Sensation = Sensory receptors detect information

Perception = the organization and interpretation of sensory information that enables you to consciously recognize objects
*In our everyday experiences, we blend sensation and perception into one continuous process.
We start with sensory receptors and work up to higher levels of processing
Sensory analysis that starts at the entry level = bottom-up processing
We process this way when we have no prior knowledge. We start at the bottom and work our way up
We construct perceptions on our experience & expectations = top-down processing
We process this way when we have prior knowledge. We start at the top and have to work to process details.
For example (picture of cowboy on horse with another horse):
As our brain deciphers the information in the painting, bottom-up processing enables our sensory systems to detect
the lines, angles and colors that form the horses, rider and surroundings. Using top-down processing we consider
the paintings title, notice the expressions, and then direct our attentions to aspects of the painting that will give
those observations meaning (red arrows on slide)
Without top=down processing, we would have to interpret the world as if it were constantly new. It would be like having to relearn
how to add in math class every single day!
Each organism in the world has different sensory gifts based on their needs:
Frogs feed on flying insects; motionless insects = starving frog
Our ears are sensitive to sound frequencies that include a human voice or a baby crying
Thresholds
Psychophysics: the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological
experience of them.
Gustav Fechner (German scientist & philosopher) studied faint stimuli and called them our absolute threshold
Absolute threshold = the minimum stimulation necessary to detect a particular light, sound, pressure, taste or odor
50% of the time. (listening to pitches during a hearing test)
Sensitivity to high-pitched sounds declines with normal aging (mosquito ring tones---younger generations can hear
certain ring tones when older generations cannot)
Stimuli we detect less than 50% of the time = subliminal
Measuring absolute thresholds:
Vision: A single candle flame from 30 miles on a dark, clear night
Hearing: The tick of a watch from 20 feet in total quiet
Smell: 1 drop of perfume in a 6-room apartment
Taste: 1 teaspoon sugar in 2 gallons of water
Touch: The wing of a bee on your cheek, dropped from 1 cm
Signal detection theory: detecting a weak signal depends on the signals strength & psychological state
Ex: Peoples ability to catch a faint signal diminishes after about 30 minutes (depends on the task, time of day, if person exercises,
experiences)
Subliminal Stimulation
Below the threshold stimuli
An invisible word can briefly prime (the activiationoften unconsciouslyof certain associations, thus predisposing ones perception,
memory or response
IF we are exposed to stimuli of a specific subject, we are more likely to recognize information about that subject in the environment
Sometimes we feel what we do not know and cannot describe (smelling foul odors)
Much of our information processing occurs automatically, out of sight, off the radar screen of our conscious mind
If we did a brain scan, you would be able to detect brain activity with a faint, brief stimulus
Difference Threshold
Just noticeable difference (the minimum difference a person or animal can detect between any two stimuli half the time)
Increases with the size of the stimulus
**Webers law: Ernest Weberfor a difference to be perceptible, two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion (not a constant
amount)
The exact portion varies, depending on the stimulus
If a salesman wants to sell a 3 piece suit & a sweater to a customerwhich do you try to sell first?? The suit because if a person pays
$300 for a suit, they will not think much about a $75 sweater
Same rule applies to accessoriespeople will pay more for accessories after they have made an expensive purchase.
For the average person to perceive differences:
Light 8%, Weight 2%, Tone 3%

Sensory Adaptation
Our diminishing sensitivity to an unchanging stimulus (smell an odor when walking in to your neighbors home, but after a few
moments, you dont notice it any more)
After constant exposure to a stimulus, our nerve cells fire less frequently
We focus more on changes in our environment instead of repetitive behaviors
On TV = we pay more attention to cuts, zooms, pans and sudden noises than the same image over and over
Vision
Our eyes receive light energy and transduce (transform) it into neural messages that our brain then processes into what we consciously
see (phototransduction).
