Sensation and Perception (PSYC450)
Sensation and Perception (PSYC450)¶
Details¶
Course Title: “Sensation and Perception”.
Instructor: Chris Rorden : Office 227 Discovery I (John Absher will provide clinical lectures)
Course Code: PSYC 450,3 credits.
When: Fall 2021
Where: TBD
Syllabus: <TODO>
- Textbook (any edition after the 2nd):
Wolfe et al (2008). Sensation & Perception. 2nd Edition. ISBN-10:0878939539
Wolfe et al (2011). Sensation & Perception. 3rd Edition. ISBN-10: 087836572X
Wolfe et al (2014). Sensation & Perception. 4th Edition. ISBN-10: 160535211X
Wolfe et al (2017). Sensation & Perception. 5th Edition. ISBN-10: 1605356417
Wolfe et al (2020). Sensation & Perception. 6th Edition. ISBN-10: 1605359726
- Optional Alternative Textbooks:
Wandell (1995) Foundations of Vision. ISBN-10: 0878938532
Snowden et al. (2012) Basic Vision. ISBN-10: 019957202X
Schnupp et al. (2010) Auditory Neuroscience: Making Sense of Sound. ISBN-10: 026211318X
Foley and Matlin (2009) Sensation and Perception. ISBN-10: 0205579809
Description: How does the brain weave information from the five senses into the rich tapestry of our experience? Lets find out! Illusions will reveal the brain can be a con artist. Experiments will reveal the physics that shapes human perception. By using the latest technology we will demonstrate how the senses are seamlessly integrated. Lets explore how the brain works with hands-on examples.
Students in this course will learn how humans use the sensory systems of sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing to perceive and interpret their environment. We will draw upon information from a variety of fields, including art, biology, physics, and psychology to address these issues. In addition to covering the material in the text, we will discuss current issues in perceptual research. The course is heavily weighted in topics related to visual and auditory perception. This course may be taken to fulfill a major requirement in Psychology, or a minor requirement in Neuroscience. Students from all disciplines are welcome in this course. Lectures are designed to provide an important foundation of information and to improve your ability to process and synthesize facts and concepts. Because exams will be primarily based on content covered in lecture, lecture attendance is crucial to your success in this course
Chapter Slides¶
Chapter Study Guides¶
- Chapter 1 Study Guide: Introduction
docx
Key terms: psychophysics, panpsychism, criterion, cross modal matching, magnitude estimation, signal detection, spatial frequency, phase
Anatomy of a neuron (neurotransmitters, neuron, axon, dendrites, receptor, myelin, ect) and basic structure (layers) of the cortex.
Types of nerve cells
Weber’s law/theories, Joseph Fourier and “Allegory in the cave”
Signal to noise ration and examples
Neuroimaging techniques (fMRI, MEG, EEG, CT, PET)
Thresholds (JND, two-point touch, absolute)
Method of (adjustment, limits, constant stimuli)
- Chapter 1 Study Guide: Introduction
- Chapter 2 Study Guide: The First Steps in Vision
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Key terms: Duplex, eccentricity, emmetropia, scotoma, synaptic terminal.
Properties of light (absorb, contrast, filter, photoactivation, reflect, scatter, transduce, transmit, wave)
Anatomy of the eye (lens, iris, rods, cones, pigments, fovea,cornea, ect) and what each part does.
Rods and Cones: where they are, what they do, when kind of cells are the information pass through, what pigment is found in rods, night vs day vision.
Myopia vs Hyperopia ; astigmatism
- Chapter 2 Study Guide: The First Steps in Vision
- Chapter 3 Study Guide: Spatial Vision
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Key terms: Aliasing, amplitude, acuity,contrast, spatial frequency,visual angle, topographical mapping, orientation tuning, phase, cortical magnification, simple cell, complex cell, pattern analyzers, adaptation.
What are receptive fields and size to perceive texture
Snellen’s 1862 method for designating
Hubel and Wiesel’s experiment as seen in the video on the slides
What do retinal ganglion cells respond to?
Know the entire pathway of a visual signal (starting at the retina) and where the signal converges.
- Chapter 3 Study Guide: Spatial Vision
- Chapter 4: Perceiving and Recognizing Objects
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Gestalt psychology
What is it? What are key points about it?
Know all of the Gestalt group principles and what they look like (examples)
Illusory Contours, Gestalt features, good continuations, occlusion, similarity, proximity, connectedness,parallelism, common fate, ambiguous figure, accidental viewpoint, parallelism,
Occlusion: Relatable shape and non accidental figures
Figure/Ground: what is usually perceived as figure or ground?
