FACE OR VASE? |
CHAPTER 3&4SENSATION &PERCEPTION |
FACE OR VASE? |
CHAPTER 3&4SENSATION &PERCEPTION |
2. Compare and contrast sensation and perception.
3. Compare and contrast
the absolute threshold with the difference threshold.
Explain why the "absolute"
threshold is not really absolute.
4. Explain Weber's
Law and the "just-noticeable difference" concept
.
5. What is meant by
signal detection threshold? How might errors occur?
6. Give examples of
receiver operating characteristics and describe how they
would affect absolute
and difference thresholds.
7. Explain what is
meant by subliminal perception and summarize the evidence
pertaining to the
influence of subliminal messages on behavior.
8. Compare and contrast
and give examples of sensory adaptation and
habituation.
What is dark adaption?
pp.
94-110
9. Give the wavelengths
that define the visible spectrum.
10. Label a diagram
of the eye so as to locate the following structures and
describe the functions
served by these structures: cornea, sclera, choroid
coat, iris, pupil,
lens, retina, fovea, blind spot, optic nerve.
11. Locate the following
elements in a diagram of the retina: rods, cones,
fovea, bipolar cells,
ganglion cells, optic nerve fibers.
12. Explain why visual
acuity is greater for images on the fovea than
elsewhere on the retina
13. Explain how saccadic,
pursuit, and convergence eye movements help to
maintain the best
possible visual acuity across a broad part of the visual
field.
14. Explain why vision changes from color to black and white as night falls.
15. List the three
psychological dimensions of the color experience and link
each to a physical
characteristic of light.
16. Describe the Young-Helmholtz
theory of color perception. Explain the
"mixing" combos.
17. Locate the opponent
process cells in the nervous system. How does color
blindness fit?
pp111-125
18. Describe the causes
and effects of dichromacy and monochromacy. Describe
the times required
for light and dark adaptation of the rods and cones.
19. Draw a diagram
of the visual pathway, including the following parts:
nasal and temporal
retinas, optic nerves, optic chiasm, lateral geniculate
nucleus, visual cortex.
20. Explain what is
meant by a receptive field and give examples of the kinds
of sensory processing
accomplished by receptive fields.
21. Describe the functions served by the feature detectors.
22. Summarize the cause
and effects of treatments for dyslexia.
23. Describe the physical
characteristics of sound waves. Relate perceived
pitch, loudness and
timbre to a sound wave’s frequency, amplitude and
complexity.
24. Label a diagram
of an ear to show the following parts: pinna, auditory
canal, tympanic membrane,
hammer, anvil, stirrup, oval window, cochlea,
basilar membrane,
hair cells, tectorial membrane and auditory nerve. List
the action and function
of these parts.
25. Distinguish
between the place theory, frequency theory and volley
principle in how we
perceive pitch and loudness. Apply the concept of
threshold to hearing.
26. Distinguish between
the two types of deafness.
27. Describe the receptors
for taste in terms of locations, types, and
responsivity to different
tastes. List sensory systems other than taste that
influence how taste
is determined.
28. Summarize the data
which suggest that humans may make some use of
pheromone communication.
29. Locate the olfactory
cells and explain what is known about how they
extract smell information.
30. Compare and contrast the olfactory and trigeminal senses.
31. Define anosmia and discuss its relationship to age.
32. List the four skin
sensations and describe what is known about these four
sensations and the
types of receptors found in the skin.
33. Describe the research on the visual substitution system.
34. Explain the Gate Control Theory as it relates to pain sensation.
35. Describe the receptors
for and functions of the kinesthetic and
vestibular systems.
CHAPTER
FOUR OBJECTIVES
PERCEPTION
pp.
132-136
1.Distinguish between
stimulus variables and organismic
variables and give
an example of how each influences behavior.
2. Define perception.Explain
what is meant when it is said that perception is organized.
3. Give an example
of figure-ground perception and list six of the factors that determine
which stimuli will be seen as figure and which as ground.
4. Explain what is
meant by the Law of Pragnanz and describe how closure is an example
of it.
5. Explain what the
laws of similarity and proximity have in common.
6. Contrast monocular
and binocular depth cues. Explain how stereopsis
and convergence give
rise to the illusion of depth.
7. Draw pictures to
illustrate each of the following monocular depth cues: elevation, interposition,
linear perspective, aerial perspective, relative brightness and texture
gradient.
8. Give an example
of the cue of motion parallax.
9. Explain why binocular
cues are probably of little use at birth and
why they are apparently
more important than monocular cues to adults.
10. Describe how the
visual cliff is used to test depth perception and cite evidence that
human infants can perceive depth.
11. Explain how time
differences and intensity differences are useful in auditory localization.
pp.140-148
12. Compare and contrast
size, shape and lightness constancies.
