Presented by

Mary Shiny James, I MSW,

PG Dept, Social Work
Cognitive Psychology
1. Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology
2. Studies mental processes including
 Think
 Perceive
 Remember
 Learn
 How people acquire, process and store information
Sensation
 The impressions received through the sense organs are
called sensations – Mathur

 A sensation is an elementary cognitive experience – Dr.

Jalota.
 A stimulus can be measures in a variety of ways
including its size, duration, intensity or wavelength. A
sensation occurs anytime a stimulus activates one of
your receptors.
 Receptor is an organ or cell able to respond to light,
heat, or other external stimulus and transmit a signal
to a sensory nerve.
 Sensation occurs when special receptors 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 systems
 Transduction_ Communication between the brain &
the rest of the body occurs via neuron
 Information goes from the senses to the thalamus,
then to the various areas in the brain.
 All senses involve something called receptor cells.
Their job is to transducer (transform or even
“translate”) physical stimulation/physical energy from
the environment into electrochemical messages that
can be understood by the brain.
All vision and
hearing & other
senses happen in
the Brain.
The physical
energy in the
environment is
detected by the
eyes, ears etc, but
we cant see, hear,
etc. Until the
brain interprets
them- ie make
sense of them. So
in a way we see,
hear, smell, etc.
In our brains!
Threshold: Absolute threshold
 The Absolute threshold is the level of stimulus that
produces a positive response of detection 50% of the
time
 The absolute thresholds for the 5 senses in humans are
the following:
1. Vision
2. Hearing
3. Taste
4. Smell
5. Touch
Sensory Adaption - examples
 Your eyes eventually adjust to a darkened movie
theatre. At first you see blackness, but eventually you
can see what is going on around you.
 When you first jump into a pool that “feels cold” your
body reacts to the stimulus. Eventually your body
adapts to the sensation and you become “comfortable”.
 When you first walk into a sports locker room, the
smell is almost nauseating. After a while, your senses
adjust and you can hardly tell.
Visual Sensation
 Vision is the most studied as it is most dominating
senses.
 There are many parts of an eye but the basic ones are
the cornea, iris, retina, optic nerve and pupil.
 Our eye is stimulated by various wavelengths of light.
The different wavelengths are responsible for the
diversity of colours we see. There are many other types
of waves that our eye cannot detect.
 Light is electromagnetic radiation that travels in the
form of waves. Light is emitted from the sun, stars, fire
and light bulbs. Most other objects just reflect light.
How does vision occur?
 Light waves enter the eye through the cornea, a the front of
the eye. Behind the cornea is the pupil, the opening in the
iris that regulates the amount of light entering the eye.
 Light then reaches the lens that changes its shape to focus
light on the retina.
 Light then hits the retina: the innermost coating of the
back of the eye, containing the light-sensitive receptor
cells.
 This light energy is then turned into “neuronal impulses,”
which are sent down the optic nerve: The nerve that carries
impulses from the retina to the brain.
Sensory Receptor cells
 Rods: enables us to see black and white are more
sensitive to light and there are 100 million in each eye.
 Cones: enables us to see colour they work best in
bright light there are 6.5 million in each eye and they
are located mostly at the centre of the eye.

There is a place called in which the optic nerve leaves the

eye called blind spot. “Blind Spot” means there are no
rods & cones on this area (there are neurons instead)
images that fall on this area of the retina are not
“seen”!
Common Visual Defects
 Hyperopia/farsight edness
 Presbyopia
 Myopia/nearightedness
 Astigmatism
 Tunnel vision
 Diplopia
 Scotoma
 Color blindness: totally color blind, partially color
blind
Auditory/Hearing Sensation

