensitive to color, are not active
in low-light conditions, and allow for fine
detail.
When it suddenly becomes dark, your
gradual increase in sensitivity to the low
level of light, called dark adaptation, results
from a shift from predominantly cone vision
to predominantly rod vision
 Rods and Cones
Rods (120 million)
Allow humans to see in black, white,
and shades of gray in dim light
Mostly in the periphery
Take 20 30 minutes to fully adapt to
darkness
Cones (6 million)
Enable humans to see color and fine
detail in adequate light, but that do not
function in dim light
Mostly in the fovea
Adapt fully to darkness in 2 3 minutes
32
EYE: VISION The Optic
Nerve
nerve impulses flow through the optic nerve as
it exits from the back of the eye
the exit point is the blind spot
Where the optic nerve exits the retina,
there arent any rods or cones, so the part
of an image that falls on your retina in
that area is missing the blind spot

the optic nerves partially cross and pass

through the thalamus
the thalamus relays impulses to the back of the
occipital lobe in the right and left hemisphere
33
Blind Spot

Where the optic nerve leaves the eye, called

the Optic Disc there are no rods or cones
which creates a blind spot
So why dont we see this blind spot
The rest of the image is there
Our eyes move fast to pick up the
complete image
The brain fills in the missing information
Figure 4.7

34

FIGURE 4.7 Experiencing the blind spot. (a) With your right eye closed, stare at
the upper right cross. Move your head if you need to and you should be able to
locate a position that makes the black spot disappear. When it does, it is on your
blind spot. With a little practice you can learn to make people or objects you
dislike disappear too! (b) Repeat the procedure described, but stare at the lower
cross. When the yellow space falls on the blind spot, the black lines will appear
to be continuous. This may help you understand why you do not usually notice
a blind spot in your visual field.
35 Colour Vision
The colours of objects you see depend on the wavelengths of
light reflected from those objects to your eyes
ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet)
combine to produce white light
The sun & most electric light bulbs give off white light
The more light waves your eyes receive the brighter an
object appears
The wave lengths of light that reach your eye from the object
determine the colour/ hue the object appears to be
 Colour Vision
36 If an object absorbs all the wavelengths,
then none reach your eyes so object looks
black
If the object reflects all of the wavelengths,
then all reach your eyes and the object looks
white
If the object absorbs some of the wavelengths
and reflects others, the colour you see results
from the colours of the waves reflected
Ex. A rose looks red when it absorbs orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet
wavelengths & reflects the longer red
wavelengths to your eyes
37 Color Vision
Trichromatic theory first proposed
by Thomas Young (1802) and revised by
Herman von Helmholtz(1852)
The eye contains 3 distinct receptors
for color
Each responds best to one of 3
primary colors of light: red, blue,
and green
By combining these 3, all other
colors can be produced
38 Colour Vision Continued
Cones are maximally sensitive to red, green,
or blue
Each colour you see results from a specific
ratio of activation among the 3 types of
receptors
For ex. Yellow results from stimulation of red
& green cones
People who are colour- blind lack a chemical
usually produced by one or more types of
cones
The most common type of colour blindness is
red and green resulting from a defective gene
on the X- chromosome
 The relative sensitivities of three types of cones to lights
of differing wavelengths. Although there is considerable
39 overlap, each type is maximally sensitive to wavelengths
corresponding to the primary hues of light: blue, green, and red.

T h re e T y p e s o f C o n e s

S -C o n e s M -C o n e s L -C o n e s
( S e n s i t iv e t o b lu e ) ( S e n s it iv e to G r e e n ) ( S e n s itiv e to R e d )
40 Information about colours
of light is easy to
remember..
Colour
receptors are
Cones.
ROYGBIV is a
long acronym,
so red is a
long wave.
 Opponent-process theory
Certain neurons can be excited/ inhibited
depending on wavelength of light
Wavelengths can have opposite effects
For ex. The ability to see reds and greens is
mediated by red-green opponent cells, which
are excited by wavelengths in the red area of
the spectrum & inhibited by wavelengths in
the green area of the spectrum, or vice versa
 Opponent-process
42 theory
Basically not only do the three
classes of cells increase their firing
rate to signal one color but they
also decrease their firing rate to
signal the opposing color
(red/green, yellow/blue, white/black)
proof of this can be seen in
afterimages
after you have stared at one color
in an opponent-process pair
(red/green, yellow/blue,
black/white), the cell responding
to that color tires and the
opponent cell begins to fire,
producing the afterimage of the
opposite colour
44 How we see color - Colm
Kelleher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8_fZPHasdo
 Vision:
45
The Nature of Colour

Colour is in
the eye of
the
beholder!.

Colour
does not
exist!
46 mixing colour
mixing paint
blue + yellow = green

mixing lights
red + green = yellow

called additive (light) and subtractive (paint) colour

47 additive colour
- mixing light
physically both colours in the mixed light
like a chord in music
light is really red + green
we see yellow
48 subtractive - mixing paint

cyan paint absorbs a lot of red

yellow paint absorbs a lot of blue
cyan + yellow absorbs most of the red and
blue leaving mainly green light reflected
so we see green
49
Additive Colours
50
Subtractive Colours
Used for mixing inks
for printing.

Primary colors are:

- Yellow
- Cyan
- Magenta
51

Subtractive Colours
52 Colour Vision: Other
Species
Most mammals
are all or
partially colour
blind.

Our view (top)

Dogs view (bottom
53 Gender Differences
in Perception of Color?
Reliable, stable differences in color preferences:
1. Women prefer cool colors, while men prefer
bright, strong colors
2. Women are more likely to have a favorite color
3. Women can name more colors
4. Color matters more to women.
5. In 1897, Jastrow reported that men prefer blue to red, and
women preferred red to blue. It may be that women have one
more photopigment receptor than men do.
54 Vision Problems

Hyperopia: Difficulty focusing nearby objects (farsightedness)

Myopia: Difficulty focusing distant objects (nearsightedness)
Astigmatism: Corneal, lens, or eye defect that causes some areas
of vision to be out of focus; relatively common
Presbyopia: Farsightedness caused by aging
55 Vision: Crash Course A&P
#18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0DYP-u1rNM