SENSATION

AND
PERCEPTION

Michael John D. Santos

13 FACES
 Sensation

•Input of sensory information

•Process of receiving, converting, and
transmitting information from the outside world
 Sensory Systems
•Vision
•Hearing
•Smell (olfaction)
•Taste (gustation)
•Vestibular sense (balance)
•Kinesthesis (body movement)
•Touch (pressure, pain, temperature)
 Hearing

• Audition (hearing) occurs via sound waves,

which result from rapid changes in air
pressure caused by vibrating objects
• Receptors located in the inner ear (cochlea)
tiny hair cells that convert sound energy to
neural impulses sent along to brain
 Smell and Taste

•Olfaction (smell) receptors are located at top of

nasal cavity
•Gustation (taste) receptors are taste buds on
tongue. Four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour and
bitter
 Body Senses

•Vestibular sense (sense of balance) results from

receptors in inner ear
•Kinesthesis - (body posture, orientation, and body
movement) results from receptors in muscles, joint
and tendons
•Skin senses detect touch (pressure, temperature and
pain)
 Processing
•Sensory reduction - filtering and analyzing of
sensations before messages are sent to the
brain
•Transduction - process of converting receptor
energy into neural impulses the brain can
understand
•Adaptation- decreased sensory response to
continuous stimuli
 Psychophysics

• •Study of the relationship between the

physical properties of stimuli and a person’s
experience of them
• the smallest change in a stimulus we can
detect
 Vision
•Visual receptor cells located on retina: rods for
night vision and cones for color vision

•The eye captures light and focuses it on the

visual receptors, which convert light energy to
neural impulses sent to the brain
• light travels to the
cornea and the pupil
and hits the transparent
disc behind the pupil
which we call the lense
which focus the light
rays into specific images
 • the lens focuses this
in the retina which
is the inner surface
of the eyeball that
contains all the
receptor cells that
begins sensing that
visual information

• the retinas don’t get the full blown image but just parts like pixels that
millions of receptors translate into neural impulses and sends it to the brain
• these retinal receptors are called rods and cones
rods detect
*the grey scale
*are used in our peripheral vision
*lets us see in twilight conditions when we really don't
see color
cones
*detects fine details and color
*these only function in well-lit conditions. that is why you see details
well and good when light is sufficient
*it is concentrated in the focal point of the
retina called FOVEA
When rods and cones are stimulated it triggers chemical change that spark neural signals
which in turn activate the cells behind them called BIPOLAR CELLS whose job it is to turn on
the neighboring ganglion cells. The long axon tails of this cell braid together to form the
OPTIC NERVE that carries the neuro impulses from the eyeball to the brain
• That visual information slips through a chain of complex levels as it travels
to the optic nerve and to the visual area of the thalamus and to the visual
cortex.
• The visual cortex sits at the back of the brain in the occipital lobe. The right
cortex to the left and the left cortex to the right
these cortex has specialized nerve cells called FEATURE DETECTORS that
respond to specific features like shapes, angles, movements etc in short the
different parts of the visual cortex is responsible for identifying different
aspects of things.
The ability to process and analyze many separate
aspects of a situation at once. In the case of visual
processing the brain simultaneously works on
making sense of FORM DEPTH MOTION AND
COLOR
“…a constructive process by which we go beyond the stimuli
that are presented to us and attempt to construct a
meaningful situation”.
 Perceptual Processing
•Top-down: perception is guided by higher-level
knowledge, experience, expectations, and
motivations. (ENVIRONMENT DRIVEN)
•Bottom-up: perception that consists of
recognizing and processing information about
the individual components of the stimuli. (DATA
DRIVEN)
 Perceptual Processing
Bottom-up

The four main bottom-up theories of form and

pattern perception are
• direct perception
• template theories
• feature theories
• recognition-by-components theory.
 Perceptual Processing
Bottom-up

DIRECT PERCEPTION
• According to Gibson’s theory of direct
perception, the information in our sensory
receptors, including the sensory context, is all
we need to perceive anything.
 Perceptual Processing
Bottom-up

TEMPLATE THEORIES
• Template theories suggest that we have stored in
our minds myriad sets of templates.
• Templates are highly detailed models for patterns
we potentially might recognize.
• We recognize a pattern by comparing it with our
set of templates. We then choose the exact
template that perfectly matches what we
observe(Selfridge & Neisser,1960).
 Perceptual Processing
Bottom-up

FEATURE THEORIES
• According to these theories, we attempt to
match features of a pattern to features stored
in memory, rather than to match a whole
pattern to a template or a prototype
(Stankiewicz, 2003).
 Perceptual Processing
Bottom-up

RECOGNITION-BY-COMPONENTS THEORY
• The recognition-by-components theory explains
our ability to perceive 3-D objects with the help
of simple geometric shapes.
• Irving Biederman (1987) suggested that we
achieve this by manipulating a number of simple
3-D geometric shapes called geons (for
geometrical ions).
Do you see a duck or a rabbit?
if we put easter eggs with the bunny duck image you
would probably think of it more as a rabbit than a
duck. Usually eggs should be associated with birds but
instead we associate it with a bunny specifically the
easter bunny... And this is where culture comes in
GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF
VISUAL PERCEPTION
Form perception is the recognition
of visual elements of objects,
specifically those to do with
shapes, patterns and previously
identified important
characteristics.
 similarity symmetry

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 SIMILARITY
XOXO

We tend to group objects on the basis

of their similarity.
 SYMMETRY
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We tend to perceive objects as

forming mirror images about their
center.
 DEPTH
is the distance from a surface, usually
using your own body as a reference surface
when speaking in terms of depth perception.
DEPTH CUES
 Perceptual Constancy

•Size constancy
•Shape constancy
•Color constancy
•Brightness constancy
 Constancy
• Size constancy is the perception
that an object maintains the
same size despite changes in the
size of the proximal stimulus.
 Constancy
• Shape constancy is the
perception that an object
maintains the same shape
despite changes in the
shape of the proximal
stimulus
 Constancy
• Shape constancy is the
perception that an object
maintains the same shape
despite changes in the
shape of the proximal
stimulus
• Prosopagnosia results in a severely impaired
ability to recognize human faces (Farah et al.,
1995; Feinberg et al., 1994; McNeil &
Warrington, 1993; Young, 2003). A person
with prosopagnosia might not recognize her
or his own face in the mirror.
Simultagnosia
• When you view this figure, you see various
objects overlapping. People with
simultagnosia cannot see more than one of
these objects at any one time.
• optic ataxia, is an impairment in the ability to
use the visual system to guide movement
(Himmelbach & Karnath, 2005). People with
this deficit have trouble reaching for things.
 Anomalies in Color
Perception
• Color perception deficits are much more
common in men than in women, and they are
genetically linked. However, they can also
result from lesions to the ventromedial
occipital and temporal lobes.
 Anomalies in Color
Perception
Kinds of “color blindness.”

ROD MONOCHROMACY, also

called achromacy. People with this
condition have no color vision at
all.
 Anomalies in Color
Perception
Kinds of “color blindness.”

DICHROMACY, only two of the

mechanisms for color perception work, and
one is malfunctioning. The result of this
malfunction is one of three types of color
blindness (color-perception deficits). The
most common is red-green color blindness.
The extreme form of red-green color
blindness is called protanopia.
 Anomalies in Color
Perception
Kinds of “color blindness.”

• deuteranopia (trouble seeing

greens), and tritanopia (blues and
greens can be confused, but yellows
also can seem to disappear or to
appear as light shades of reds).