 Hearing depends on vibrations in the air called

sound waves
 Sound waves from the air pass through various
bones until they reach the inner ear, which
contains timy hair like cells that move back and
forth.
 These hair cells change sound vibrations into
neuronal signals that travel through the auditory
nerve to the brain.
Three parts: external or outer ear-
Function:
 Gathering sound energy and amplification of sound
pressure. – pinna, external meatus, eardum/tympanic
membrane
 Middle ear Function: transmission of acoustic energy
from air to the cochlea
 Inner ear function: transformation of mechanical
waves (sound) into electric signals (neural signals).
Vestibular portion, cochlea, basilar membrane.
Transduction in the EAR
 Sound wave hit the eardum then avil then hammer
then stirrup then oval window.
 Everything is just vibrating.
 Then the cochlea vibrates.
 The cochlea is lined with mucus called basilar
membrane.
 In basilar membrane there are hair cells.
 When hair cells vibrate they turn vibrations into
neural impulses which are called organ of Corti.
 Sent then to thalamus up auditory nerve.
Auditory Defects = Deafness
 Conduction Deafness: occurs when anything hinders
physical motion through the outer or middle ear or
when the bones of the middle ear become rigid and
cannot carry sounds inward.

 Sensorineural Deafness: occurs from damage to the

cochlea, the hair cells or the auditory neurons.
Smell depends on sensory
receptors that respond to airbone
chemicals.

In humans these chemoreceptors

are located in the olfactory
epithelium.
Disorders of olfaction:
 Anosmia- inability of smell
 Cacosmia- things smell like feces
 Dysosmia- things smell different than they should
 Hyperosmia- an abnormally acute sense of smell.
 Hyposmia- decreased ability to smell
 Olfactory Reference Syndrome- psychological disorder
which cause the patient to imagine he or she has
strong body odor.
 Parosmia – things smell worse than they should
 Phantosmia – “hallucinated smell”, often unpleasant in
nature.
Gustatory/Taste Sensation
 The sensation of taste – we have bumps on our tongue
called papillae. Taste buds are located on the papillae
(they are actually all over the mouth). Your tongue and
the roof of your mouth are covered with thousands of
tiny taste buds. When you eat something, the saliva in
your mouth helps break down your food. This causes
the receptor cells located in your tastes buds to send
messages through sensory nerves to your brain. Your
brain then tells you what flavours you are tasting.
Sense of touch/Cutaneous or skin
sensation
 Our sense of touch is controlled by a huge network of
nerve endings and touch receptors in the skin known
as the somatosensory system. This system is
responsible for all the sensations we feel
 3 layers:
 Epidermis – outer layer
 Dermis- intermediate layer
 Deep layer of subcutaneous adipose tissue.
PAIN
 Pain receptors are probably the most important for
your safety because they can protect you by warning
your brain that your body is hurt!. Pain motivates us to
tend to injuries, to restrict activity, and to seek medical
help. Pain teaches us to avoid pain-producing
circumstances in the future.
 Chronic pain- pain that persists for three months or
more three common types, low-back, headache and
arthritis.
Sensation: Perception:
 your window to the world  Interpreting what comes
in your window.
 the passive process of
bringing information  the active process of
from the outside world selecting, organizing,
into the body and to the and interpreting the
brain. information brought to
the brain by the senses.
Perception
Definition
 Perception is the process of getting to know objects and
objectives facts by use of senses- Woodworth.

 All knowledge of the world is ultimately obtained

thorough sensory experiences

 First response to a stimulus is sensation and

perception is the next response following to sensation
Nature of Perception:
 It is meaningful
 It is selective.
 Based on Sensation
 Preventive and representative process of mind
 Needs observation/ experience.
 Makes use of images.
 Both analytic and synthetic
 In perception sensory data gets enriched.
 Mental set: Mental set has a by no means
insignificant effect upon the organization of the
sensation. One of the causes of mental set is habit. For
example, a philosopher looks at the truths of the
universe, while a trader is always involved in worthy
things.

 Reinforcing factors: These include good figure. The

supplementing of the incomplete is a mental
tendency, which diverts our attention from gaps and
presents a whole. The idea of good figure is explained
by the picture, in the description of closure
 Perceptual Errors: It is quite possible that the same object
may be perceived differently by different people or by the
same person on different occasions. There are two errors of
perception namely illusion and hallucination.

