Psychology
Sensory and Perceptual Processing
Sensory and perceptual processing refers to the way in which our sensory organs receive and interpret information from the environment. This includes the processes of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. Perceptual processing involves the brain's interpretation of this sensory information, leading to the formation of perceptions and experiences. These processes are fundamental to our understanding of the world around us.
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10 Key excerpts on "Sensory and Perceptual Processing"
eBook - PDFSensation, Perception and Action
An Evolutionary Perspective
- Johannes Zanker(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
OVERVIEW Why is perception such an important topic of study for psychologists? Throughout every single day of our life we incessantly and effortlessly solve complex tasks related to the collec-tion and interpretation of sensory input, and the planning and execution of action based on what is perceived. We (usually) experience little difficulty in preparing a sandwich, catching a ball, riding a bicycle, or crossing a busy road – but each of these seemingly simple tasks requires a huge amount of sensory information processing! Only when we observe the hope-less efforts of robots facing much, much simpler challenges (like walking up a step), do we start to appreciate how difficult it is to navigate and coordinate movements in a group of independently moving individuals, for instance, on a crowded dance floor. To address these questions, and to understand more generally how a person collects knowledge about the world and acts in the world, the information processing paradigm is introduced, together with the computer metaphor for the brain. This approach is closely linked, through the specific relationship between brain and perception, and more generally the relationship between brain and mind, to the study of brain function, which embeds perception in a vari-ety of scientific disciplines that help us to analyse and conceptualise human behaviour. The attempt to localise mental functions in the brain is an illustration of how the information processing approach, and neuroscience, are highly relevant to gain some deep understanding of psychological phenomena. Sensory systems usually are treated as information processing channels that are tuned to particular signals (such as sounds, or odours) and used to solve particular tasks (such as communication). Studying such mechanisms from a scientific and/ or engineering perspective allows us to tackle questions of how their designs are optimised in the context of evolutionary adaptation and ecological constraints.
eBook - PDFCognitive Neuroscience of Human Systems
Work and Everyday Life
- Chris Forsythe, Huafei Liao, Michael Christopher Stefan Trumbo, Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
Our brains recreate the world around us within our heads. Everything that we experience is an abstraction that arises through transduction as energy flows from sensory receptors through intermediate neural circuits, eventu-ally resulting in an integrated internal representation of the external world. This is perception, at least from our brains’ perspective. Perception concerns the processes whereby we experience the world around us based on our cre-ating an abstract representation of the external world within our heads. It is worth noting that the majority of this experience may never enter into our conscious awareness. However, whether experienced at a conscious or an unconscious level, one’s experience of a system and its design will arise through perceptual processes. Traditionally, from an engineering perspective, perception has mainly been discussed with respect to the capacity for a human to effectively sense, process, and use various information to achieve task objectives. Certainly, effective task performance is essential to achieving system objectives, and there are many excellent accounts of the principles underlying effective 74 Cognitive Neuroscience of Human Systems information presentation and display (Boff and Lincoln, 1988; McBride and Schmorrow, 2005; Salvendy, 1997). However, in the following sections of this chapter, there will be little emphasis on engineering information displays for task performance, with the primary focus placed on engineering design that engages perceptual processes to create certain experiences within operators, users, and others affected by a system. Each of the following sections dis-cusses general principles concerning the mechanisms and organization of perceptual processes within the brain that determine how systems will be experienced and the resulting efficacy with which people will operate within those systems.
eBook - ePub- Terry McMorris(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
2 Sensation and Perception of External InformationLearning objectives
At the end of this chapter, you should be able to:- understand what is meant by indirect or inferred perception
- describe how information processing theorists explain perception, with particular reference to:
- – signal detection theory
- – nature and role of selective attention
- – nature and role of visual search
- – how individual differences affect perception
- understand what is meant by direct perception
- have a basic knowledge of how ecological psychologists explain perception, including
- – nature and importance of affordances
- – how perception and action interact to detect affordances
- understand the main criticisms of information processing and ecological psychology theories with regard to perception
- be aware of the main developmental factors affecting perception.