What is middle vision? How is it summarized?
Famous studies
Hoffman and Richard
Tarr
Gauthier et al.
Disorders of perceiving and recognizing objects
Balint’s syndrome, prosopagnosia, associative agnosia,
What are the symptoms and what causes these disorders.
Object recognition models
Naive Template Theory, Recognition by component, Multiple recognition committees, structural description, entry level category
Examples for each, famous experiments/components associated with these models, problems with models?
- Chapter 4: Perceiving and Recognizing Objects
- Chapter 5: Color
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Trichromacy theory
Univarience
Color opposition
Subtractive and Additive color mixing
Hue cancellation with lights(examples/combinations)
Color consistency
Metemers
Opponent color theory (output of cones and opponency between colors)
After image
what colors pairs belong to each other (I.E. you see red when you stare at green)
RGB scale
what percentages of RGB make colors. Play with the color picker tool in paint to see percentages (i.e. 100% red, 50% green, 0% blue is the color orange)
Disorders that causes one to not be able to perceive color
Types of cones (L, M, S) (Protan, Deutan, Tritan)
What colors respond to which cone
What color blindness is correlated to the absence of which cone
Deuteranope, protanope, tritanopia, and monochromacy
How do these different cones respond at night or day (photopic vs scotopic)
Repacking of the Retina information
(L-M), (L+M), (L+M)-S
What do these combinations tell you/ what are they used for.
The color violet. Why is it unique? Who/what can see it?
How do animals see color differently than humans?
Cats, birds, and dogs (tetrachromats vs dichomates vs trichromats)
- Chapter 5: Color
- Chapter 6 Study Guide: Space Perception and Binocular vision
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Depth cues (what are they, be able to identify examples of each, and whether they are binocular or monocular depth cues)
Motion parallax, aerial perspective, linear perspective, vanishing point, accommodation, occlusion, texture gradient, relative height, size constancy, metric depth cue, nonmetric depth cue, size and position cues, kinetic depth perception, pulfrich effect
Panum’s Fusion area
Vieth Muller circle
Horopter vs diplopia
Stereoscopes/stereograms
Stereoblindness (what causes it)
Binary Disparity/ Rivalry
Uncrossed vs crosses disparity, stereoacuity; Binocular rivalry, dichoptic
Free Fusion
Influences of perception on binocular vision
Bayesian Approach, continuity constraints, uniqueness constraints, correspondence problem
- Chapter 6 Study Guide: Space Perception and Binocular vision
- Chapter 7 Study Guide: Attention and Scene Perception
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What is attention? What does it consist of? Types of attention?
What is reaction time (RT) and how is it used in regards to attention tasks?
Searches and search elements
Spotlight attention, visual search, distractors, target, set size, selective attention, feature search, serial vs parallel search, reaction, serial self terminating,
Efficient search vs inefficient search
Repetition blindness and attentional blink
feature integration theory (define and example of)
how do neurons respond during response enhancement?
Neglect: what it is, what are the symptoms and what tests are used?
Balint syndrome; what is it and what are the symptoms? (make sure you watch the video on the powerpoint)
Areas of the brain that are used attention and scene perception (i.e: FFA, EBA, parahippocampal place area, striate cortex)
What are the three ways the response of a cell can be changed by attention?
What is spatial layout and covert attentional shift?
- Chapter 7 Study Guide: Attention and Scene Perception
- Chapter 8 Study Guide: Motion Perception
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Vocab: First order motion, second order motion, apparent motion, aperture problem, correspondence problem, biological motion, interocular transfer.
Know about motion after effect.
What are the waterfall illusion and the barber shop pole illusion and what do they demonstrate?
What is Tau? What does it tell you?
What parts of the brain are responsible for perceiving motion? In individuals who cannot perceive motion, what part of the brain is often damaged?
What is the comparator? What is its purpose?
How do you use motion information to navigate? Optic array and optic flow?
What is the “focus of expansion”? What is its purpose? Why is this important?
What does Warren’s lab (in the section labeled “using motion information) find in regards to humans estimating their direction of heading?
What is saccadic suppression?
Types of eye movements(what they are and when you use them): Saccades, smooth pursuit, vergence, microsaccades.
What is the comparator? How does it work?