13. Explain the size
distance invariance hypothesis and the difficulty that is created for this
explanation of size perception by the moon illusion.
14. Explain how all
forms of perceptual constancy can be explained through some form of "taking
into account" theory. Explain how we use the same theory to perceive
motion.
15. Give some
examples of apparent movement.
pp.
148-161
16. Define
pattern perception and give examples from several sensory modalities.
17. Cite evidence
that human infants are capable of pattern perception at birth.
18. Explain the difference
between template-matching theory, prototype-matching theory and feature
analysis theory.
19. Give examples
to distinguish between Gibson's, Biederman's and Fourier analysis.
20. Compare and contrast
top-down and bottom-up processing.
21. Give examples
of how each of the following organismic variables can influence pattern
perception: perceptual set, motivation, interest , memory,emotion.
22. Define selective
attention. Give an example of the cocktail party effect.
23. Explain how the
results of dichotic listening studies support Broadbent's filter theory.
24. Explain
by examples how organismic and stimulus variables may influence selective
attention.
25. Cite evidence
from dichotic listening studies that supports the conclusion that at least
some processing is given to "unattended" information.
26. List and give
examples of some of the factors that increase the occurrence of divided
attention.
27. Describe how an
advertiser might use all five of the following stimulus characteristics
to capture our attention: intensity, color, repetition, movement and size.
28. How might human
factors psychology fit into the idea of attention.
29. Describe Gibson's
theory of perceptual learning.
30. What are some
of the differences between good and poorer readers.
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Subliminal Perception?
in Advertising in Propaganda Music
Researching experiments that have been conducted and/or
Debating whether or
not people can respond to "messages" presented below
their sensory thresholds.
Is Subliminal Advertising Effective?
Demonstrations/Experiments:
Activities Handbook Volumes I-IV
1. Olfaction:
The Seven Basic Smells Volume 1, pp. 33-35.
2. The Pulfrich Pendulum Effect. Volume 1, pp. 40-42.
3. Sensory Interdependencies.(smell& temperature on taste) Vol. 3, pp. 74-75
4. Size-Weight Illusion:
A Pound is a Pound the World Around?
Vol 1, pp. 44-46
5. Color Blind: Interference on Attention (Stroop Effect) Vol 1, pp. 67-68
6. Classroom Measurement of Visual Illusions, Vol 3, pp. 63-69
7. The Role of Expectancies in the Perception of Language., Vol 2, pp. 57-59
8. Color Demonstrations for Intro Psych. Act Hand, Vol 2 pp. 57-59
9. Adaption to Displaced Vision. Act Hand, Vol 1, pp. 51-53
10. Emmert's Law--visual afterimage & size constancy, Vol 2, pp. 46-48
11. Upside Down and Left-Right Reversing Spectacles, Vol.3, pp. 60-62
Possible Demonstrations
tied to 7 senses:
a. Vision:
Ames Room Sensory Threshold Figure/Ground
Depth Perception
Escher
Stereograms
Muller-Lyer
Stroop Effect
Movement Detectors
b. Sound:
Localization Loudness/threshold
Frequency/threshold
Synesthesia Back Masking Dichotic
Listening Test/ Divided
Attention
c. Skin Senses/Taste
and Smell:
Pressure
Pain Temperature Texture Tactile Blocks
Interactive nature
of taste and smell Taste Preferences:Color
Pheromones
d. Vestibular:
Balance Sensitivity Weber's Law Signal Detection Theory
Hand-Eye Coordination
e. Kinesthetic: Body Perception
Books to read:
Diane Ackerman--A
Natural History of the Senses
Richard Cytowic--The
Man Who Tasted Shapes
Paul Ekman--Unmasking
the Face
Oliver Sacks--Seeing
Voices
Research Topics:
Anosmia
The Psychology of
Pain
The Organization of
Vision in the Cerebral Cortex
Noise in the Workplace
The Positive and Negative
Effects of Sensory Deprivation
Color Blindness
Seeing in 3D w/2D
Retina?
Illusions
Perception and Art
Learning to Read Emotion in the Human Face
Sound Localization
Pheromones--role in
animal/human behavior
Taste Preferences--Super
Tasters and Sexual Linkage
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AP
PSYCHOLOGY WARM-UP EXERCISE
Humans differ in the
quality of their sensory abilities. Whether by
variations in genetic
endowment or by deficits caused from environmental
damage, human sensory
abilities differ from person to person and they
also vary over time
for each individual.
The range of one's
sensory abilities might influence a person's choice
of careers.
In this exercise, you and a partner are to look at the
model introduced by
the trapeze artist and then try to determine a
justification and
a range of abilities for five other career profiles.
