Chapter 4 − Sensation and Perception

September 25, 2020 11:31 AM

4.1 Sensation and Perception at a Glance

- Process of detecting and translating the complexity of world occurs in 2 stages: sensation and then perception
- Sensation is the process of detecting external events with sense organs and turning those stimuli into neural signals
○ E.g. Sound of someone’s voice is simply air particles pushing against the eardrum
- Perception involves of organizing and interpreting the stimuli we sense
○ E.g. Organizing different vibrations of the eardrum so that you recognize human voice
- Transduction is when specialized receptors transform the physical energy of the outside world into neural impulses
○ Neural impulses influence different brain activities and give us the internal representation of the world

- All our senses uses action potential to transmit information to the brain
- The brain area that processes the information is the most important to generate perception, not the original
sensory input itself
○ E.g. We can see because information gets sent to the occipital lobes, which generate our vision
- Müller idea of doctrine of specific nerve energies: the different senses are separated in the brain
○ Distinct pathways connect sensory organs to appropriate brain structures
○ This does not apply to children that is below the age of 3, later in life less−useful connections get pruned away
- Sensory receptors are most responsive upon initial exposure to stimulus
○ Changes in our sensory/perceptual world allows us to quickly direct our attention to new stimuli
○ Allocate less attention to stimuli that remain same over time
- Sensory adaptation is the reduction of activity in sensory receptors with repeated exposure to stimulus
○ E.g. Sound of traffic is less intense after few minutes outside of a building
- Fechner help create psychophysics: study of how physical energy (e.g. light and sound) and their intensity relate to
psychological experience
○ E.g. the measure the min amount of stimulus for detection, and the amount of change in stimulus for the
change to perceptible to a person
- Absolute threshold is the minimum amount of energy or quantity of stimulus required for it to be reliably detected
at least 50% of time it is presented
○ Suppose you put on some headphones to hear for words, but they manipulated the volume at which the
words were presented so that some could be heard and some could not. Your absolute threshold would be
the volume at which you could detect the words 50 % of the time.
- Difference threshold is the smallest difference between stimuli that can be reliably detected at least 50% of the
time
○ This is also called the just noticeable difference
○ E.g. the smallest difference in sound for us to perceive a change in the radio’s volume
- Weber's law states that the just noticeable difference between 2 stimuli changes as a proportion of those stimuli
○ E.g. If u have a 50g of candy in your hand and your just noticeable difference is the weight of an extra 5g of
candy. If you have 100g candy in your hand now, your just noticeable difference is now increased to 10g
(double amount of original weight, so double amount of just noticeable difference)
- Signal detection theory states that whether a stimulus is perceived depends on both sensory experience and the
judgment made by the subject
○ So there are 2 processes: a sensory process and a decision process
▪ In lab setting, experimenter presents a faint stimuli/no stimuli to the subject (sensory process), the
subject must report if there was a stimulus or not (decision process)
□ 4 possible outcomes: a hit −> correct that you hear sound, a correct rejection −> correct that you
didn't hear a sound, a false alarm −> think you heard something that is not there, a miss −> fail to
detect stimuli

- Detecting a weak stimulus depends on many factors:

○ Sensitivity of a person's organs
○ Cognitive and emotional factors which include:
▪ Expectations, level of psychological and autonomic−nervous system arousal, motivation to pay attention
to nuances in stimuli (e.g. If u are lost in woods u will be more likely detect a distant bear growl, than
hiking with friends on a familiar path with the same noise level −−> motivated to detect sounds)
- Subliminal perception is the perception below the threshold of conscious awareness
○ This is actually possible under strict laboratory conditions
- Priming is when previous exposure to a stimulus can influence that individual's later responses, either to the same
stimulus or related ones
- Many experiments of subliminal priming have been conducted:
○ Usually experimenters present word/image for a fraction of sec and then immediately changes to a new
image that is known as the mask and it is displayed for a longer time
○ Mask interferes with conscious perception of "subliminal stimulus"; the subjects are unaware of stimulus
appeared before the mask
○ Rapidly presented stimuli can produce small effects in the nervous system −−> so subliminal perception occurs
- Subliminal priming doesn't create new motivations, but can enhance motivations we already have
- Wertheimer coined Gestalt psychology: an approach to perception that emphasizes that the whole is greater than
the sums of its parts
- Figure−ground principle (from gestalt psychologists) states that objects or "figures" in our environment tend to
stand out against a background
○ Can also apply to sounds, if you are in a party and the person is talking to you, you are attending to the figure
(voice of individual) against the background noise (the ground)
▪ Or when you are uninterested to guy who is speaking, you may attend to the music instead what they
are saying to you
- Proximity and similarity are 2 additional Gestalt principles that influence perception
○ We tend to treat 2+ objects in close proximity as a group
○ Similarity can be experienced by viewing groups of people in uniform (e.g. 2 different soccer teams in a field)
- Other Gestalt principles are continuity and closure
○ Continuity refers to the perceptual rule that lines and other objects tend to be continuous, rather than
abruptly changing direction
○ Closure refers to the tendency to fill in gaps to complete the whole object
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- Gestalt concepts are not a collection of isolated examples, when put together it demonstrates an important
characteristic of perception:
○ We create our own organized perceptions out of the different sensory inputs we experience
- Bottom-up processing is when we perceive individual bits of sensory information (e.g. sounds) and use them to
construct a more complex perception
- Top-down processing is when our perceptions are influenced by our expectations or prior knowledge
- Divided attention is when we are paying attention to more than one stimulus at a time
○ Happens often, e.g. Playing video games and having a conversation
- Selective attention involves focusing on one particular event or tasks (e.g. Driving without distractions)
○ Your perception of other parts of the environment suffers
- Inattentional blindness is a failure to notice clearly visible events or objects because attention is directed elsewhere