What strikes our eye is pulses of electromagnetic energy that our visual system perceives as color (we only see a small slice of the
electromagnetic spectrum
Electromagnetic spectrum ranges from short gamma rays to the narrow band we see as visible light, to the long waves of radio
transmission
Bees cannot see red, but can see ultraviolent light, where we can see red, yellow, etc. but not uv light
Three physical characteristics of light help determine our sensory experience of them:
Lights wavelength (the distance from one wave peak to the next) determines its hue (the color we experience, such as blue or green)
Wavelength determines the quality of the waves (for vision = color, for sound = pitch)
Intensity (the amount of energy in light wavesdetermine by the waves amplitude or height) influences brightness
Amplitude determines the intensity of the waves (for vision = brightness, for sound = loudness)
Saturation (purity of the color)the more pure the color, the more likely our eye will be to identify the color
The Eye
Light enters the eye through the cornea (which protects the eye and bends light to provide focus)
The light then passes through the pupil (a small adjustable opening surrounded by the irisa colored muscle that adjusts light intake
and controls the size of the pupil opening)
The iris dilates or constricts in response to light intensity and even to inner emotions
Red eye pictures?
Usually red eye occurs in pictures where the surrounding illumination is dim, so the cameras flash must be used to take an accurate
picture. The flash is so quick, that the iris doesnt have time to contract, making the pupil big enough to see right through to the red
retina! Cameras with so-called red eye reduction features provide a series of quick flashes that warn the eye that a picture is about to
be taken. The iris reacts to the light pulses and shrinks the pupil down so the retina is protected from the bright light.
Behind the pupil is a lens that focuses incoming light rays into an image on the retina (a multilayered tissue on the eyeballs sensitive
inner surfacecontains receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information)
The retina doesnt see a whole image. Its millions of receptors cells convert particles of light energy into neural impulses and forward
those to the brain. There the impulses are reassembled into a perceived, upright-seeming image
The retinas area of central focus = fovea
The lens focuses the rays by changing its curvature (shape) in a process called accommodation (to focus near or far objects on the
retina)
Nearsightedness occurs when the lens focuses objects in front of the retina
Farsightedness occurs when the lens focuses objects behind the retina
The Retina
The retinas reaction to light
1. Light entering eye riggers photochemical reaction in Rods & cones (buried receptors cells) at the back of the retina
2. The light energy trigger chemical changes that would spark neural signals, activating neighboring bipolar cells.
3. The bipolar cells would activate the neighboring ganglion cells (the axons which converge to form the optic nervelike the strands of
a rope). The optic nerve then carries information to your brain (where the thalamus will receive and distribute the information)
The optic nerve can send nearly 1 million messages at once through its nearly 1 million ganglion fibers
*Where the optic nerve leaves the eye there are no receptor cellscreating a blind spot
Cones
Cones cluster in and around the fovea
Cones have their own hotline to the brain which devotes a large area to input from the fovea; this direct connections preserve the cones
precise information, making them better able to detect fine detail
Cones enable you to see coloronly in bright light, in dim light you see no colors
Rods

No direct hotline; they share bipolar cells with other rods, sending combined messages
You can detect something in your peripheral vision well before perceiving its details
Enable black and white visionremain sensitive in dim light
Visual Information Processing
The retinas neural layers help to encode and analyze the sensory information
Any given retinal area relays its information to a corresponding location in the visual cortex in the occipital lobe at the back of your
brain, just above the cerebellum
Your retinal cells are so responsive that even pressure triggers them if you close your eye and rub it; your brain interprets this
pressure/firing as light
Feature Detection
Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel (1979) demonstrated that neurons in the occipital lobes visual cortex receive
information from individual ganglion cells in the retina. These feature detector cells derive their name from their ability to respond to
scene specific features (edges, lines, angles & movements)
Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional architecture in the cats visual cortexvisual on slide
Shape detectors in the visual cortex pass such information to other cortical areas where teams of supercell clusters respond to more
complex patterns
In the temporal lobe, it allows us to perceive faces
Other lobes = chairs, houses
Parallel Processing
Our brain engages in parallel processing (doing many things at once)
The brain divides a visual scene into subdimensions (color, movement, form and depth) and works on each aspect simultaneously
Mrs. M = A stroke damaged areas near the rear of both sides of her brain, she can no longer perceive movement
People suddenly appear in a room
Some people with a stroke or surgery damage to their brains visual cortex have experience blindsight:
A localized area of blindness in a part of their field of vision
Those with blindsight have superb vision, but they dont know they can see. Their vision remains intact; only the neural areas that bring
vision into awareness are impaired.