SENSORY PROFILE FOR
A TRAPEZE ARTIST
Vision------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------X
Hearing---------------------------------------X
Smell
X
Touch-------------------------------------------------------------------
------------X
Taste
X
Pain
X
Balance-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------X
Low ability
Average ability
High ability
Justification:Vision,
touch, and balance would need to be especially
acute to accomplish
his/her task. Hearing could be average because
trapeze artists rely
somewhat less on hearing, but it is still
important. To
perform their jobs, they really do not rely at all on
taste or smell.
A Reduced capacity to transmit pain would probably
enable longer hours
of practice and performance without distraction,
although the diminished
ability could pose some danger from the artist's
not recognizing or
attending to serious injury.
Complete the
same chart and justification for the following professions:
sanitation engineer
(garbage collector)
dessert chef
college professor
manual laborer
baseball player
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Animals sometimes exhibit
highly stereotyped behavior patterns when they
encounter biologically-meaningful
stimuli. For example, the round shape
of a female stickleback
fish--which indicates an abdomen filled with
eggs--causes a male
stickleback to perform an elaborate series of
zig-zag courtship
movements
as he attempts to lure her to his nest.
Stimuli can be auditory
as well as visual: When a mother mallard duck
sights a potential
predator near the nest, she utters an alarm call.
Upon hearing it, her
ducklings immediately cease all vocal and locomotor
activity and crouch
downward. Animal behaviorists call highly
stereotyped behavior
patterns like these fixed action patterns (FAPs).
Just as dozens of
visual and auditory stimuli elicit FAPs, there are
hundreds of known
examples of odorous compounds--all produced by
insects--that bring
about social interactions between conspecifics
(members of the same
species).
Beginning in the early
1900s, insect researchers have identified more
than 250 different
sexual pheromones--some that lure males toward
females and others
that render the females receptive to copulation. Most
female sex attractants
are carried downwind in aerial odor trails as
much as two miles
long; male insects usually receive the chemical
messages on their
antennae and respond with specific fixed action
patterns: Male braconid
wasps, for example, run about excitedly flapping
their wings, while
male sugar-beet wireworms buzz around and repeatedly
extrude their genitalia.
Researchers have clearly linked pheromones and
the fixed action patterns
of insects. But what about mammals, with their
more complex behavior?
Benjamin D. Sachs,
a neuroscientist at the University of Connecticut,
has just discovered
the first instance of an odor eliciting a fixed
action pattern in
a mammal. Specifically, he studied the sexual
pheromone of the female
rat and the FAP it elicits in the male: penile
erection.
"Pheromone" comes from
the Greek root words meaning "to transfer
excitement," and it
is an apt term for chemicals that communicate
information and cause
specific reactions within members of the same
species. Although
researchers have known for some time that pheromones
affect behavioral
and physiological aspects of mating in rats (not to
mention other mammal
species), Sachs was the first to show through
behavioral research
that a volatile (airborne) pheromone from a mammal
elicits an FAP. This
is particularly exciting to scientists who study
animal communication
and instinctive behavior because it is difficult to
identify highly specific
behavioral stimuli in animals with complex
behavior.
Sachs made his discovery
while performing a series of elegant
experiments. In the
first set of trials, he would place a sexually-naive
male rat in a special
airflow chamber with an estrous female on the
opposite side of a
partition and located either upwind or downwind from
the male. Eleven of
20 males placed downwind of females exhibited penile
erections, while only
1 of 20 males situated upwind of females did so.
Sachs got the same
results when he tested males with copulatory
experience, and when
he switched the barriers from clear to opaque.
Sachs concluded that
female pheromones are necessary to evoke male
erections and that
visual and auditory stimuli are not, by themselves,
sufficient to trigger
this FAP.
In a second experiment,
Sachs addressed the question of whether estrous
female pheromones
are sufficient to evoke penile erections as well as
necessary. He placed
males downwind of some females in estrus and some
not in estrus. He
anesthetized the females to prevent them from giving
off auditory cues,
and surrounded them with an opaque barrier to prevent
visual cues. In these
tests, 6 of 10 males had erections when the female
was in estrus, while
only 1 of 10 males did so when the female was not
in estrus. Sachs concluded
that since the estrous females could provide
neither visual nor
auditory cues, their pheromones must be sufficient to
elicit the fixed action
pattern of male erection.
Like most mammals,
humans emit pheromones, and these chemical signals
have been implicated
in a variety of behaviors ranging from
mother-infant recognition
to synchronization of menstrual cycles among
women living together
in dormitories. It is tempting to assume that
pheromones play a
role in human sexual attraction. But do they?
According to Sachs,
there is no clear evidence for it. "The perfume
industry has worked
hard for many years to enhance attractiveness with
scents by adding to
and/or masking our odors," Sachs states.
