Sensation

What does it mean to sense something? Sensory receptors are specialized neurons that respond to
specific types of stimuli. When sensory information is detected by a sensory receptor, sensation has
occurred. For example, light that enters the eye causes chemical changes in cells that line the back of
the eye. These cells relay messages, in the form of action potentials (as you learned when studying
biopsychology), to the central nervous system. The conversion from sensory stimulus energy to action
potential is known as transduction. Transduction represents the first step toward perception and is a
translation process where different types of cells react to stimuli creating a signal processed by the
central nervous system resulting in what we experience as a sensations. Sensations allow organisms to
sense a face, and smell smoke when there is a fire.
Perceptions on the other hand, require organizing and understanding the incoming sensation
information. In order for sensations to be useful, we must first add meaning to those sensations, which
create our perceptions of those sensations. Sensations allow us to see a red burner, but perceptions
entail the understanding and representation of the characteristic hot. Also, a sensation would be
hearing a loud, shrill tone, whereas a perception would be the classification and understanding of that
sounds as a fire alarm. Throughout this chapter sensations and perceptions will be discussed as separate
events, whereas in reality, sensations and perceptions can be more accurately thought of as occurring
along a continued where boundaries are more fluent between where a sensation ends and a perception
begins.

You have probably known sinceprimary school that we have five senses: vision, hearing (audition), smell
(olfaction), taste (gustation), and touch (somatosensation). We also have sensory systems that provide
information about balance (the vestibular sense), body position and movement (proprioception and
kinesthesia), pain (nociception), and temperature (thermoception), and each one of these sensory
systems has different receptors tuned to transduce different stimuli. The vision system absorbs light
using rod and cone receptors located at the back of the eyes, sound is translated via tiny hair like
receptors known as cilia inside the inner ear, smell and taste work together most of the time to absorb
chemicals found in airborne particles and food via chemically sensitive cilia in the nasal cavity and
clusters of chemical receptors on the tongue. Touch is particularly interesting because it is made up of
responses from many different types of receptors found within the skin that send signals to the central
nervous system in response to temperature, pressure, vibration, and disruption of the skin such as
stretching and tearing.

The sensitivity of a given sensory system to the relevant stimuli can be expressed as an absolute
threshold. Absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulus energy that must be present
for the stimulus to be detected 50% of the time. Another way to think about this is by asking how dim
can a light be or how soft can a sound be and still be detected half of the time. The sensitivity of our
sensory receptors can be quite amazing. It has been estimated that on a clear night, the most sensitive
sensory cells in the back of the eye can detect a candle flame 30 miles away (Okawa & Sampath, 2007).
Under quiet conditions, the hair cells (the receptor cells of the inner ear) can detect the tick of a clock 20
feet away (Galanter, 1962). Additionally, one teaspoon of sugar can be tasted within two gallons of
water, and the human olfactory system can detect the scent of one drop of perfume throughout a six
room apartment.
It is also possible for us to get messages that are presented below the threshold for conscious
awareness—these are called subliminal messages. A stimulus reaches a physiological threshold when it
is strong enough to excite sensory receptors and send nerve impulses to the brain: This is an absolute
threshold. A message below that threshold is said to be subliminal: The message is processed, but we
are not consciously aware of it. Over the years, there has been a great deal of speculation about the use
of subliminal messages in advertising, rock music, and self-help audio programs to influence consumer
behavior. Research has demonstrated in laboratory settings, people can process and respond to
information outside of awareness. But this does not mean that we obey these messages like zombies; in
fact, hidden messages have little effect on behavior outside the laboratory (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc,
1980; Rensink, 2004; Nelson, 2008; Radel, Sarrazin, Legrain, & Gobancé, 2009; Loersch, Durso, & Petty,
2013). Studies attempting to influence movie goers to purchase more popcorn, and reduced smoking
habits demonstrated little to no success further suggesting subliminal messages are mostly ineffective in
producing specific behavior (Karremans, Stroebe & Claus, 2006). However, neuroimaging studies have
demonstrated clear neural activity related to the processing of subliminal stimuli stimuli (Koudier &
Dehaene, 2007). Additionally, Krosnick, Betz, Jussim & Lynn (1992) found that participants who were
presented images of dead bodies or buckets of snakes for several milliseconds (subliminal priming),
were more likely to rate a neutral image of a woman with a neutral facial expression as more unlikable
compared to participants who were shown more pleasant images (kittens and bridal couples). This
demonstrates that although we may not be aware of the stimuli presented to us, we are processing it on
a neural level, and also that although subliminal priming usually is not strong enough to force unwanted
purchases, it may influence our perceptions of things we encounter in the environment following the
subliminal priming.
Absolute thresholds are generally measured under incredibly controlled conditions in situations that are
optimal for sensitivity. Sometimes, we are more interested in how much difference in stimuli is required
to detect a difference between them. This is known as the just noticeable difference (JND, mentioned
briefly in the above study comparing color perceptions of Chinese and Dutch participants) or difference
threshold. Unlike the absolute threshold, the difference threshold changes depending on the stimulus
intensity. As an example, imagine yourself in a very dark movie theater. If an audience member were to
receive a text message on her cell phone which caused her screen to light up, chances are that many
people would notice the change in illumination in the theater. However, if the same thing happened in a
brightly lit arena during a basketball game, very few people would notice. The cell phone brightness
does not change, but its ability to be detected as a change in illumination varies dramatically between
the two contexts. Ernst Weber proposed this theory of change in difference threshold in the 1830s, and
it has become known as Weber’s law.
Webers Law: Each of the various senses has its own constant ratios determining difference
thresholds.

