Psychology
Sensory Adaptation
Sensory adaptation refers to the process by which our sensory receptors become less responsive to constant or unchanging stimuli. This allows us to focus on new or changing stimuli in our environment. For example, when entering a room with a strong odor, we may initially notice the smell, but over time, our sense of smell adapts and the odor becomes less noticeable.
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8 Key excerpts on "Sensory Adaptation"
eBook - PDF- Karen R. Huffman, Catherine A. Sanderson(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Subliminal perception The perception of stimuli presented below conscious awareness. Q1 Sensory Adaptation Imagine that friends have invited you to come visit their beautiful new baby. As they greet you at the door, you are overwhelmed by the odor of a wet diaper. Why don’t your friends do something about that smell? The answer lies in the previously men- tioned sensory reduction, as well as Sensory Adaptation . When a constant stimulus is presented for a length of time, sensation often fades or disappears. Receptors in our sensory system become less sensitive. They get “tired” and actually fire less frequently. Sensory Adaptation can be understood from an evolutionary perspective. We can’t afford to waste attention and time on unchanging, normally unimportant stim- uli. “Turning down the volume” on repetitive information helps the brain cope with an overwhelming amount of sensory stimuli and enables us to pay attention to change. Sometimes, however, adaptation can be dangerous, as when people stop paying attention to a small gas leak in the kitchen. Although some senses, like smell and touch, adapt quickly, we never completely adapt to visual stimuli or to extremely intense stimuli, such as the odor of ammonia or the pain of a bad burn. From an evolutionary perspective, these limitations on Sensory Adaptation aid survival by reminding us, for example, to keep a watch out for dangerous predators, avoid strong odors and heat, and take care of that burn. If we don’t adapt to pain, how do athletes keep playing despite painful injuries? In certain situations, including times of physical exertion, the body releases natural painkillers called endorphins (Chapter 2), which inhibit pain perception. This is the so-called “runner’s high,” which may help explain why athletes have been found to have a higher pain tolerance than nonathletes (Tesarz et al., 2012).
eBook - PDF- Karen R. Huffman, Katherine Dowdell, Catherine A. Sanderson(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
For example, those who listened to American music (“California Girls,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” and “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys) chose foods like hamburgers and hot dogs. Sensory Adaptation Imagine that friends have invited you to come visit their beautiful new baby kitten. As they greet you at the door, you are overwhelmed by the odor of the kitten’s overflowing litter box. Why don’t your friends do something about that smell? The answer lies in the previously mentioned sensory reduction, as well as Sensory Adaptation. When a constant stimulus is presented for a length of time, sensation often fades or disappears. Receptors in our sensory system become less sensitive. They get “tired” and actually fire less frequently. Sensory Adaptation can be understood from an evolutionary perspective. We can’t afford to waste attention and time on unchanging, normally unimportant stimuli. “Turning down the volume” on repetitive information helps the brain cope with an overwhelming amount of sen- sory stimuli and enables us to pay attention to change. Sometimes, however, adaptation can be dangerous, as when people stop paying attention to a small gas leak in the kitchen. Although some senses, like smell and touch, adapt quickly, we never completely adapt to visual stimuli or to extremely intense stimuli, such as the odor of ammonia or the pain of a bad burn. From an evolutionary perspective, these limitations on Sensory Adaptation aid survival by reminding us, for example, to keep a watch out for dangerous predators, avoid strong odors and heat, and take care of that burn. Pain and Sensory Adaptation Our differing reactions to pain offer an intriguing ex- ample of Sensory Adaptation. In certain situations, including times of physical exertion, the body releases natural, pain-killing neurotransmitters called endorphins (Chapter 2), which inhibit pain perception.