- Chapter 8 Study Guide: Motion Perception
- Chapter 9 Study Guide: Hearing
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Components of sound: amplitude, loudness, period, frequency, pitch, sine wave, tone, complex tones, resonance frequency, masking, acoustic reflex, harmonics, threshold tuning curve, two tone suppression, rate saturation, temporal integration.
What happens when you strike a tuning fork?
Know the anatomy of the ear (including all of the little parts/auditory pathway) and the purpose of the parts (ear canal, inner, middle, outer ear, ect)
How the cochlear works?
What causes hearing loss? How does age affect hearing?
- Chapter 9 Study Guide: Hearing
- Chapter 10 Study Guide: Hearing in the Environment
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Interaural time difference, interaural level difference, sound localization, sound shadow, cone of confusion, perceptual restoration, good continuation, spectral composition, Head related transfer function.
Know the parts of the brain that are involved with hearing and what they do (auditory stream).
Sound components: Harmonics, missing fundamentals, fundamental frequencies, Timbre, Pitch, Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release, Octave, Continuity effects, perceptual restoration, Doppler effect.
What is source segregation and what does it involve?
What is auditory stream segregation and what contributes to it? What is an example of this?
What are the different ways you can group sounds? (grouping by onset, timbre, continuity effect, decay, ect)
- Chapter 10 Study Guide: Hearing in the Environment
- Chapter 11 Study Guide: Music and Speech Perception
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Key terms- pitch, octave, tone height, tone chroma, chord, melody, tempo, syncopation, vocal tract, phonation, articulation, formant, spectrogram, coarticulation, categorical perception, encephalogram.
How is speech sounds produced?
How does culture affect perception of music?
components of articulatory dimension
Theories involving speech?
Know about the chimpanzee experiments that attempted to teach them language (e.g. Vicki and Washoe)
Broca’s and Wernicke’s area
Study the “Musical pitch” slides
How do infants react to sounds and sentences? Think about the studies done with infants.
Watch the youtube video on monkeys (Robert Seyfarth: Can Monkeys Talk”)
- Chapter 11 Study Guide: Music and Speech Perception
- Chapter 12 Study Guide: Spatial Orientation and the Vestibular System
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Know the parts of the ear that contribute to the vestibular system and how they work.
Vocab: angular motion, linear motion, tilt, angular acceleration, linear acceleration, vection, motion sickness, habituation, acceleration, velocity, receptor potential, mechanoreceptor, otoconia, oscillatory, sensory integration, sinusoidal.
Know the pathways used by the vestibular system
Know the 3 different reflexes/responses used in vestibular response (they all start with “vestibulo-”) and what they do.
Know how caloric stimulation works.
How do cameras try to mimic the human vestibular system/
- Chapter 12 Study Guide: Spatial Orientation and the Vestibular System
- Chapter 13 Study Guide: Touch
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What are the field size, rate and function of the four mechanoreceptor (SA1, SA2, FA1, FA2)
What do each receptor/fiber responds to (i.e. Tactile, Kinesthetic, Thermal, Nociceptors)
Know the pathway for touch from the skin to the brain
Know the areas of the brain that perceive pain and pleasant/unpleasant touch
Vocab: Body image, haptic, neural plasticity, gate control theory, homunculus, egocenter, propriocenter, somatotopic, kinesthetic, endogenous opiate, analgesia.
What is tactile agnosia and what causes it?
Phantom Limb syndrome.
What is important about fingerprints in regards to touch
- Chapter 13 Study Guide: Touch
- Chapter 14 Study Guide: Olfaction
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Key terms: Odor, odorant, nasal dominance, anosmia, cross adaptation, cognitive habituation, odor imagery, pheromones, odor hedonics, receptor adaptation,
Binaural rivalry
Know the olfactory system of an animal
Why is olfaction a “mute sense”?
Know the anatomy of the human olfactory system and the purpose of each part
Know the pathway a signal is carried from the olfactory receptor to the brain (including nerves associated with olfaction and taste)
Vibration theory vs shape pattern theory
- Chapter 14 Study Guide: Olfaction
- Chapter 15 Study Guide: Taste
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Key terms: tastant, taste bud, flavor, retronasal olfactory, gustatory system, cross-modality matching
Understand the process of how food is tasted/perceived starting when you chew up the food to where in the brain the neural signal is received
Theories related to taste
What happens when you anesthetize the chorda tympani?
Know the four taste qualities and what specific thing produces them (i.e. H+)
Know the purpose of the different types of papillae
Social influence on flavor
PROP (the experiment we did in class)
- Chapter 15 Study Guide: Taste
Demonstrations¶
- Chapter 1: Introduction
Signal to Noise: Photography with long shutter has good SNR, rapid shutter freezes motion but has low SNR.