Manufacturers often
take extracts from glands of musk deer, civet cats,
and other nonhuman
organisms and--as an added twist--use components from
male rather than female
mammals to make the perfumes women wear to
attract men!
There has been considerable
speculation about how pheromones might
influence human sexual
behavior. "I think that personal attraction,
including sexual attraction,
is partly an aesthetic judgment," says
Sachs, and one aspect
of that may be "an unconscious response to
pheromones." The discovery
that male erections can require nothing more
than the sex pheromones
of estrous female rats suggests that we have a
lot to learn about
the role of chemical communication in mammals. Before
drawing any conclusions,
one must keep in mind that rats are a nocturnal
species for whom vision
is much less, and olfaction much more, important
than in humans. Nevertheless,
the study of human pheromones may someday
enable us to answer,
at least in part, the age-old question, "Why do I
love her like I do?"
Resources
1.Sachs B.D. Erection
Evoked in Male Rats by Airborne Scent from Estrous
Females. Physiology
& Behavior 62: 921-924 (1997). The original paper.
2.Sachs B.D. Airborne
Odor from Estrous Rats: Implication for Pheromonal
Classification. In
Advances in Chemical Signals in Vertebrates, R.E.
Johnston (Ed.). New
York: Plenum Press (1998).
3.Sachs B.D., Akasofu
K., Citron J.H., Daniels S.B., Natoli J.H.
Noncontact Stimulation
from Estrous Females Evokes Penile Erection in
Rats. Physiology &
Behavior 55: 1073-1079 (1994).
4."Chemical Senses."
Journals Home Page. Oxford University Press. 1997.
This site links the
user to tables of contents and abstracts from recent
issues of the scientific
journal, Chemical Senses. The site is
searchable. (13 Nov.
1997)
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PERCEPTION
IS THE EXTRACTION AND INTERPRETATION OF STIMULI FROM THE ENVIRONMENT.
IT CAN BE DISTINGUISHED
FROM SENSATION IN THAT SENSATION IS THE MERE RESPONSE OF THE RECEPTORS
TO STIMULATION BUT UNTIL THE BRAIN MAKES SENSE OF THIS INFORMATION, NO
COGNITION OR RECOGNITION CAN TAKE PLACE. WE MUST ATTEND TO AND ORGANIZE
SELECTIVELY THE DATA THAT IS PROVIDED BY
THE SENSORY SYSTEMS.
THE GESTALT PSYCHOLOGISTS IN THE LATE 1800's WERE AMONG THE FIRST PSYCHOLOGISTS TO INTEREST THEMSELVES IN THIS PHENOMENON. GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY, THEY REASONED, THE BRAIN WOULD REDUCE THIS SENSATION TO ITS SIMPLEST AND MOST EFFICIENT FORM: THE LAW OF PRAGNANZ OR HOCHBERG PRINCIPLE
IN A FIGURE-GROUND PICTURE, WE ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE ATTRACTED TO THE CENTRAL THEME AND IGNORE THE BACKGROUND--THE FIGURE EMERGES FIRST. IN BLACK AND WHITE DRAWINGS, THESE MAY REVERSE THEMSELVES.
OTHER GESTALT PRINCIPLES INCLUDE: CLOSURE, SIMILARITY, PROXIMITY AND COMMON FATE.
WHEN WE SEE SOME CLUES TO A FIGURE, OUR MINDS-EYE HAS A TENDENCY TO ENCLOSE THESE ELEMENTS, THUS CONTOURS EVOKE A TRIANGLE, PARTS OF A CIRCLE GET ENCLOSED AND SEEN AS A CIRCLE, ETC.
WHEN THINGS ARE SIMILAR,
WE TEND TO GROUP THESE TOGETHER.
OBJECTS THAT ARE NEARER
TO ONE ANOTHER,WE ALSO GROUP TOGETHER.
ITEMS WHICH SEEM TO
SHARE A COMMON FATE--WHICH COULD BE BROKEN INTO TWO SHAPES--ARE SEEN AS
ONE CONTINUOUS PATTERN.
#2 Hubel &
Weisel
Nobel Prize winners for mapping the visual pathway
Note how the orientation and brightness of a line can effect
whether it is detected.
#3 Perception:
Inversion Glasses
Young artist goes
a week with upside down glasses and learns to accomodate
original accomodation
takes several days
when she removes glasses
it takes about an hour to readjust
#4 Illusions
are effected by prior experience
mental set in series one--animals in series two people
effect how you perceive a stimulus
#5 Pavel's research
on visual information processing
cat's face struck by light and transmitted to retina
broken down, measure brightness-amount of color seen related to
boundaries/edge/line detectors
red/green/blue edge detector
how constancy/simplicity, rigidity, ambiguous motion effect a square
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