eBook - PDF- Catherine A. Sanderson, Karen R. Huffman(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Sensory Adaptation Imagine that friends have invited you to come visit their beautiful new baby kitten. As they greet you at the door, you are overwhelmed by the odor of the kitten’s overflowing litter box. Why don’t your friends do something about that smell? The answer lies in the previously mentioned sensory reduction, as well as Sensory Adaptation. When a constant stimulus is presented for a length of time, sensation often fades or disappears. Receptors in our sensory system become less sensitive. They get “tired” and actually fire less frequently. Sensory Adaptation can be understood from an evolutionary perspective. We can’t af- ford to waste attention and time on unchanging, normally unimportant stimuli. “Turning down the volume” on repetitive information helps the brain cope with an overwhelming amount of sensory stimuli and enables us to pay attention to change. Sometimes, however, adaptation can be dangerous, as when people stop paying attention to a small gas leak in the kitchen. Although some senses, like smell and touch, adapt quickly, we never completely adapt to visual stimuli or to extremely intense stimuli, such as the odor of ammonia or the pain of a bad burn. From an evolutionary perspective, these limitations on Sensory Adaptation aid survival by reminding us, for example, to keep a watch out for dangerous predators, avoid strong odors and heat, and take care of that burn. If we don’t adapt to pain, how do athletes keep playing despite painful injuries? In certain situations, including times of physical exertion, the body releases natural, pain-killing neuro- transmitters, called endorphins (Chapter 2), which inhibit pain perception. This is the so-called “runner’s high,” which may help explain why athletes have been found to have a higher pain tolerance than nonathletes (Tesarz et al., 2012).
eBook - PDF- John P. Houston, Helen Bee, David C. Rimm(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
After a period of continued stimulation, with no change in the intensity or char-acter of the stimulus, the threshold increases. That is, the receptor ad-justs, or gets used to, the stimulus, and stops responding to it. If the stimulus changes in some way, the receptor is likely to begin responding again. There is an experiment you can do at home that will help you experi-ence Sensory Adaptation. Fill one pan with very cold water, one with very hot water, and one with lukewarm water. Put one hand in the hot water and one in the cold water. Leave them there for two minutes. Then take them both out and plunge them into the lukewarm water. What will you feel? The hand that had been in the hot water will tell you the lukewarm water is very cold, while the hand that has been in the cold water will tell you that same pan of lukewarm water is very hot. This is because each hand has gotten used to the temperature in its first pan. In contrast, the temperature in the second pan seems intense. The tendency toward adaptation varies among the senses. Olfactory ad-aptation in humans occurs fairly rapidly. Not long after you enter the fish 86 Chapter 3 Sensation and perception market, you can no longer detect the fishy odor. Pain, on the other hand, appears not to adapt. People who have experienced prolonged pain, such as a toothache, usually report that it does not decrease over time. Sensory Adaptation can be helpful If you think about it, you will realize how helpful Sensory Adaptation is to us in our daily lives. Imagine being constantly aware of your cold nose, the pressure of your clothes, and the rumble of distant traffic as you try to take an exam. With all those unimportant messages coming in, you might not be able to concentrate at all. And if we could not adapt to bad odors, our lives would be far less pleasant. On the other hand, not adapting can be helpful, too.
eBook - PDF- Trygg Engen(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
There may indeed be more adaptation in olfaction Self-Adaptatio n 63 than in audition, but the difference has probably been exaggerated and, in addition, adaptation has been confused with habituation. Traditionally, the distinction between adaptation and habituation was made in terms of central versus peripheral receptor mechanisms. A decrease in response due to adaptation has been assumed to reflect fatigue of the receptors. A decrease in response due to habituation has been assumed to be the result of a person getting used to or ignoring stimulation no longer judged to be of significance, and thus involves central brain factors. The distinction between these concepts is becoming less clear, but adaptation is seen to involve continued exposure to stimulation that affects sensory transmission of information, and habituation involves repeated stimulation and learning. There is no physiological evidence indicating or relating olfactory adaptation to changes in peripheral receptor function. As early as 1957 Beidler proposed the hypothesis that olfactory adaptation may be mediated by a central rather than peripheral mechanism (see also Koster, 1971). Moulton (1971) likewise states that there is little evidence of ad-aptation in electrophysiological recordings from the primary neurons or olfactory bulb of a variety of species: prolonged depressions of response seldom follow repeated receptor exposures to a variety of odorants [p. 69]. The understanding of the physiology of adaptation is poor, but a number of interesting and important psychophysical studies have been made, and this chapter will emphasize that work. To begin with, there are several aspects of adaptation. What has been described so far, is often referred to as self-adaptation. Self-Adaptatio n Self-adaptation is the change in perceived intensity of an odorant after one has been exposed to it. In general, one distinguishes between an adapting odorant and a test odorant or target to be detected.
