Chapter 6 A: Sensation and Perception

1. Chapter 6 A:Sensation and Perception

2. Essential Question How do people use the 7known senses to understand the world around them?

3. Chapter 6 (A):Sensation, Perception, and Attention

4. Do-Now(Discussion) Open your textbooks to Pg. 229:“Sensation and Perception” What is Prosopagnosia? How does this condition illustrate the difference between sensationand perception?

5. Sensation and Perception • Sensation: • The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment • “Bottom-Up” • Perception: • The process or organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events • “Bottom-Up” and “Top-Down”

6. Sensation and Perception:“Bottom-Up” Vs. “Top-Down” “Bottom-Up” Processing: “Top-Down” Processing: T E C T

7. “The Forest Has Eyes”Bev Doolittle

8. Sensation and Perception:“Bottom-Up” Vs. “Top-Down” • Look at the images on Hand-Out 6-12: • What does each image represent • Which process is “Bottom-Up?” • Why? • Which process is “Top-Down?” • Why?

9. Sensation and Perception • Organisms are equipped with sensory and perceptualabilities based upon their individual needs: • A frog, which feeds on flying insects, has eyes with receptor cells that fire only in response to small, dark, moving objects. A frog could starve to death knee-deep in motionless flies. But let one zoom by and the frog’s “bug detector” cells snap awake. • A male silkworm moth has receptors so sensitive to the female sex-attractant odor that a single female need release only a billionth of an ounce per second to attract every male silkworm moth within a mile. That is why there continue to be silkworms. • Humans are similarly equipped to detect the important features of our environment. Our ears are more sensitive to sound frequencies that include human voice consonants and a baby’s cry.

10. Perception and Selective Attention • Selective Attention: • The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus • The five senses take in 11,000,000 bits of information per second; however, people consciously process 40bits.

11. Perception and Selective Attention • Inattentional Blindness: • Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere • Simons and Chabris: • “Gorilla Study” (1999) • 50% of participants failed to consciously perceive gorilla • Change Blindness: • Failure to notice changes in the environment • Simons and Levin: • “Door Study” (1998) • 50% of participants failed to consciously perceive change of actor

12. Review • What is the difference between sensationand perception? • How do sensation and perception help us understand the world around us? • What is selective attention? • Differentiate between inattentional blindnessand change blindness.

13. Homework • Chapter 6 Outline:“Sensation and Perception” • Research Study Response #5: “Take a Long Look” (Pgs. 36-42)