Most people have a separate visual system for perception and actiondual processing brain
Cant identify objects, but can tell the detail of the object (vertical/horizontal, colors)
Color Blindness
Objects reflect long wavelengths of color (i.e. tomato = red)
Our brain can discriminate 7 million different color variations
1 in 50 (usually males) have a color deficient (cant distinguish between different colors) because the defect is genetically sex-linked
Hermann von Helmholtz and Thomas Young developed the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory:
Any color can be created by combing the light waves of three primary colors (red, green ,blue) using three corresponding types of color
receptors
Our cones in our eyes do their color magic in teams of three; when we stimulate combinations of these cones, we see other colors
Most people who are color-deficient, are not actually colorblind; they lack functioning of the red or green sensitive cones (sometimes
both)
People who are colorblind se the color they are deficient in as a shade of muted gray or brown
They may be monochromatic (one-color) or dichromatic (two-color) instead of trichromatic, making it impossible to distinguish the red
& green 74 in the image on the slides
Dogs lack receptors for the wavelengths of red, giving them only limited, dichromatic color vision
Opponent-Process theory
Ewald Hering discovered the occurrence of afterimages (British flag example
As visual information leaves the receptor cells, we analyze it in terms of three sets of opponent colors: red-green, yellow-blue, and
white-black
Color processing occurs in two stages:
The retinas red, green and blue cones respond in varying degrees to different color stimuli (Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory)
Their signals are then processed by the nervous systems opponent process cells (en route to the visual cortex)
Hearing
Our audition (hearing) is highly adaptive

We hear best sounds with frequencies in a range corresponding of the human voice, sensitive to faint sounds (baby crying)
We are attuned to variations in sounds (we recognize our friends voice over all the others in a busy hallway)
Playing a violin (drawing the bow across it) results in stimulus energy = sound wavesjostling molecules of airour ears detect brief
air pressure changes
We hear by both air and bone conduction
Then our ears transform the vibrating air into nerve impulses, which our brain decodes as sound
**The strength (amplitude) of sound wave determines its loudness
Waves vary in length (frequency)
The frequency determines the pitch we experience (long waves = low frequency = low pitch) (short waves = high frequency = high
pitch)
**We measure sounds in decibels
Absolute threshold for hearing = 0 decibels
The Ear
How does the ear transform sounds waves/energy into neural messages our brain interprets?
The visible outer ear channels the sound waves through the auditory canal to the eardrum (a tight membrane that vibrates with the
waves)
The middle ear then transmits the ear drums vibrations through a piston made of three tiny bones (hammer, anvil and stirrup) to the
cochlea (a snail-shaped tube in the inner ear).
The incoming vibrations cause the cochleas membrane (the oval window) to vibrate, jostling the fluid that fills the tube.
This motion causes ripples in the basilar membrane, bending the hair cells lining its surface
A cochlea has 16,000 hair cells
5. Hair cell movement triggers impulse in the adjacent nerve cells, whose axons converge to form the auditory nerve, which sends neural
messages (via the thalamus) to the temporal lobes auditory cortex.
Damage to hair cells accounts for most hearing loss
If you are exposed to sounds louder than 85 decibels for a prolonged period of time; it can result in hearing loss (if you hear ringing in
your ears = hearings equivalent to bleeding)
Mens hearing tends to be less acute than womens because they are more likely to blast loud music for long periods of time
Perceiving Loudness
The brain can interpret loudness from the number of activated hair cells
For those with hearing loss, they differ in our sensation of soft sounds
Hard of hearing people usually do not want all sounds amplified---they can typically hear loud sounds, just not soft sounds
They like sounds compressedharder-to-hear sounds are amplified more than loud soundsa feature with newer hearing aids
Perceiving Pitch
Herman von Helmholtzs place theory = we hear different pitches because different sound waves trigger activity at different places
along the cochleas basilar membrane
The brain determines a sounds pitch by recognizing the specific place (on the membrane) that is generating the neural signal
Different frequencies of sound waves are said to vibrate different places on the cochlea. These places are wired to different parts of the
auditory cortex in the brain so the sound can be processed correctly
**Best explains how we sense high pitches
The frequency theory suggests that the brain reads pitch by monitoring the frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory
nerve.
