Unit 3 – Sensation and Perception

Essential Questions:

• What is the difference between Sensation and Perception?
• How do the five senses receive and transmit signals to the brain fro processing?
• How do our senses adapt and affect behavior?
• How does the brain process sensory information correctly and incorrectly to produce our perception?
• What are the limitations of each sense and how do those limitations affect behavior?

Objectives:

• Contrast the processes of sensation and perception.
• Discuss signal detection theory and thresholds. (Weber’s Law)
• Discuss sensory adaptation and accommodation
• Identify the components and functions of both the visual and auditory systems
• Identify and contrast proprioception and vestibular senses.
• Explain the Young-Hemholz and the opponent process theory of color vision.
• Explain the place and frequency theories of pitch perception
• Identify the views of Gestaltist as related to perception.
• Explain how we use monocular and binocular cues to determine size, depth, and distance.
• Discuss research on depth perception and cues
• Explain the concept of constancy.
• Analyze the effect of perceptual set on everyday sensory experience.
• Conduct original experiment on some aspect of sensation or perception

Activities, Readings and Viewings:

• Read – Myers chapters 5 and 6
• The Stroop Effect – Online activity
• Sensation/Perception Experiment Project
• Optical Illusions
• Video – Basketball passes
• Video – The Mind: The Girl with no Pain receptors
• Excerpts from – The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat – Sacks

Evaluation:

• Project
• Quizzes
• Exam 3

Daily smartboard presentations (notes)

Link to download smartboard software

Sensation – Perception notes (SB file) (pdf) (html)(powerpt)

Internet Resources:

Links from class:

http://www.boystownhospital.org/Media/Cochlear/normal.swf

http://www.physpharm.fmd.uwo.ca/undergrad/medsweb/

http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~psyc351/imagelist.htm

Link to basketball video - http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/gestalt/gestalt.htm

Fun Things (with vision) (http://www.yorku.ca/eye/funthing.htm ) Collection of visual illusions with explanations.

How Do Magic Eye Pictures Work? (http://www.magiceye.com/faq.htm ) Explanation of perceptual principles behind these pictures.

Optical Illusions (http://www.ads-online.on.ca/illusion/directory.html ) Reproduction of several classical visual-perceptual illusions.

San Francisco Exploratorium (http://www.exploratorium.edu/seeing/index.html ) Science and technology museum with a myriad of interactive illusions which illustrate principles of visual and auditory perception, inter alia the Depth Spinner Illusion, the Changing Patterns Illusions, the Fading Dot Illusion, the Temple Illusion, Movement and Camouflage and an Auditory Illusion.

Seeing Hearing Smelling World (http://www.hhmi.org/senses/ ) Howard Hughes Medical Institute site presents research on sensory processes in magazine style format. Great graphics and animations.