Sensation and Perception: Constructing Representations of the External World - Prof. Amand, Study notes of Psychology

Download Sensation and Perception: Constructing Representations of the External World - Prof. Amand and more Study notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Sensation and Perception Chapter 6  Sensation & Perception  How do we construct our representations of the external world?  Sensation.  Perception.  Bottom-up Processing  Top-Down Processing  Psychophysics  How we interpret the physical world?  Thresholds  Absolute Threshold  Sensory Adaptation o Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.  Transduction  In sensation, the transformation of stimulus energy (sights, sounds, smells) into neural impulses.  The Stimulus Input: Light Energy  Physical Characteristics of Light  The Eye  Parts of the eye  Optic Nerve, Blind Spot & Fovea  Visual Information Processing  Feature Detection  Shape Detection  Visual Information Processing  Processing of several aspects of the stimulus simultaneously is called parallel processing.  Hearing The Stimulus Input: Sound Waves  Sound waves are compressing and expanding air molecules.  Sound Characteristics  Skin Senses  Pain  Gate-Control Theory  Pain Control  Taste  Sensory Interaction  Smell  Smell and Memories  Perceptual Organization  How do we form meaningful perceptions from sensory information?  We organize it. Gestalt psychologists showed that a figure formed a “whole” different than its surroundings. o Form Perception o Organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground). o Gestalt Principles Illustration o http://psychlab1.hanover.edu/Classes/Sensation/Gestalt/index_files/frame.htm  Grouping  Depth Perception  Depth perception enables us to judge distances. Gibson and Walk (1960) suggested that human infants (crawling age) have depth perception.  Monocular Cues  Light and Shadow: Nearby objects reflect more light into our eyes than more distant objects.  Perceptual Constancy  Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change.  Color Constancy  Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color even when changing illumination filters the light reflected by the object.  Size-Distance Relationship  Lightness Constancy