The whole basilar membrane vibrates with the incoming sound wave, triggering neural impulses to the brain at the same rate as the
sound wave (if a the sound wave has 100 frequency waves per second; then 100 pulses per second travel up the auditory nerve)
The entire cochlea is believed to vibrate at a particular frequency, thus sending the signal of the quality of the sound to the brain
**Best explains how we sense low pitches
Locating Sounds
Two ears are better than one
If a car to the right honks , your right ear receives a more intense sound , and it receives sounds slightly sooner than your left ear
Sound travels 750 miles per hour
Hard to distinguish the intensity difference being sent between our ears (6 inches apart)
But if you were trying to distinguish a sound ahead, behind, above or below you, you would make some mistakes
Hearing Loss and Deaf Culture
Conduction hearing loss: Problems with the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea

If the eardrum is punctured or if the tiny bones of the middle ear lose their ability to vibrate, the ears ability to conduct vibrations
diminishes.
Sensorineural hearing loss: Damage to the cochleas hair cell receptors or their associated nerves can cause this (nerve deafness)
Can be linked to disease, biological changes with heredity, aging, prolonged exposure to ear-splitting noise or music
The only way to restore hearing for people with nerve deafness = bionic ear = cochlear implant (translates sounds into electrical signals
that wired to the cochleas nervesconvey some information about sound to the brain
60,000 people in the world have cochlear implants (2003); millions more are potential candidates
500 million people in the world live with hearing loss
Challenges to hearing loss:
Have reported feeling sadder, being less socially engaged, more often experiencing others irritation (if not wearing a hearing aid)
Academic difficulties in a spoken classroom
Some deaf community supporters argue that deafness is NOT a disability because native signers are not linguistically disabledsign
language is a complete language with grammar, syntax and meanings
Children raised in a signing household (whether by Deaf or hearing parents) express higher self-esteem and feel more accepted
People who lose one channel of sensation seem to adapt:
Blind musicians (Stevie Wonder) can develop perfect pitch
Blind people can more accurately locate sound sources
Touch
From birth, touch is essential to our development; animals and infants who are not stimulated by touch, develop poor self-esteem and are
usually unhappy
Our sense of touch or skin is a mix of distinct senses with different specialized nerve endings within the skin
Some are sensitive to pressure, warmth, cold, pain
Only pressure has identifiable receptors
Stimulating nearby cold and warms spots produces the sensation of hot
Two types of skin:
Hairy skin (contains hair cells, which detect movement and pressure)
Glabrous skin (contains no hair cells, so the receptors in this type of skin are more sensitive. Found on the palms of hands, lips)
Important sensors in your joints, tendons, bones and ears and skin sensors enable your kinesthesis (your sense of the position and
movement of your body parts)
Vision interacts with kinesthesis
People who lose their kinesthetic sense = proprioception lose the ability to move unless they can see themselves move. When they see
their bodies, their brains are able to process what needs to be done to move. In the dark, these people become limp and collapse to the
floor.
Our vestibular sense monitors your heads/bodys position and movement
Our inner ear and fluid within our semicircular canals & vestibular sacs moves when your head rotates or tilts
This movement stimulates hair-like receptors, which send messages to the cerebellum at the back of the brain, thus enabling you to sense
your body position and to maintain your balance
After you spin around & get dizzy, the dizzy aftereffect fools your brain to think you are still spinningneither your semicircular canals
nor your kinesthetic receptors will immediately return to their neutral state
Pain
Pain is your bodys way of telling you something is wrong
Some people are born (genetically) without the ability to feel pain can experience severe injury or die if not monitored
Pain is mainly governed by nerves known as free nerve endings, which are not directly connected to any specific nervous system
Pain seems to be regulated within its own system, working where needed to signal the body to a painful stimulus.
