Why do psychologists study sensation and perception?

• sensation and perception change our mental process

The Five Senses:

• touch

• taste

• hearing

• smell

• sight

Sensation: the activation of the sense organs by a source of physical energy; EX: sensing a bright light, sound, or pinch

Perception: the sorting out, interpretation, analysis, and integration of stimulus involving the sense organs and brain (brain kicks in); EX: feeling the heat of a hot pepper

Stimulus: energy that produces a response; EX: bright light causes you to squint

Absolute threshold: the minimum stimulation level an organism needs to sense a stimulus

Sensory adaptation: a phenomenon in which the body adjusts to external stimuli over time, becoming less sensitive or responsive to that particular stimulus

Extra Sensory Perception (ESP): belief that some people have knowledge of information that is not gained through the senses

• Telepathy - mental transfer of information from one person to another

• Clairvoyance - medium (communicate with the dead) or finding lost people

• Pre-Cognition - predicting future events

• Intuition and Deja-vu - gut feeling/feeling that something has happened

The Visual Spectrum

Vision

Parts of the Eye:

Iris: the colored part of the eye that surrounds the pupil, it regulates the amount of light that enters the eye

Cornea: the clear tissue in front of your eye, helps to protect your eye and filters out some UV light

Pupil: the opening at the center of the iris through which light passes, The size of the pupil adjusts to control the amount of light that enters the eye

Lens: a clear disk behind the iris, that bends light and focuses it for the retina to help see images clearly

Optic Nerve: connects the eye directly to the brain

Blind Spot: the spot in the retina where the optic nerve connects, there are no light-sensitive cells, so this part of the retina cannot see

Peripheral Vision: how well can you see what you’re not staring at

Important for:

• Balance

• Safety (driving)

• Sports

fear causes the narrowing of blind spot

• tunnel vision

Rods: microscopic structures in the eye that help you see in the dark

Cones: microscopic structures in the eye that help you see color

• lack of cones = varying degrees of colorblindness

Light Adaptation: eyes adapting to bright light

Dark Adaptation: eyes adapting to a dark environment

• eyes adapt quicker to bright light than to dark

Color Blindness: when you have fewer or no cones

• the average person can see 7 million colors

• 1/50 men are colorblind

• 1/5000 women are colorblind

  • women can see more colors than men even if not colorblind

Afterimage: an image that you seem to see when you are no longer looking at an image

Hearing

• women prefer deeper voices

• men prefer higher-pitched voices

• women can match voice to face with 60% accuracy

  • can predict age, height, weight, and social class

• men can match voice to face with 20% accuracy

Smell

Pheromone: Naturally occurring chemicals in the body that are secreted into the environment. These secretions produce a reaction in other members of the same species

Flashbulb Memory: a memory is triggered when one of the senses is stimulated. That memory is so memorable because it was surprising, unexpected, and/or unusual (songs, scent)

How it impacts behavior:

• choosing where you go to eat

• choosing whether or not to stay in a room

Women have a better sense of smell:

• mothers can identify babies by their scent

• women who live together sync menstrual cycles

It impacts attraction

• women prefer the smell of men with different immune systems

  • Children would receive genetic coding of both parents and would therefore have a stronger immune system