Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Overview:
Our senses gather information and tell us about
sensory signals because of changed attention to them. (e.g. touch clothing, socks)
perception of sensory information. We get much more sensory information coming into our brains than we can pay attention to at one time.
Cocktail party phenomenon the phenomenon
where our brains monitor sensory information outside our conscious awareness and brings things to our attention if they are important. (e.g. your name in loud classroom)
Vision:
Light from some source enters our eyes, or bounces
Process of Vision:
Light passes through cornea, a protective cover that
colour of your eye (iris) . This hole can dilate (get bigger) to let more light in, or smaller to let less light in.
focusing piece. Muscles can change the shape of lens to focus the image clearly on the back of the eye. (switch distance focus)
Process of Vision:
Process of Vision:
Light is focused on the back of the eye on the retina.
and this causes them to send neural signals. Different kinds of cells: Cones detect colour (5-6% of retina) Rods simply react to light; detecting shape, etc.
Process of Vision:
slightly indented, and has high concentration of cone cells. We see colour best here (coloured pencil test).
Peripheral (edge) vision is mostly rods, so mostly
Process of Vision:
Light Sensitive Cells Bipolar Cells Ganglion Cells Brain (Thalamus) Occipital Lobe (Visual Cortex)
(axons) that takes sight information to the brain. Blind Spot where the optic nerve leaves the eye. Because of cord, no cones or rods in this spot, so no vision here. (But we have two eyes...) Blind Spot Test
Source of Light
Process of Vision:
Process of Vision:
The image that is projected onto the retina of our eyes
is flipped and upside-down. Our brains flip the image back after they get the signals.
Process of Vision:
Our retina is divided into two. Left side of each retina
goes to the right side of the brain, and vice versa. (Remember Focus split brain patients) Point
Optic Chiasm
Influences on Vision:
Amount of light = how bright things seem
visible light
Objects appear
to be the colour of the wavelength of light they reflect, because thats the light that hits our eye
Influences on Vision:
light
cones that detect blue, red and green light. These three in different amounts give us all the colours we can see.
However this doesnt explain after
blue / yellow are tied together in pairs. Chemical process going one way = red, the other way = green. When you stare at the red picture, the red process is overused. So after that, the process reverses, showing the green colour.
When signaling red, cant signal green.
colorblindness.
Many researchers think both explanations can be
useful to explain colour sight. Exact truth is not completely clear yet.
Process of Vision:
The signals travel from our eyes, along the optic
nerve, through the thalamus (lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)), and to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain.
There, we have specialized cells that react to certain
Process of Vision:
These are called feature detectors. They detect certain
features of our environment from the visual info provided by our eyes.
Feature detectors explored by David Hubel and
Torsten Wiesel.
All the detected features are combined in higher level
processing areas, and thats where our perception of vision comes from.
waves. Sound waves come from vibration, travel through the air to our ears.
Auditory:
Sound waves have amplitude and frequency Amplitude
Auditory Sense:
Hammer (malleus)
Anvil (incus)
Stirrup (stapes)
Oval Window
Cochlea
Auditory Sense:
Cochlea coiled shell-shaped organ, filled with fluid. Inside are hair cells that are moved by the fluid when
vibrations pass through. Neurons connected to the hair cells fire when they move, sending signals to the auditory cortex of the brain.
Hair cells and neurons = organ of Corti
respond to different frequencies of sound. This seems to be true for high tones.
Frequency Theory idea that cells fire signals at
different speeds in response to diff. frequencies of sound. Seems to be true for low tones.
or sensorinerual deafness; we dont know how to get hair cells to re-grow. Hair cells can be damaged permanently by loud noises. Permanent hearing loss is possible.
Touch:
We have different types of nerve ending sensors in our
skin that detect heat, cold, pressure, and pain. These feed information to our brains.
Different areas of our body
have different amount of receptors. Hands, fingertips, feet, face, lips high number Back, elbow, etc. - low
Sensory Input
Touch:
Gate Control Theory of Pain- some pain messages
have a higher priority than others. If no high priority message, low gate is open and that pain gets through. But if high priority message comes, the low gate closes, stopping the low priority message, and the high priority message gate opens to let it through. (Gates are just a metaphor, not real structures) E.g. sore leg from exercise yesterday vs. cut hand.