4.2 The Visual System

- Primary function of the eye is to gather light and convert it into an action potential
- Light refers to radiation that occupies a narrow band in the electromagnetic spectrum
- Light travels in waves in terms of 2 properties: length and amplitude
○ Wavelength refers to distance b/w peaks of a wave
▪ a specific wavelength corresponds to a specific colour in the electromagnetic spectrum
○ Amplitude refers to height of the wave
▪ Low amplitude waves −> dim colour, High amplitude waves −> bright colour
- Light waves clustered around one colour −> intense vivid colour, variety of waves −> colour is "washed out"
- Characteristics of light are: hue (colour of spectrum), intensity (brightness), saturation (purity of colour)
- Sclera is the white outer surface of the eye
- Cornea is the clear layer that covers the front portion of the eye and contributes to the eye's ability to focus
○ Light enters cornea and passes through the pupil
- Pupil regulates the amount of light that enters by changing its size; it dilates or constricts
- Iris adjusts the size of the pupil; also gives the eyes their characteristic colour
- Lens is a clear structure that focuses light onto back of the eye
- Accommodation is a process where the lens changes its shape, so light entering the eye is refracted in a way that is
focused when it reaches the back of the eye
- Transduction is a process where when the light reaches the back of the eye, the receptors convert light into a
message that the brain can interpret
- Retina lines the inner surface of the back of the eye and consists of photoreceptors that absorb light and send
signals related to the properties of light to the brain
○ Retina at the back of eye since its:
▪ Protected there and has constant blood supply
▪ Has bipolar and ganglion cells that collect messages from photoreceptors that converge on the optic
nerve where it carries messages to the brain
- Optic nerve is a dense bundle of fibres that connect to the brain
○ Has no photoreceptors, this area is called optic disc
▪ Optic disc results in our blind spot
□ we don't usually notice our blind spot since the brain "fills in" missing information for us
- 2 types of photoreceptors : rods and cones
- Rods are photoreceptors that occupy the peripheral regions of the retina and are highly sensitive under low light
levels (responsive to black and gray)
- Cones are photoreceptors that are sensitive to different wavelengths of light that we perceive as colour
○ Tend to be clustered around fovea
- Fovea is the central region of the retina
- When rods and cones are stimulated by light, their structure briefly change, altering the activity of neurons of retina
○ Ganglion cells will be the last to receive the changed input and will output it out to the optic nerve
▪ 10 rods : 1 ganglion cell, 1 cone: 1 ganglion cell; all input from cone is transmitted to ganglion cell while
the rod input has to compete with inputs from other rods
□ This is why colourful stimuli are often sharp images while grey shadowy images are hazy/unclear
- In daylight/artificial light, cones more active than rods; helps us see differences in colour of objects
- Dark adaptation is the process by which rods and cones become increasingly sensitive to light under low levels of
illumination
○ Photoreceptors are slowly becoming regenerated after exposure to light; cones generate faster than rods, but
rods become more sensitive after
- We don't see colour in dark , since rods are more active than cones under low light levels
- Colour is not a characteristic of object, but interpretation of wavelengths by the visual system
- Trichromatic theory (or Young Helm-Holtz theory) states that colour vision is determined by 3 different cone types
that are sensitive to short, medium, and long wavelengths of light
○ These cones correspond to wavelengths associated with blue, green, and red
▪ Use these cones to see different colours in the spectrum (e.g. Yellow is perceived by combining red and
green cones)
- Hering's opponent-process theory (of colour perception) states that we perceive colour in terms of opposing pairs:
red to green, yellow to blue, white to black
○ This is consistent with activity patterns of ganglion cells
▪ A cell that is stimulated by red is inhibited by green
□ When red no longer perceived, inhibited cells that fire during perception of green are free to fire,
whereas previously active cells related to red are inhibited
- Some people have a form of colour blindness, most forms of colour blindness don't have the correct protein for a
type of cone
○ Usually colour blindness are caused by genetics
- Nearsightedness/myopia occurs when eyeball elongated, causing image that the cornea and lens focus on to fall
short of the retina
○ Can see objects closeup but distant objects are blurry
- Farsightedness/hyperopia is when the image is focused behind the retina
○ Can see distant objects, but not those that are close by
- Can use laser surgery to correct vision; nearsightedness −−> reshape cornea so light focus on retina,
farsightedness −−> make cornea steeper
- Optic chiasm is the point which optic nerves cross at the midline of the brain
○ Half of nerve fibres travel to same side of brain (ipsilateral)
▪ Outside half of retina sends optic nerve projections ipsilaterally
○ Half of nerve fibres travel opposite side of brain (contralateral)
▪ Inside half of retina sends optic nerve projections contralaterally
○ So right hemisphere process left half of visual field, left hemisphere process right half of visual field
▪ This increases the likelihood that some visual abilities are preserved if brain is damaged
- Fibres from optic nerve first connect to thalamus ("sensory relay station of brain")
○ Thalamus has a lateral geniculate nucleus which is specialized for processing visual info
▪ The fibres from this nucleus sends messages to visual cortex (located in occipital lobe)
- Feature detection cells are a set of cells in the visual cortex that respond selectively to simple and specific aspects of
 a stimulus such as edges and angles
○ These cells are thought to be where visual input is organized for perception, but additional processing is
needed
▪ From primary visual cortex, info about different features is sent for further processing in the secondary
visual cortex
□ This area consists of specialized regions that perform function such as perception of colour and
movement
□ These specialized areas are beginning of 2 streams of vision:
◆ The ventral stream which extends from visual cortex to lower part of temporal lobe
◆ The dorsal stream extends from the visual cortex to the parietal lobe