Pain experiences can vary widely (depending on our physiology, our experiences and attention and culture)
No one type of stimulus which triggers pain
There are different nociceptors--- sensory receptors that detect hurtful temperatures, pressures or chemicals
Psychologist Ronald Melzack and biologist Patrick Wall:
Gate-control theory-the spinal cord contains a neurological gate that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The
gate is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in large fibers or by information
coming from the brain.
Helps to explain why people arent always aware of pain. Pain signals can be controlled by the brain.
The brain can sometimes choose which pain to consider and which to ignore, blocking off pain signals in the spinal cord that it chooses
to ignore.
Rubbing the area around your stubbed toe will create competing stimulation that will block some pain signals
When we are distracted from pain & soothed by the release of endorphins our experience of pain may be greatly diminished
Psychological influences:
We edit our memories of pain (which often differ from the pain we actually experienced)
We record pain at the peak moment, register pain at the end

Socio-cultural influences:
We tend to perceive more pain when others also seem to be experiencing pain
Our experience of pain is much more than neural messages sent to the brain
Controlling Pain
Can be treated both physically and psychologically:
Drugs, surgery, acupuncture, electrical stimulation, massage, exercise, hypnosis, relaxation training and thought distraction (thinking
pleasant thoughts or counting backwards by 3s) diverting ones attention from pain can be helpful in alleviating its effects
Given a placebo can help to dampen the pain feeling (think you are receiving a pain medication)
Image explanation: For burn victims undergoing painful skin repair, an escape into virtual reality can powerfully distract attention, thus
reducing pain and the brains response to painful stimulation. The MRI scans illustrate a lowered pain response when the patient is
distracted.
TASTE
Tastes sensations = sweet, sour, salty, bitter, --added recently umami (meaty tasteflavor enhancer)
Survival functions:
Sweet indicates energy source, Salty indicates sodium essential to physiological processes, Sour indicates potentially toxic acid. Bitter
indicates potential poisons, Umami indicates proteins to grow and repair tissue
Taste is a chemical sense
200+ taste buds (little bumps on the top & sides of your tongue) each contain a pore that catches food chemicals
Into each taste bud pore = 50-100 taste receptor cells which project antennalike hairs that sense food molecules
Taste receptors reproduce every week or two (so when you burn your tongue on a hot pizza, it hardly matters
As you grow older, the number of taste buds & your sensitivity decreases
Sensory Interaction
The principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste
When you have a cold (stuffed up nose), food is not as enjoyable to eat, Smell + texture + taste = flavor
Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting are blended by our brain when inputting into our system
SMELL
We inhale/exhale 20,000 breaths of life-sustaining airthe results of experiencing smell = olfaction, Smell is a chemical sense
We smell something when molecules of a substance reach a tiny cluster of 5 million + olfactory receptor cells at the top of each nasal
cavity and respond selectively
They alert the brain through their axon fibers (olfactory neurons bypass the brains sensory switchboard (thalamus), Smell is processed
near the prefrontal cortex before it is sent along
We can identify & detect 10,000 odors molecules and identify patterns of past odor molecules to identify fresh fruit vs. rotten fruit
Smell is the most primitive sense and most difficult to describe & recall
Some animals have many times more olfactory receptor cells than humans do and use their sense of smell to communicate and navigate
We have a remarkable capacity to recognize long-forgotten odors and their associated memories (ex: smell of the sea)
PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION
A group of German psychologists noticed that when given a cluster of sensations, people tend to organize them into a gestalt (German
word for form or whole) EX: Necker cube (see different circles, a white cube, all meet together to form a cube shape)
Max Wertheimer (founder of Gestalt psychology) observed the phi phenomenon (where individual flashing lights could be made to
look like they were chasing each other by putting them in a time sequence. by looking at each light individually, you lost the whole
effect of the lights chasing each other. He felt that studying individual behaviors took away from appreciating the whole person)
We constantly filter sensory information and infer perceptions in ways that make sense to us.
