Sensation and

Perception
By
Phramaha Phuen Kittisobhano, Ph.D.
Sensation
Sensation(Phassa)
Sensation the process that occurs when special
receptors (sensory neuron) in the sense organs(the eyes,
ears, nose, skin, and taste buds) are activated, allowing
various forms of outside stimuli to become neural
signals in the brain. This process of converting outside
stimuli, such as light, into neural activity is called
transduction.
Sensory threshold
• Difference threshold(just noticeable differences)
The smallest difference between two stimuli that is
detectable 50 percent of the time.
• Absolute threshold
The lowest level of stimulation that a person can
consciously detect 50 percent of the time the
stimulation is present.
Habituation and Adaptation
• Habituation is tendency of the brain to
stop attending to constant, unchanging
information.
• Sensory adaptation is tendency of
sensory receptor cells to become less
responsive to a stimulus that is unchanging.
Visual Sensation
Albert Einstein who first proposed that light is actually tiny
packets of waves. These wave packets are called photons and
have specific wave lengths associated with them.
Aspects to our perception of light: brightness, color, and
saturation.
Brightness is determined by the amplitude of the wave(high or
low)
Color, or hue, is largely determined by the length of the wave
Saturation refers to the purity of the color people perceive.
Visible spectrum
Visible spectrum
Visible spectrum
Structure of the Eyes
• Visual accommodation is the change in the thickness of the lens
as the eye focuses on objects that are far away or close.
Presbyopia is disorder when people lose this ability through aging.
• Rod is visual sensory receptors found at the back of the retina,
responsible for noncolor sensitivity to low levels of light.
• Cone is visual sensory receptors found at the back of the retina,
responsible for color vision and sharpness of vision.
• Dark/Light adaptation is the recovery of the eye s sensitivity to
visual stimuli in darkness after exposure to bright lights or in
contrast.
How the Eyes works
Perception of color
• Trichromatic theory (Hermann von Helmholtz,)
proposed that we have three kinds of cones (Red
cones, Green cones, and Blue cones)
Perception of color
• Opponent-process theory (Ewald Haring) believed that there
are four primary colors: red, green, blue, and yellow. The
colors are arranged in pairs, red with green, blue with yellow,
and white and black. If one member of a pair is strongly
stimulated, the other member is inhibited and cannot be
working so there are no reddish-greens or bluish-yellows.
Color blindness/color-deficient vision
• Monochrome color blindness. people either have no
cones or have cones that are not working at all.
• Dichromatic vision
•Protanopia is due to the lack of functioning red
cones.
•Deuteranopia is due to the lack of functioning green
cones.
•Tritanopia is result of the lack of functioning blue
cones.
Auditory Sensation
Properties of sound waves
• Wavelength or amplitude
•Pitch or frequency of sound(low, medium,
high)
•Volume(soft or loud)
• Purity or Timbre- richness in tone of sound
Wavelength or amplitude
Sound wave and Decibles
Units of measure the sound
• A decibel is a unit of measure for loudness.
• Hertz(Hz) is unit of measure for circle of sound
frequency per second
• Human can sense wave frequency between 20
-20,000Hz
Structure of the Ears
• The outer ear
•Pinna
•Auditory canal
• The middle ear
• hammer (malleus),
•Anvil (incus), and
•Stirrup (stapes)
• The inner ear
•Cochlea
•
Structure of the Ears
Gustatory
Sensation
Structure of tongue
The five basic tastes
• Bitter
• Sour
• Salty
• Sweet
• Umami
Olfactory Sensation
Olfactory Sensation
Bodily Sensation
Perception of touch, pressure, and
Temperature
Kinesthetic sense
Special receptors located in the muscles, tendons, and joints are part of
the body's sense of movement and position in space the movement
and location of the arms, legs, and so forth in relation to one another.
This sense is called kinesthesia, from the Greek words kinein( "to move" )
and aesthesis( "sensation" ). When you close your eyes and raise your
hand above your head, you know where your hand is because these
special receptors, called proprioceptors, tell you about joint movement
or the muscles stretching or contracting.
If you have ever gotten sick from traveling in a moving vehicle, you
might be tempted to blame these proprioceptors. Actually, it s not the
proprioceptors in the body that make people get sick. The culprits are
special structures in the ear that tell us about the position of the body
in relation to the ground and movement of the head that make up the
vestibular sense the sense of balance.
Sensory Deprivation: Indriyasaṃvara
Floating tank
Perception
THEMATIC
APPERCEPTION
TEST
Constancy of perception
• Consistency of Shape
Constancy of perception
• Consistency of Size
Constancy of perception
• Consistency of brightness
Gestalt principle
Depth perception
The capability to see the world in three dimensions is called depth
perception. It's a handy ability because without it you would have a hard
time judging how far away objects are. Humans develop depth
perception very early in infancy. People who have had sight restored have
almost no ability to perceive depth if they were blind from birth. Depth
perception, like the constancies, seems to be present in infants at a very
young age.
Various cues exist for perceiving depth in the world. Some require the use
of only one eye (monocular cues), and some are a result of the slightly
different visual patterns that exist when the visual fields of both eyes are
used (binocular cues).
Binocular cues
• Convergence: the rotation of the two eyes in
their sockets to focus on a single object, resulting
in greater convergence for closer objects and
lesser convergence if objects are distant
• Binocular disparity: the difference in images
between the two eyes, which is greater for
objects that are close and smaller for distant
objects.
Monocular cues
• Linear perspective:
• Relative size
• Overlap
• Aerial (atmospheric) perspective
• Texture gradient
• Motion parallax
• Accommodation or muscular cue
Perceptual illusion
Hermann’s
grid
Muler-illusion
Other factors that influence to perception
• Perceptual sets and Expectancies
Mindfulness, Sensation
and Perception
6 Object(Ārammaṇa) 6 Sensation (Viññāna)
-Visual objects -Visual(Cakkhu) Perception
-Auditory objects -Auditory (Sota) Perception
-Olfactory objects -Olfactory (Ghana)
-Gustatory objects Perception
-Kinesthetic objects -Gustatory(jiwha) Perception
-Mental objects -Kinesthetic(Kay) Perception
-Mind(Mano)
Sensory
objects Mindfulnes
Sensation
Transductio s
Perception Memory Retrieval
n
Sensory 6 Sensations Working memory
organs (Phassa) Short-term
-Visual sensation memory
6 Senses(Āyatana)
-Auditory sensation Feeling Long-term
-Olfactory sensation memory
-Visual Receptor Feeling(Vedanā)
-Gustatory
-Auditory Receptor -Pleasure(Sukha)
sensation
-Olfactory Receptor -Unpleasure(Dukkha)
-Kinesthetic
-Gustatory Receptor -Equanimity(Upekkh
sensation
-Kinesthetic a)
-Mind
Receptor
-Mind
แสงมากระทบตา(attention(mindfulness)+stimuli+sensory organ)
->transduction(Phassa) ->perception-> sensory
memory(+feeling)->short-term memory(+feeling)-> Long-term
memory(+feeling)-retrieve memory