CHAPTER 4 SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

Interesting Questions Related to this Chapter Why do many older people prefer spicy foods? Why can’t I taste my food when I have a cold? Is color blindness genetic? Why do some people experience more/less pain than others? What is subliminal perception? Does it work? Why do certain smells trigger my emotions? Why do people see different things when the same stimuli are presented?

Sensation Sensation: Awareness resulting from stimulation of a sense organ. Sensation comes from 1. Vision: visual 2. Hearing: auditory 3. Touch: kinesthetic 4. Taste: gustation 5. Smell: olfaction

Perception Perception: The organization, identification, and interpretation of a sensation for the purpose of forming a mental representation.

Transduction Transduction: Process that occurs when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into neural signals that are sent to the central system.

Sensory Adaptation Sensory Adaptation: sensitivity to prolonged stimulation typically declines over time as one adapts to current conditions. Examples: The stink of garbage in your apartment when you first walk in to a room eventually dissipates. You At first jumping into the swimming pool finds you shivering. A little while later, you call out to friends, “ come on in, the water is fine.”

Illustration If you are wearing a watch right now, I would like for you to participate in this brief exercise:

Exercise Move your watch up your wrist an inch. You will likely feel it, however you will only feel it for a few seconds. After constant exposure to a stimulus, our nerve cells fire less frequently and we adapt.

Question 1. Please describe what happened. 2. What makes the concept of sensory adaptation important? What would happen if humans could not adapt to intense sensation?

Answer to Exercise on Sensory Adaption Despite the fact that sensory adaptation reduces our sensitivity, it enables us to focus on informative changes in our environment without being distracted by the uninformative constant stimulation of odors, noise, etc. (Myers, 2004). Example: This sensitivity to changing stimulation (e.g. zooms, sudden noises) helps to explain TV’s attention-getting power.

Perceiving Color Isaac indicated that color is not something “in” light. It is nothing else than one’s perception of light’s wavelength.

Seeing Color In order to see in color, we perceive a spectrum of color because objects selectively absorb some wavelengths of light and reflect others. Color recognition corresponds to the summed activity of the three types of cones. Each type is most sensitive to a narrow range of wavelengths in the same visible spectrum. These are: Short (blush light) Medium (greenish light) Long (reddish light

Trichromatic Color Representation The pattern of responding across the three types of cones that provides a unique code for each other.

Color Mixing There are millions of color shades resulting from the mixture of wavelengths that a stimulus absorbs or reflects. One can see a ripe banana as yellow because the banana skin reflects the light waves that we perceive as yellow but absorbs the wavelengths that one perceives as shades of blue to green and those that make one see read.

Color Blindness Color blindness is a genetic disorder in which one or more of the cone types are causing a color deficiency. This occurs more in men than women. People with one cone missing can see distinguish many colors.

Question Do you know of anyone who is color blinded? If so, what how does this affects the individual’s life?

Perception and Persuasion and Subliminal Advertising In the 1950’s, many owners of movie theater owners experimented with the technique of subliminal advertising. Without the conscious awareness of the viewers, they were trying to spliced single frames containing photographs of popcorn and soda or word images such as “I am thirsty” in an attempt to get the customers to buy food and drinks. Scientific evidence for this type of subliminal persuasion is mixed and not conclusive

Sensory Branding (Lindstrom, 2005) The attempt is to exploit all the senses for the purpose of promoting a product or brand. For example, an advertised may feature an exciting, provocative, or sexual image (visual sense) to sell products on TV or movie commercials. Popular movie (auditory sense) often accompany these images to evoke a certain mood that is favorable to the product. Thus, the visual and auditory senses will become associate with the targeted product that otherwise could possibly be a really boring or awful product.

Sensory Branding Example: The car smell (olfaction) that is in a new car is designed to evoke positive feelings designed to hook potential buyers when they test drive a car.

Product Placement A form of advertising whereby companies pay to have their products appear prominently in motion pictures and TV products. Example: A well-known celebrity drinks a certain soda or drives a certain car in a commercial.

Question What are your thoughts regarding the use of sensation and perception to persuade people to buy products? Is it harmful? Is it moral?