Selective attention
Through selective attention, your conscious awareness focuses, like a flashlight beam, on only a very limited aspect of all u experience.
Our 5 senses take in 11,000,000 bits of information per second we consciously process 40 of them
People with ADHD seem to lack the ability to be selectively attentive. Instead of filtering out unimportant stimuli in order to focus on
important ones, they attend to all stimuli in the environment, making it difficult, if not impossible, to process information correctly
Ex: Cocktail party effect (you are able to attend (hear) one voice among many; if you hear someone say your name, you will instantly
bring their voice into your consciousness

Form Perception
Our first perceptual task is to perceive any object (the figure) as distinct from its surroundings (the ground)
The figure-ground relationship of an object continuously reverseswe always organize the stimulus into a figure seen against the
ground
Grouping:
The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups based on color, movement, light/dark contrastmore specifically:
Proximity: We group nearby figures together, Similarity: We group similar figures together, Continuity: We perceive smooth,
continuous patterns , Connectedness: Because patterns are uniform and linked, we perceive them as a single unit, Closure: WE fill in
gaps to create a complete, whole object
Some principles usually help us to construct reality, sometimes however lead us astray
Depth Perception: Seeing objects in three dimensions-enables us to estimate their distance from us
Eleanor Gibson & Richard Walk placed 6-14 month infant on the edge of a safe canyon (visual cliff). When the infant mothers tried to
coax them to cross over the glass towards them, most were reluctant because they came prepared to perceive depth
Even newborns and young animals can perceive depth and grows with age and experience (more they crawl, the more aware they are)
Binocular Cues
Depth cues (retinal disparity) to judge the distance of nearby objects using two eyes
When the brain compares two slightly different images from our eyes, the difference between them is retinal disparityprovides a
binocular cue for perceiving depth
The greater the difference between the two images, the closer the object
The creators of 3D movies simulate or exaggerate retinal disparity
The old-fashioned Viewmasterscover one eye and look through the view finderthen look with both
Monocular Cues
Depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone
Horizontal-vertical illusion: our perceiving vertical dimensions as longer than identical horizontal dimensions (St. Louis Gateway Arch
looks taller, but it is as wide as it is tall)
Light-and-shadow effect: Painting black on a steps edge (making it seem farther away) and bright silver on the flat surface
of the step below (making it seem closer)
Relative size: If 2 objects are similar in size, most people perceive the one that casts the smaller retinal image as farther
away
Interposition: If one object partially blocks our view of another, we perceive it as closer. The depth cues provided by
interposition make this an impossible scene.
Relative height: We perceive objects higher in our field of vision as farther away. Because we perceive the lower part of a
figure-ground illustration as closer, we perceive it as figure. Invert the illustration above and the black becomes ground,
like a night sky.
Relative motion: As we move, objects that are actually stable may appear to move. If while riding on a bus you fix your
gaze on some objectsay, a housethe objects beyond the fixation point appear to move with you; objects in front of the
fixation point appear to move backward. The farther those objects are from the fixation point, the faster they seem to move.
Linear Perspective: Parallel lines, such as railroad tracks, appear to converge with distance. The more they converge, the
greater their perceived distance.
Light and Shadow: Nearby objects reflect more light to our eyes. Thus, given two identical objects, the dimmer one seems
farther away. Shading, too, produces a sense of depth consistent with our assumptions that light comes from above. Invert
the illustration on the slide, and the hollow in the bottom row will become a hill.
Motion Perception
Phi phenomenon: When two adjacent stationary light blink on and off in quick successionwe perceive a single light moving back and
forth between them (moving arrow on a sign) **Our brain constructs our perception
Perceptual Constancy
The ability to recognize objects without being deceived by changes in their shape, size, brightness, or color even as illumination and
retinal images change
Top-down process which lets us identify people and things in less time than it takes to draw a breath
Sometimes an object whose actual shape cannot change seems to change with the angle of our view
Shape constancy: we perceive the form of familiar objects (door shape)
Size constancy: we perceive objects as having a constant size (a car is large enough to carry people even though it looks very small from
2 blocks away)
There is a close connection between perceived distance and perceived size
Perceiving an objects distance gives us cues to its size

Ponzo Illusion: The distant monster and the top red bar appear bigger because of distance cues. Experience tells us that a more distant
object can create the same-size image as a nearer 1 only if its actually larger; makes the object that is farther away look larger, when in
reality it isnt.