Touch:
Pain is a very useful sense. It acts as a warning to help
influence our experience of pain, including through natural pain-killing chemicals. (endorphins)
Taste / Gustation:
A Chemical Sense. Taste involves detecting chemicals
from food we eat. Papillae are bumps in our mouths (mainly on our tongues) that include taste buds that detect chemicals. We detect 5 types of tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savory (meaty; also called umami).
Different taste buds will be more specialized to detect
certain tastes.
Taste / Gustation:
Taste / Gustation:
Smell (Olfaction):
Another Chemical Sense. Involves detecting chemicals
from the air. We have many types of olfactory receptor cells (probably around 100) in mucous membrane deep inside our noses. These detect chemicals, and send it to the olfactory bulb, and then to the amygdala and hippocampus. (not to the thalamus like other senses) This may be why smell can be so strongly connected to memory.
Smell (Olfaction):
orientation. Three canals in the inner ear with fluid tell us how our head is oriented in terms of gravity. Fluid in these semi-circular canals moves when our heads move, giving us orientation info.
Dizziness and nausea can
about where parts of our bodies are. Sensors in our joints and muscles give information about how our arms, legs, etc. are positioned.
Perception:
How we interpret and understand sensations. Psychophysics study of the interaction of sensations
Thresholds:
Absolute Threshold the smallest amount of stimulus
small subliminal messages can influence our behaviour (e.g. picking a word from a list), but theres no evidence that complicated messages can alter peoples behaviour in major ways (e.g. advertising)
Thresholds:
Absolute threshold
Thresholds:
Difference / Just-Noticeable Difference Threshold
the smallest amount of change in stimulus before we will detect the change.
Webers Law or Weber-Fenchner Law change must
Thresholds:
So a very strong stimulus will need to change more
before you notice the change. A weak stimulus can change just a bit before you notice. *In both cases, the same proportion. Consider a drink with sugar in it.
Just-Noticeable Difference for Vision 8% For Hearing is 5%
Perception
Perception in the real world is influenced by things
and how they might influence our rates of correct or false detection of stimuli.
Perception
Signal Detection Theory: False Positive, False Negative, Hit, Correct Rej.
Top-Down Processing:
When our previous background knowledge and
expectations cause us to see something. We perceive in that way because of our experience.
Schemata mental constructions of how we think the
world is. Perceptual Set because of expectations and schemata, we are more likely to see the world in a certain way.
Top-Down Processing
Bottom-Down Processing:
Also called feature analysis When we use the features of the object itself to build
our perception. We dont use our previous experience to guide our perception.
We constantly use both top-down and bottom-up
understood. Has been studied a lot. Here are some principles of visual perception.
Figure-ground
relationship same stimuli, our minds can switch our perception of it.
Gestalt Rules:
Gestalt Psychologists looked at how our perception
of objects are guided by more than just the individual objects separately.
Similarity, Proximity, Continuity (seen as one continuous thing), Closure like top-down proc. Even if there are gaps,
Gestalt Rules:
Constancy:
Even though we receive slightly different signals
based on how close the object is to us, the angle from which we view it, and the light that bounces off the object (outside in bright sunlight vs. inside in a dim place).
Based off our background knowledge of the object.
Perceived Motion:
Our brains do math to detect the motion of objects.
Perceived Motion:
Phi Phenomenon when a series of light bulbs turned
on and off at a fast rate will look like one moving light bulb.
Autokinetic Effect
in a dark place, with one point of light, if you stare at it, the light will seem to move
Depth Cues:
Very important part of our visual perception.
crawl as infants.
Animals commonly get this earlier than humans.
Depth Cues:
Eleanor Gibson Visual Cliff Experiments
the distance.
2. Texture Gradient Cue
objects that are the same size get smaller into the distance
Retinal Disparity the image of objects in each eye will get more and more different as the object gets closer to our eyes.
closer objects require us to move our eyes inward more, so our brain uses eye position to determine how close something is to us.
(IPD = InterPupillary Distance)
Cultural Differences
Cultures with a lot of right angles in architecture tend
Perceptual Illusions
There are also other times
our brain is well designed to perceive the world in ways that are accurate.