Webers ideas about difference thresholds influenced concepts of signal detection theory which state
that our abilities to detect a stimulus depends on sensory factors (like the intensity of the stimulus, or
the presences of other stimuli being processed) as well as our psychological state (you are sleepy
because you stayed up studying the previous night). Human factors engineers who design control
consoles for planes and cars use signal detection theory all the time in order to asses situations pilots or
drivers may experience such as difficulty in seeing and interpreting controls on extremely bright days.

PERCEPTION

“Although are perceptions are built from sensations, not all sensations result in perception.”

While our sensory receptors are constantly collecting information from the environment, it is
ultimately how we interpret that information that affects how we interact with the world. Perception
refers to the way sensory information is organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced.
Perception involves both bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing refers to the fact
that perceptions are built from sensory input, stimuli from the environment. On the other hand, how we
interpret those sensations is influenced by our available knowledge, our experiences, and our thoughts
related to the stimuli we are experiencing. This is called top-down processing.
One way to think of this concept is that sensation is a physical process, whereas perception is
psychological. For example, upon walking into a kitchen and smelling the scent of baking cinnamon rolls,
the sensation is the scent receptors detecting the odor of cinnamon, but the perception may be “Mmm,
this smells like the bread Grandma used to bake when the family gathered for holidays.” Sensation is a
signal from any of our six senses. Perception is the brain’s response to these signals. When we see our
professor speaking in the front of the room, we sense the visual and auditory signals coming from them
and we perceive that they are giving a lecture about our psychology class.
Although our perceptions are built from sensations, not all sensations result in perception. In fact, we
often don’t perceive stimuli that remain relatively constant over prolonged periods of time. This is
known as sensory adaptation. Imagine entering a classroom with an old analog clock. Upon first entering
the room, you can hear the ticking of the clock; as you begin to engage in conversation with classmates
or listen to your professor greet the class, you are no longer aware of the ticking. The clock is still ticking,
and that information is still affecting sensory receptors of the auditory system. The fact that you no
longer perceive the sound demonstrates sensory adaptation and shows that while closely associated,
sensation and perception are different. Additionally, when you walk into a dark movie theater after
being outside on a bright day you will notice it is initially extremely difficult to see. After a couple
minutes you experience what is known as dark adaptation which tends to take about 8 minutes for
cones (visual acuity and color), and about 30 minutes for the cones in your retina to adapt (light, dark,
depth and distance) (Hecht & Mendelbaum, 1938; Klaver, Wolfs, Vingerling, Hoffman, & de Jong, 1998).
If you are wondering why it takes so long to adapt to darkness, in order to change the sensitivity of rods
and cones, they must first undergo a complex chemical change associated with protein molecules which
does not happen immediately. Now that you have adapted to the darkens of the theater, you have
survived marathon watching the entire Lord of the Rings series, and you are emerging from the theater
a seemly short ten hours after entering the theater, you may experience the process of light adaptation,
barring it is still light outside. During light adaptation, the pupils constrict to reduce the amount of light
flooding onto the retina and sensitivity to light is reduced for both rods and cones which takes usually
less than 10 minutes (Ludel, 1978). So why is the process of raising sensitivity to light to adapt to
darkness more complex than lowering sensitivity to adapt to light? Caruso (2007) has suggested that a
more gradual process is involved in darkness adaptation due to humans tendency over the course of
evolution to slowly adjust to darkness as the sun sets over the horizon.
There is another factor that affects sensation and perception: attention. Attention plays a significant role
in determining what is sensed versus what is perceived. Imagine you are at a party full of music, chatter,
and laughter. You get involved in an interesting conversation with a friend, and you tune out all the
background noise. If someone interrupted you to ask what song had just finished playing, you would
probably be unable to answer that question.

See for yourself how inattentional blindness works by checking out this selective attention test from
Simons and Chabris (1999).