Moon illusion: The moon looks up to 50% larger when on the horizon compared to when it is high in the sky
Adelbert Ames room: Even though one girl looks taller than the other, the room is distorted (the girls are actually the same height)
Lightness Constancy
White paper reflects 90% of the light falling on it; black paper only 10%
Brightness constancy/lightness constancy: we perceive an object as having a constant lightness even while its illumination varies
Perceived lightness depends on relative luminance (see image on slide)the amount of light an object reflects is relative to its
surroundings
Color Constancy
Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object:
A red apple in a bowl by itself retains its redness; by keeping in mind the surrounding context, when seeing the apple with other fruits,
its color will remain roughly constant as the lighting and wavelengths shift
*Color depends on context in its surrounding objects
Importance of Perceptual constancy: our brain has the power to make sense out of nonsense!
Perceptual Interpretation
We are born with the ability to tell the difference between figure and ground and can sense colors (Immanuel Kant1724-1804)
Experience guides and sustains the brains development as it forms pathways that affect our perceptions (John Locke 1632-1704)
Eyes and mouth play a dominant role in face recognition.
Sensory deprivation
Kittens raised without exposure to horizontal lines later had difficulty perceiving horizontal bars.
Perceptual adaptation
Given a new pair of glasses or new contact lenses, we may feel a little strange, even dizzy. Within a day or two, we adjust
Perceptual adaptation: In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field
If you are given goggles which turns the world upside, you are able to adapt to the context and learned to coordinate your movements
Perceptual Set
Our experiences, assumptions, and expectations may give us a perceptual set/mental predisposition that greatly influences (top-down)
what we perceive.
Once we have formed a wrong idea about reality, we have more difficulty seeing the truth. Much of what we perceive comes from our
experiences and what we see/hear. Through experience, we form schemas: that organize and interpret unfamiliar information
We recognize people by facial features that cartoonists can caricature
Context Effects
Our brain can work backward in time to allow a later stimulus to determine how we perceive an earlier one
Context can radically impact our perception. In each case, the context of the rabbits guides our perception
Cultural Context
Culture influences perception. Most Westerners (North/South Americans) have no trouble interpreting the image of people sitting inside
of a dwelling. They dont confuse the window with a box on the womans head. However those from other cultures that do not share the
same perceptual sets perceive the scene differently (said woman was balancing a box on her head & the family was sitting under a tree)
**Perception is also influenced by our emotions and motivation
If a person is tired, walking a long trek will be overwhelming
**The river of perception is fed by sensation, cognition and emotion need multiple levels of analysis (Biopsychosocial approach)
Extrasensory Perception: The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance
(the ability to perceive things beyond an ordinary means of perception) and precognition
Parapsychology: the study of paranormal phenomena (ESP & psychkinesismovement of physical objects by the mind without the use
of physical meanslevitating a table, influencing the roll of dice)
96% of scientists are skeptical that such phenomena exist

Virtually never have psychics anticipated any of the years headlines, predicted the outcome of a jackpot, or make billions on the stock
market
Many have had stunning coincidencesbut not predictions, just chance
Correlation does not mean causation (just because events occur together, does not mean that they can cause each other)
Claims of paranormal phenomena (psi);
Astrological predictions, psychic healing, communication with the dead, out-of-body experiences
Most testable/relevant:
Telepathy (mind-to-mind communication), Clairvoyance (perceiving remote eventssensing that a friends house is on fire),
Precognition (perceiving future eventssporting events outcome)
**Confirmation bias: occurs when we only look for evidence that supports our beliefs and ignore evidence that refutes them. Many
people believe in parapsychology because they rely only on the evidence that supports their beliefs.
James Randis debunking psychics video from earlier in the semester encourages psychics to test their beliefs to see if they work