2. KEY POINTS
• Distinguish between sensation and perception
• Psychophysics: absolute threshold and difference
threshold
• Identify each major sensory system, their
receptors, and type of sensory information each
receives
• Perception: selection, organization and
interpretation
3. Sensation
• Input of sensory information
• Process of receiving, converting, and
transmitting information from the outside
world
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. Body Senses
• Vestibular sense (sense of balance) results
from receptors in inner ear
• Kinethesis - (body posture, orientation, and
body movement) results from receptors in
muscles, joint and tendons
• Skin senses detect touch (pressure,
temperature and pain)
9. 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
10. Psychophysics
• Study of the relationship between the
physical properties of stimuli and a person’s
experience of them
• Absolute threshold - minimum amount of
energy we can detect
• Difference threshold - (jnd) the smallest
change in a stimulus we can detect
11. Perception
• “…a constructive process by which we go
beyond the stimuli that are presented to us
and attempt to construct a meaningful
situation”.
12. Perceptual Processing
• Top-down: perception is guided by higher-
level knowledge, experience, expectations,
and motivations
• Bottom-up: perception that consists of
recognizing and processing information
about the individual components of the
stimuli
19. 3. Four Major Factors of
Interpretation
• Perceptual adaptation
• Perceptual set
• Individual motivation
• Frame of reference
20. Subliminal Perception
• Stimuli that occur below the threshold of
our conscious awareness but have a weak, if
any effect on behavior
21. 4. Extrasensory Perception (ESP)
• Alleged perception in the absence of
sensory data
• Types of ESP - telepathy, precognition,
clairvoyance, and psychokinesis