In this chapter we examine, from an information processing perspective, how we perceive external information particularly for the purposes of making decisions. From an ecological psychology stand point, we are looking at how perception and action combine to recognize the existence of affordances in the environment. The role of perception in the control of movement is covered in Chapter 6 .Information processing theory, sensation and perception
Although information processing theorists argue that sensation and perception are different, the two concepts tend to be treated as one. The senses, which are the most important in the perception of information for decision making, are visual and auditory receptors. Vision is generally considered to be the most important of the senses. Light rays enter the eye through the lens and are detected by the retina. The central portion of the eye, the fovea, is rich in nerve receptors, which allow it to extract detail from an object. The range of foveal or central vision depends on how the eye is focused. This is controlled by the ciliary muscles, which are on either side of the lens. The range is generally regarded as being between 2° and 5°. The vision outside of this range is referred to as peripheral vision. The receptors, here, are less dense and images are less distinct than those found in foveal vision. Although foveal and peripheral vision are commonly used terms, Trevarthen (1968) used the terms focal and ambient vision. Focal vision is identical to foveal vision, but ambient vision differs a little to peripheral vision. According to Trevarthen, ambient vision
- John Weinman(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Butterworth-Heinemann(Publisher)
2 Human information processing The previous section on pain perception brought out the important point that sensory information is not all automatically processed to the level of conscious awareness in a mechanical fashion. There is a range of factors which will determine the degree to which sensory information is attended to and its ultimate effects on behaviour. Having recognized this, it is possible to examine human information processing in more detail both as a basis for understanding human behaviour and in order to be able to look at the effects of neurological lesions. In this chapter those processes involved with the uptake, selection, processing and storage of information are outlined. An attempt is also made to indicate the extent to which these processes are dependent on experience and the way in which they can be affected by neurological damage. • 2.1. Attention and perception a. 'Seeing where' and 'seeing what' As the result of some recent observations on patients with damage to the primary visual cortex and many animal studies, there are good grounds for postulating that there are at least two functionally distinct visual systems. One system is based on the visual cortex and the other on the superior colliculus {Fig-1)-The system which projects from the eyes to the visual cortex, via the lateral geniculate nucleus, appears to be primarily concerned with the detailed processing of visual images which are fixated by the central, foveal regions of the retina (i.e. 'seeing what'). There is neurophysiological evidence that this type of sensory information is processed by specific types of retinal ganglion cells ('sustained' cells) which are particularly suited to detecting the fine details of a visual scene. Furthermore, information from these cells is projected to specific regions of the visual cortex by slow-conducting afferent fibres.
eBook - PDF- Douglas Bernstein, , , (Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Summary 135 SUMMARY Sensing and Perceiving the World What is the difference between sensation and perception? A sense is a system that translates information from outside the nervous system into neural activity. Messages from the senses are called sensations . Perception is the process through which people actively use knowledge and understanding of the world to interpret sensations as meaningful experiences. Sensory Systems How does information from my eyes and ears get to my brain? Accessory structures collect and modify incoming energy from sensory stimuli. Then comes transduction , the process of convert-ing that energy into neural activity. It is accomplished by sensory neural receptors , which are neural cells specialized to detect en-ergy of some type. Sensory adaptation takes place when recep-tors continue to receive stimulation that does not change. Except in the case of smell, sensory neural activity is transferred through the thalamus, which relays it to the cerebral cortex. Encoding is the translation of the physical properties of a stimulus into patterns of neural activity that specifically identify those physical properties. It’s the language the brain uses to describe sensations. Encoding is characterized by the specific energy doctrine: Stimulation of a par-ticular sensory nerve provides codes for that one sense, no matter how the stimulation takes place. The minimum amount of light, sound, pressure, or other phys-ical energy that can be detected 50 percent of the time is called the absolute threshold .
eBook - ePub- Ilona Roth(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
These are deep and difficult issues. Psychologists certainly do not claim that all the physiological and psychological theories of perception add up to a complete explanation of the complex interaction between knowledge and perceptual experience. We exploit our perceptions to gain experience and knowledge about the world. We use current expectations to explain apparent contradictions in the environment. At the same time, we have to pay attention to what is actually happening. Survival would be difficult if animals moved around in a haze of top-down expectations, without the ability to react instantaneously and directly to bottom-up stimulation of sensory receptors. It is not at all easy to strike the right balance between representations of prior knowledge and the analysis of sensory inputs by sensory systems. Perception can be thought of as a ‘conflation of what one remembers and what one sees’. This is indeed a crucial issue both for perceivers in general and for psychologists who study perception, although, as perceivers ourselves, it normally causes us very little bother.Summary of Section 6
- According to feature detection models, feature detectors operate in a bottom-up direction, analysing sensory inputs and combining them at higher levels.
- Perceptual hypotheses and perceptual models involve the testing of hypotheses based on past experiences against sensory cues, incorporating both top-down and bottom-up processing.
- Gibson’s theory of direct perception emphasizes the total array of light stimulation which he claims is sufficient for perceptual interactions with the environment, without the need for intermediate processing stages.
- Basic sensory processes like depth perception are innate in most species and develop at a very early stage of infancy in humans. Without some basic perceptual mechanisms, human infants would not have the equipment necessary to learn about the environment.
- Evidence from the restoration of sight to people born blind indicates that some learning is required for fully effective perception.
- For perception to provide a basis for adaptable behaviour in humans, there needs to be an interaction between analysis of sensory information and interpretations based on learned knowledge and expectations about the environment.
