ITP 4 - SENSATION & PERCEPTION

• Sensation is the process where our sensory receptors and nervous system detect and respond to physical energy from the environment. It involves raw data collection through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.
• Perception refers to how the brain organizes, interprets, and makes sense of the sensory information received.
• Afterimage is a visual illusion where an image continues to appear in one's vision after the original image has been removed.
• Senses

  1. Touch - Detected through skin receptors
  2. Smell - Detect airborne chemical molecules
  3. Hearing - Detect sound waves
  4. Sight - Capture light waves and convert them into visual images
  5. Taste - Identify flavors
  6. Vestibular - Balance and spatial orientation
  7. Proprioception - Body’s "sixth sense," refers to the awareness of body position
• Located in the inner ear, the vestibular system is responsible for maintaining balance and spatial orientation.
• The inner ear contains structures like the semicircular canals, which help maintain balance and spatial orientation.
• Papillae are small bumps on the tongue that contain taste buds.
• Sensory organs on the tongue (around 10,000) that detect sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami flavors.
• The olfactory system can quickly adapt to smells, meaning that continuous exposure to a particular odor can make it less noticeable over time.
• The skin is the largest organ of the body
• Proprioception allows us to perceive the position and movement of our body parts.
• Process of sensory and perception

  1. Stimulus energy
  2. Sensory receptors
  3. Neural impulses
  4. Interpretation of the brain
• The absolute threshold is the minimum level of stimulus intensity required for a stimulus to be detected 50% of the time.
• Perceptual Powers

  1. In-born abilities
  2. Critical periods
  3. Psychology and cultural influences
• In-born Abilities - Humans are born with certain perceptual abilities, such as recognizing faces or distinguishing between different sounds.
• Critical Periods - There are specific windows during development when the brain is especially receptive to acquiring certain perceptual abilities. Missing these critical periods can lead to long-term deficits in those areas.
• Psychological and cultural influences

  • Needs
  • Beliefs
  • Emotions
  • Expectations on past experiences
  • Cultural background
• Context Effects refer to how the surrounding environment and situation can influence perception. The same stimulus can be perceived differently depending on the context in which it is encountered.
• Extrasensory Perception is the claimed ability to perceive information beyond the known senses.
• The Law of Pragnanz states that people will perceive and interpret complex images or ambiguous stimuli in the simplest form possible.
• Gestalt psychology revolves around the idea that “the whole is different than the sum of its parts.”
• Similarity – We tend to group objects that are similar in appearance, such as shape, color, or size, and perceive them as part of the same group.
• Proximity – Objects that are close to each other are perceived as a group or related.
• Continuity – The brain prefers to see continuous patterns rather than abrupt changes.
• Closure – Even when a visual stimulus is incomplete, our brains tend to "fill in the gaps" to create a complete, whole object.
• Figure-Ground – This principle describes how we differentiate between a figure (the main object of focus) and the ground (the background or surrounding area).
• Perceptual Set - A habitual way of perceiving, based on expectations.