- Ventral stream of vision performs a critical function: object recognition

○ Groups of neurons in temporal lobe gather info of shape and colour from secondary visual cortex and
combine this info into a neural representation of an object
○ Damage to the ventral stream causes impairments in object recognition
- Perceptual constancy is the ability to perceive objects as having constant shape, size, and colour despite changes in
perspective (e.g. You can still identify your cat as you cat regardless if its noon or midnight)
○ This is possible since we have the ability to make relative judgements of shape, size, and lightness
▪ Shape constancy: we judge the angle of the object relative to our position
▪ Size constancy: is based on judgements of how close an object is relative to one’s position as well as to
the positions of other object
▪ Colour constancy allows us to recognize an object's colour under varying levels of illumination
○ Constancies are affected by top−down processing
▪ E.g. If we know that a door is rectangular, our visual system will use this knowledge when it organizes
our perceptions in the brain
- Prosopagnosia is a condition where you have the inability to recognize faces
- Fusiform face area (FFA) is the "face area" of the brain; responds more strongly to entire face than individual
features
- Dorsal stream of vision allows you to locate an object in a space and allows you to interact with it
○ E.g. Able to put a letter in a mailbox
▪ This pathway is involved with visually guided movement
- Ventral stream could be referred to "what" pathway (object recognition) and dorsal stream could be referred to
"where" pathway (where is the object)
- Binocular depth cues are distance cues that are based on the differing perspectives of both eyes
○ Convergence is a type of binocular depth cue
- Convergence occurs when the eye muscles contract so that both eye focuses on a single object
○ Usually occurs when objects are close to you (e.g. When you hold up your finger right up to your nose)
- We can see in 3D good since we have both eyes face forward, this makes us perceive objects from slightly different
angles, which enhances depth perception
- Retinal disparity (or binocular disparity) is the difference in relative position of an object as seen by both eyes,
which provides information to the brain about depth
- We have stereoscopic vision, which results from overlapping visual fields
 ○ Brain can use the difference b/w the information provided by left and right eye to make judgements about the
distance of the objects being viewed
- Monocular cues are depth cues that we can perceive with only one eye
○ Accommodation and motion parallax are both monocular cues
- Accommodation (already discussed) is when the lens of your eye curves to allow you to focus on nearby objects
○ Brain receives feedback about this movement that it can then use to help make judgments about depth
- Motion parallax is used when you or your surroundings are in motion
○ E.g. As you look out the train window, objects close to you past quickly in the opposite direction of your travel
and distant objects appear to move slowly and in the same direction that you are travelling
○ The disparity in directions travelled by near and far−off objects provides a monocular clue about depth