I would like to thank Ilona Roth and John Pickering whose work in an earlier Open University psychology course has been helpful in the writing of this chapter.Personal acknowledgements
Further reading
- Gregory , R. L. (1972) Eye and brain
eBook - PDF- Zhongzhi Shi(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- World Scientific(Publisher)
135 Chapter 5 Perceptual Cognition Perceptual cognition is an objective external direct role in the human sense organs. The development of perceptual cognition goes through three kinds of basic form: sensation, perception, representation. 5.1 Dialectic Process of Understanding People’s knowledge can be divided into perceptual knowledge and rational knowledge. Perceptual knowledge is people’s understanding on the superficial phenomena and outside relation of objective things on the basis of practice. It is the primary stage of understanding. Perceptual knowledge generates when objective external world act on sense organ of people directly. In social practice, people can contact the phenomena of objective things through five organs: eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body. Under the stimulus of the external phenomenon, people’s sense organ has produced information flow which is conveyed to the brain along the specific neural channel, forming feeling and impression to objective things, such as color, shape, sound, cold and hot, smell, pain, etc. The development of perceptual knowledge should go through three basic forms: feeling, perception and representation. Feeling is the reflection in people’s brain of the specific attribute and characteristics of objective things. The perception is the integration of various feelings. It is the reflection in people’s brain of the whole objective thing and it is more complete and more complicated than feeling. Representation generates on the basis of perception. Representation, i.e. impression, is reproduced through reminiscence and impression. It is different from feeling and perception. It is formed on the basis that perceived to the same thing or similar things many times in the past. Thus it has certain indirectness and generality. But representation can only summarize the simplest form of the perceptual materials, it can’t reveal essence and law of the things yet.
eBook - PDFDiscovering Psychology
The Science of Mind
- John Cacioppo, Laura Freberg(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Before you can use information from your senses, it must be translated into a form the nervous system can understand. This process of translation from stimulus to neural signal is Some types of snakes (vipers, boas, and pythons) can sense prey using infrared energy. We have all had the experience of watching events with others (sensation) and then being shocked by the different interpretations we hear of what just happened (perception). Ted Kinsman / Science Source perception The process of interpret-ing sensory information. AP Photo/Roberto Pfeil Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Chapter 5 | THE PERCEIVING MIND 150 known as transduction . You might think of sensory transduction as similar to the processing of information by your computer. Modern computers transduce a variety of inputs, including voice, keyboard, mouse clicks, and touch, into a programming language for further processing. The Brain Constructs Perceptions From Sensory Information Once information from the sensory systems has been transduced into neural signals and sent to the brain, the process of perception, or the interpretation of the sensory information, can begin. Perception allows us to organize, recognize, and use the information provided by the senses. An important gateway to perception is the process of attention, defined as a narrow focus of consciousness. As we discuss in Chapters 6, 9, and 10, attention often determines which features of the environment influence our subsequent thoughts and behaviors.
eBook - PDF- E. Goldstein, James Brockmole(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
This processing then continues as signals travel to various places in the brain. Figure 1.4 Step 3 of the perceptual process. Receptor processes include transduction (the transformation of light energy into electrical energy) and the shaping of perception by the properties of visual pigments in the receptor’s outer segments. The end result is an electrical representation of the tree. 1 2 3 Receptor processes Light is reflected and focused Distal stimulus Rod Cone 3 Receptor Processes Rod and cone receptors (described in Chapter 2) line the back of the eye. They change light energy into electrical energy and influence what we perceive. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 8 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Perception The changes in these signals that occur as they are trans- mitted through this maze of neurons is called neural processing (Figure 1.5). Processing will be described in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3. For now, the main point is that process- ing continues the process of transformation that began when looking at the tree created an image of the tree inside the eye, which was then changed into electrical signals in the visual re- ceptors. A similar process occurs for other senses as well. For example, sound energy (pressure change in the air) is trans- formed into electrical signals inside the ear and is transmitted out of the ear along the auditory nerve, then through a series of structures on the way to the brain.
eBook - PDF- John P. Houston, Helen Bee, David C. Rimm(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
But when they are combined, as they are at the bottom, they disappear, arid two new lines — (c) and (d) — appear. (a) Information processing: complex perceptual abilities 111 We do not think of them as six separate buzzes, or two groups of three buzzes. Because they are located close together in time, they are perceived as groups. As a final example, consider the following: N owi sth etim ef o ral lgoo dme ntoc om etot heaid. We must fight against the influence of proximity to make sense of the phrase. To sum up, our perceptual processes are guided by strong inclinations to perceive things according to certain rules. Among the more important are the tendencies to see things as objects against a background, to fill in gaps, to perceive continuity in elements that go in the same direction, and to form groups of adjacent and similar elements. Information processing: complex perceptual abilities Pattern recognition Now that we have observed how our organizational tendencies govern our perceptions, we can focus more sharply upon some of our perceptual abilities. We begin with pattern recognition. Humans and animals have a finely tuned ability to recognize one object as being basically the same as an-other. For example, a triangle is a triangle, whether it is part of the roof of a house, is drawn on paper, or forms one side of a pyramid. Psychologists currently are giving close attention to the problem of pattern recognition. Much of this research is guided by one of several information-processing theories. For example, the template^matching hypothesis proposes that patterns are recognized because stimuli are matched, in the brain, with a standard form, or template. According to this view, the gable of a house is compared with an abstract triangle stored in memory. Held up against the template, the gable is recognized as a triangle. Another hypothesis, referred to as feature analysis, also has guided a great deal of research.
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