SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

To survive, PP must be able

to perform 3 interrelated

activities:

-Sensing events (stimuli),

-Processing stimuli and

-Responding to stimuli

-> Sensation & Perception

READ THE STORY

You have been planning to invite some close friends for

dinner at your family and you are the very cook to

prepare the dinner. To be sure that everything tastes as

good as its smells, you sample the offerings frequently.

However, the more you sample, the less satisfied you

are. The spicy sauce tastes bland, and the potato dish

does not seem to have any flavor. Some additional

spices will cure this problem, you hope.

Are more spices the solution to your problem ?

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

What’s sensation?

Sensation:

Activation of

receptors by

stimuli in the

environment

What’s perception ?

Perception: The

process of organizing

and making sense of

sensory information

received

Why is sensation be seen as the basic building

blocks of perception ?

If receptors:

- Not receive info ?

- Can’t process the info they receive ?

-> No info -> the brain -> no perception occurs

Ex: Color-blind people ?

PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION

*Adaptation:

Loss of sensitivity to a stimulus by the receptors as a

results of continued presentation of that stimulus

(Think back to the story of preparing dinner ?)

-Applying the principle in daily activities ?

Teaching ?

Business ?

PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION

*Signal detection theory ?

How have you thought you heard the ringing of the

telephone (signal) while you were watching TV

(background noise)?

The contention that the threshold (level) varies with

nature of the stimulus (signal) and background

stimulation (noise)

Ex ?

PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION

Can stimuli that are below the threshold (level) for

perception have any effect on us ?

Subliminal perception?

(Subliminal stimuli)

-Stimuli that are below the level of awareness

-> having a direct effect on unconscious motivation

PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION

How can this principle (subliminal stimulus) be

applied in business activities? Examples ?

- What is subliminal

stimulus in this

liquor ad ?

- Many liquor ads

appear to contain

cleverly disguised

sexual stimuli (Key,

1989)

- Subliminal

stimulus?

The Five Senses

Vision : light (what we experience)

Hearing (Audition): sounds

Taste (Gustation): tastes

Smell (Olfaction): odors

Touch (Cutaneous): pressure, temperature, pain

What is the most important and most highly

valued sense ? Why ?

What is the most important and most highly

valued sense ? Why ?

Our brain has more neurons devoted to vision than

to hearing, taste or smell (Restak, 1994)

Thinking about watching a 4-D cartoon at a

Disneyland cinema and this similar film on our

home TV, What are the differences ?

Perception: The process of organizing and

making sense of the stimuli in our surroundings

-Why do we heavily rely on the visual sense ?

PERCEPTION

*Pattern perception?

The ability to discriminate among different shapes

and figures

The feature analysis theory of pattern perception

states that we perceive basic elements of an

object and mentally assemble them to create a

complete object (Lindsay & Norman, 1977)

Ex ?

Basic Perceptual Abilities

*Perceptual

Constancies?

The tendency to

perceive the size

and shape of an

object as constant

even though its

retinal image

changes

Basic Perceptual Abilities

*Depth Perception (self study)

Basic Perceptual Abilities

Gestalt: German word: “pattern”, “shape” or

“configuration”

Founders of Gestalt psychology: We are born with the

ability to organize the elements of our perceptual world

in very predictable ways (Shapes & Wertheimer, 2000)

-Figure and ground relation

-Principles of grouping

Gestalt Principles of Perceptual

Organization

What can you see in

this picture ?

Figure and ground

relation: Organization

of perceptual elements

into a figure (the focus

of attention) and a

background

FIGURE AND GROUND RELATION

WHAT CAN YOU SEE IN THE PICTURE ?

Young woman

or old woman ?

Find some examples of this principle

application in daily activities

Figure and Ground Relation

Group reading

(pages 120 – 122)

Principles of Grouping

Proximity ?

Similarity?

Good continuation?

Closure ?

Applications of the principles in daily

activities ?

Principles of Grouping

Apparent motion:

Illusion of movement in a stationary object

Can you give some examples of apparent

motion in our environment ?

Perceptual hypotheses: inferences about the

nature of stimuli received from the environment

Perceptual illusions: misconceptions or

interpretations of stimuli that do not correspond

to the sensations received

How can we explain the case “grass looks

greener on the other side of the fence” ?

Perceptual Hypotheses and

Illusions

Examples of Perceptual Illusion ?

ARE THE HORIZONTAL LINES THE SAME LENGTH ?

ARE THE CENTER CIRCLES THE SAME SIZE ?

Thank you !