One of the most interesting demonstrations of how important attention is in determining our
perception of the environment occurred in a famous study conducted by Daniel Simons and Christopher
Chabris (1999). In this study, participants watched a video of people dressed in black and white passing
basketballs. Participants were asked to count the number of times the team in white passed the ball.
During the video, a person dressed in a black gorilla costume walks among the two teams. You would
think that someone would notice the gorilla, right? Nearly half of the people who watched the video
didn’t notice the gorilla at all, despite the fact that he was clearly visible for nine seconds. Because
participants were so focused on the number of times the white team was passing the ball, they
completely tuned out other visual information. Failure to notice something that is completely visible
because of a lack of attention is called inattentional blindness. David Strayer and Frank Drews
additionally examined cell phone use in a series of driving simulators and found that even when
participants looked directly at the objects in the driving environment, they were less likely to create a
durable memory of those objects if they were talking on a cell phone. This pattern was obtained for
objects of both high and low relevance for their driving safety suggesting little meaningful cognitive
analysis of objects in the driving environment outside the restricted focus of attention while maintaining
a cell phone conversation. Additionally, in-vehicle conversations did not interfere with driving as much
as cell phone conversations as Strayer and Drews suggest, drivers are better able to synchronize the
processing demands of driving with in-vehicle conversations compared to cell-phone conversations.
Overall, it is apparent that directing the focus of our attention can lead to sometimes serious
impairments of other information, and it appears cell phones can have a particularly dramatic impact on
information processing while performing other tasks.
In a similar experiment to the activity above, researchers tested inattentional blindness by asking
participants to observe images moving across a computer screen. They were instructed to focus on
either white or black objects, disregarding the other color. When a red cross passed across the screen,
about one third of subjects did not notice it (figure below) (Most, Simons, Scholl, & Chabris, 2000).

Motivation can also affect perception. Have you ever been expecting a really important phone call and,
while taking a shower, you think you hear the phone ringing, only to discover that it is not? If so, then
you have experienced how motivation to detect a meaningful stimulus can shift our ability to
discriminate between a true sensory stimulus and background noise. This motivational aspect of
expectation in conversation additionally may be why such strong inattentional blindness has been found
in relation to cell phone use. The ability to identify a stimulus when it is embedded in a distracting
background is called signal detection theory.

Signal detection theory: A theory explaining how various factors influence our ability to detect weak
signals in our environment.

Signal detection theory also explains why a mother is awakened by a quiet murmur from her baby but
not by other sounds that occur while she is asleep. This also applies to air traffic controller
communication, pilot and driver control panels as discussed previously, and even the monitoring of
patient vital information while a surgeon performs surgery. In the case of air traffic controllers, the
controllers need to be able to detect planes among many signals (blips) that appear on the radar screen
and follow those planes as they move through the sky. In fact, the original work of the researcher who
developed signal detection theory was focused on improving the sensitivity of air traffic controllers to
plane blips (Swets, 1964).

Our perceptions can also be affected by our beliefs, values, prejudices, expectations, and life
experiences. As you will see later in this chapter, individuals who are deprived of the experience of
binocular vision during critical periods of development have trouble perceiving depth (Fawcett, Wang, &
Birch, 2005). The shared experiences of people within a given cultural context can have pronounced
effects on perception. For example, Marshall Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits (1963)
published the results of a multinational study in which they demonstrated that individuals from
Western cultures were more prone to experience certain types of visual illusions than individuals from
non-Western cultures, and vice versa. One such illusion that Westerners were more likely to experience
was the Müller-Lyer illusion (figure below): The lines appear to be different lengths, but they are actually
the same length.

In the Müller-Lyer illusion, lines appear to be different lengths although they are identical. (a) Arrows
at the ends of lines may make the line on the right appear longer, although the lines are the same
length. (b) When applied to a three-dimensional image, the line on the right again may appear longer
although both black lines are the same length.

These perceptual differences were consistent with differences in the types of environmental features
experienced on a regular basis by people in a given cultural context. People in Western cultures, for
example, have a perceptual context of buildings with straight lines, what Segall’s study called a
carpentered world (Segall et al., 1966). In contrast, people from certain non-Western cultures with an
uncarpentered view, such as the Zulu of South Africa, whose villages are made up of round huts arranged
in circles, are less susceptible to this illusion (Segall et al., 1999). It is not just vision that is affected by
cultural factors. Indeed, research has demonstrated that the ability to identify an odor, and rate its
pleasantness and its intensity, varies cross-culturally (Ayabe-Kanamura, Saito, Distel, Martínez-Gómez, &
Hudson, 1998). In terms of color vision across cultures, research has found derived color terms for
brown, orange and pink hues do appear to be influenced by cultural differences (Zollinger, 1988).

Children described as thrill seekers are more likely to show taste preferences for intense sour flavors
(Liem, Westerbeek, Wolterink, Kok, & de Graaf, 2004), which suggests that basic aspects of personality
might affect perception. Furthermore, individuals who hold positive attitudes toward reduced-fat foods
are more likely to rate foods labeled as reduced fat as tasting better than people who have less positive
attitudes about these products (Aaron, Mela, & Evans, 1994).

SUMMARY

Sensation occurs when sensory receptors detect sensory stimuli. Perception involves the organization,
interpretation, and conscious experience of those sensations. All sensory systems have both absolute
and difference thresholds, which refer to the minimum amount of stimulus energy or the minimum
amount of difference in stimulus energy required to be detected about 50% of the time, respectively.
Sensory adaptation, selective attention, and signal detection theory can help explain what is perceived
and what is not. In addition, our perceptions are affected by a number of factors, including beliefs,
values, prejudices, culture, and life experiences