 Illusion:
A wrong perception is called illusion. A state in which
errors of perception are immediately confirmed by
experience is called an illusion. In illusion we take a wrong
meaning of the stimulus present before us. It is related with
the stimulus. For example at dim light the rope that we find
on way is taken for a snake, error may occur due to
inadequate stimulation, poorly functioning sense organs or
incorrect interpretation of sensations.
Common types of illusions:
 Illusion regarding distance, size, shape of things,
regarding colour, movement and speed.

 Causes for illusion:

 Irregular or unusual conditions in the external world
 Defects in sensory organs
 Anticipation expectation and suggestions
 Interest and habits
 Previous experience and present selfishness
 Present aptitudes.
Hallucination:
 Hallucination is a false perception. Here a person
experiences of the stimulus even in the absence of it. It
is a mental state in which a person begins to perceive
something in spite of the absence of any external
stimulus. For example, at night a person may see a
ghost when practically there is no stimulus either in
the form of a human figure or anything resembling it.
This is a case of hallucination. There is no stimulus in
hallucination and memory image is taken for
perception.
Visual hallucination:
 A hallucination which occurs in the sphere of vision is
called a visual hallucination, and it means seeing an
object which is not in front of eyes at all.

Auditory Hallucination:
 The hallucination which occurs in the sphere of
hearing is called auditory hallucination. For example
while sitting in solitude or loneliness, we may
suddenly feel, that someone is calling us, through in
reality no one has called us.
Causes for Hallucination:
 More but vague and irrelevant
continuous thinking.
 Excessive imagination or day-
dreaming.
 The will and desire in the unconscious
mind.
 Hysteria/ madness, schizophrenia and
other related mental diseases.
Using this there is lot of
psychological quiz which test your
personality, almost you have
experienced in playing it in famous
applications like facebook,
pinterest etc. Here in this chapter I
include a gestalt psychology to
know few of them.
Gestalt Psychology
Objective:
 Explain the figure-ground relationship
 Define Gestalt principles of grouping
 Describe how perceptual set is influenced by an
individual’s characteristics and mental state
 One Gestalt principle is the figure-ground
relationship. According to this principle, we tend to
segment our visual world into figure and ground.
Figure is the object or person that is the focus of the
visual field, while the ground is the background
 How we read something provides another illustration
of the proximity concept. For example, we read this
sentence like this, notl iket hiso rt hat. We group the
letters of a given word together because there are no
spaces between the letters, and we perceive words
because there are spaces between each word.

 We might also use the principle of similarity to group

things in our visual fields. According to this principle,
things that are alike tend to be grouped together For
example, when watching a football game, we tend to
group individuals based on the colors of their
uniforms.
 Two additional Gestalt principles are the law
of continuity (or good continuation) and closure.
 According to Gestalt theorists, pattern perception, or
our ability to discriminate among different figures and
shapes, occurs by following the principles described
above. You probably feel fairly certain that your
perception accurately matches the real world, but this
is not always the case. Our perceptions are based
on perceptual hypotheses: educated guesses that we
make while interpreting sensory information. These
hypotheses are informed by a number of factors,
including our personalities, experiences, and
expectations
 Gestalt theorists have been incredibly
influential in the areas of sensation and
perception. Gestalt principles such as
figure-ground relationship, grouping by
proximity or similarity, the law of good
continuation, and closure are all used to
help explain how we organize sensory
information. Our perceptions are not
infallible, and they can be influenced by
bias, prejudice, and other factors.
Conclusion:
 Although intimately related, sensation and perception
play two complimentary but different roles in how we
interpret our world. Sensation refers to the process of
sensing our environment through touch, taste, sight,
sound, and smell. This information is sent to our
brains in raw form where perception comes into
play. Perception is the way we interpret these
sensations and therefore make sense of everything
around us – Mary Shiny James.