eBook - PDFPsychology
Made Simple
- Abraham P. Sperling, Kenneth Martin(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Made Simple(Publisher)
2 SENSATION AND PERCEPTION Everything we experience comes to us by means of our sense organs. These may be thought of as receiving stations for stimuli which come from outside and from within our body. Human beings and other higher animals are distinguished by the fact that the_sense organs are highly specialized for receiving specific kinds of stimuli. We have eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, the tongue for taste. In the most simple forms of animal life such as the one-celled amoeba, there is no differentiation as regards sense organs. The whole body is equally sensitive to heat, to cold, to pressure, and light. It may be well for us to define the terms most commonly employed by the psychologist in describing sensory behaviour. A sense organ, sometimes referred to as a receptor, is a specialized part of the body which is selectively sensitive to some types of changes in its environment and not to others. For example, the eye is a receptor for sensations of light waves but is impervious to sound stimuli. To a deaf individual whose sense of hearing is totally impaired, it would make no difference whether you held a gently ringing alarm clock next to his ear or a wailing siren. A stimulus is any kind of mechanical, physical, or chemical change that acts upon a sense organ. The important feature is the element of 'change'. In 'applied' psychology, we make maximum use of this idea when we want to hold an individual's attention. The advertiser, the teacher, the actor, and the engineer—for example—employ this princi-ple continuously. Ordinarily, a red light over a door serves as a warning. Left there long enough, we get used to it and its effectiveness as a stimulus is diminished. If we then change its nature by making it a blinking red light, it again serves as an effective stimulus. For the same reason, the advertiser puts motion into his otherwise stationary window displays.
- Lorelle J. Burton, Drew Westen, Robin M. Kowalski(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Second, they all have thresholds below which a person does not sense anything despite external stimulation. Children know this intuitively when they tiptoe through a room to ‘sneak up’ on someone — who may suddenly hear them and turn around. The tiptoeing sounds increase gradually in intensity as the child approaches, but the person senses nothing until the sound crosses a threshold. Third, sensation requires constant decision making, as the individual tries to distinguish meaningful from irrelevant stimulation. We are unaware of most of these sensory ‘decisions’ because they occur rapidly and unconsciously. Alone at night, people often wonder, ‘Did I hear something?’ Their answers depend not only on the intensity of the sound but also on their tendency to attach meaning to small variations in sound. Fourth, sensing the world requires the ability to detect changes in stimulation — to notice when a bag of groceries has gotten heavier or a light has dimmed. Fifth and finally, efficient sensory processing means ‘turning down the volume’ on information that is redundant; the nervous system tunes out messages that continue without change. We examine each of these processes in turn. Pdf_Folio:290 290 Psychology Transduction Sensation requires converting energy in the world into internal signals that are psychologically meaningful (Julius & King, 2005). The more the brain processes these signals — from sensation to perception to cognition — the more meaningful they become. Sensation typically begins with an environmental stimulus, a form of energy capable of exciting the nervous system. We actually register only a tiny fraction of the energy surrounding us, and different species have evolved the capacity to process different types of information. Honeybees, for example, can sense the Earth’s magnetic field and re-locate important landmarks, such as places they have found food, by their compass coordinates (Collett & Baron, 1994; see also Collett et al., 2002).
eBook - PDFSensory Restriction
Effects on Behavior
- Duane P. Schultz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
Davis discusses this and other physiological findings of sensory restriction studies in terms of increased sensitization, commenting that: The visual receptor, of course, gains sensitivity in the absence of stimuli and loses in their presence, and there is reason to think the process occurs elsewhere as well. 'Central* regulation of sensitivity now seems to play an important role (Bruner, 1957). Such operations resemble the automatic volume control of a radio receiver. That device is intended to maintain a constant output in the face of signal variations. But, if the intended signal is weak or absent, the device seeks ever weaker input levels and causes the system to respond to the noise level. So the sensitized organism may be brought into contact with an underlying field of weak tactual, kinesthetic, even auditory and visual stimuli or system noise, a field which one may easily suppose is more densely populated than are the higher energy levels (Davis, 1959, pp. 313-314). E . T H R E S H O L D C H A N G E S 1. VISION A study designed to determine the effects of sensory restriction on visual recognition thresholds was performed by Rosenbaum, Dobie, and Cohen (1959). The conditions of sensory deprivation and perceptual deprivation were compared by utilizing one group under total visual deprivation and another group under unpatterned visual stimulation. The subjects, sixteen in each group, each sat in a chair in a room, wearing earplugs and padded earphones. In addi-tion, a constant masking sound was provided by an electric fan. Subjects in the sensory deprivation group wore blacked-out rubber Ε. Threshold Changes 47 goggles while those in the perceptual deprivation group wore frosted goggles admitting diffuse formless light. After the period of deprivation, subjects were allowed several minutes for peripheral adaptation to normal light. The deprivation periods were zero, five, fifteen, and thirty minutes on four different days.
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