Thresholds: Detecting quiet sounds shows a ROC curve. We can change the volume to influence discriminability. We can use rewards or punishment to influence criterion. (ROCui Matlab script)
Frequencies: We can take a sharp (focused) and blurry (unfocused) image of the same scene to show low frequencies. We can compute the difference between these two images to reveal the high frequencies (edges). We can add the edges to the sharp image to enhance edges (sharpening). [bmp_unsharpmask Matlab script].
We can measure neural conduction time by using transcranial magnetic stimulation [TMS] to cause a finger movement. We can then measure the motor evoke potential to see the transmission delay time from the brain to the finger.
David Heeger’s Signal Detection Matlab tutorial
- Chapter 2: Light to neural signals
Focal length and aperture: We can make pin hole cameras with different focal lengths (camera body caps with holes drilled in the center, lens adapters provide different focal length). We can adjust the aperture of a lens to reveal different depth of field and light transmission.
- Chapter 4: Object Recognition
Thatcher illusion <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcher_effect>`_
- Chapter 5: Color
Extra sensory perception: We can see how a camera responds to color. By removing the hot mirror we can show that the camera has been limited to mimic the human eye.
Isomers: purple vs violet
- Chapter 6: Space perception, binocular vision
Binocular rivalry
- Chapter 7: Attention and scene perception
Visual search: feature vs conjunction
Neglect: egocentric vs allocentric
- Chapter 8: Motion perception
Waterfall illusion (motion adaptation)
Saccadic suppression: look at your eyes in the mirror - shift gaze from left to right eyes: note you only sees your eyes when they are still. Watch someone else doing this to see what you are missing.
Biological motion
- Chapter 10: Hearing in the environment
The Auditory Neuroscience has terrific demos for all the hearing chapters.
Auditory grouping illusions
Interaural time and loudness practical demonstrating (requires Matlab)
- Chapter 11: Music and speech perception
- Chapter 12: Spatial orientation and the vestibular system
Wagging your finger versus wagging your head (see book chapter)
- Chapter 13: Touch
Foley and Matlin describe several demonstrations with touch.
Two point discrimination
Rubber hand illusion
- Chapter 14: Olfaction
Le Nez du Vin includes 54 smells often identified in wines. Can you identify these smells without any other context?
- Chapter 15: Taste
Gymnema Sylvestre tea can (temporarily) abolish your sense of sweet taste.
Foley and Matlin describe some elegant taste and smell demonstrations
Assignments and Grade distribution¶
The assignments during the term account for 75% of the grade, the final exam counts for 25%.
A = 90-100%
B = 80-90%
C = 70-80%
D = 60-70%
F = <60%
Goals¶
By the end of the term, successful students should be able to do the following
Recognize the features and limitations of the five major sensory systems and the vestibular system.
Explain the properties of the sensory receptors.
Describe how this often-ambiguous sensory information is integrated into a unified percept.
Solve novel problems regarding perception using scientific experiments.
Translate this knowledge to other domains.
Assess how politicians, advertisers, psychic and mentalists exploit our perceptual biases.
Relate this knowledge to everyday human experience, and to the student’s own interests.
Expectations & Evaluation¶
Sensation and Perception is designed to give insight into the basic processes of sensory and perceptual processes using novel, hands on activities. There were three approaches to this goal: (1) observation, (2) critical thinking (3) integration.
There will be an emphasis on OBSERVATIONS, in which students reflect on what they sensed or perceived.
The class requires students to read Sensation and Perception by Wolfe et al. As in most other textbooks about sensation and perception, vision and audition will be covered most extensively compared to other sensory systems. Because the book is dense in material, all lectures are be posted online to guide students on the important concepts. The information from the text as well as the lecture is to help students CRITICALLY THINK about their observations.
Formal evaluations will consist of quizzes and a Final Exam. There will also be a group project in which students are to present on a topic that INTEGRATES information from observations and formal neural/perceptual mechanisms.
Attendance¶
Attendance throughout class is required. By registering for this class you are confirming your availability during class. If you must miss a class, you should talk to the instructor ahead of time. For emergencies (flu, car trouble) it is strongly preferred that you send a text message to the instructor at the time of the class. Failure to meet the 10% rule described in the academic regulations will have homework assignment scores diminished by the proportion of the absences across the term (e.g. missing 15% of classes will mean your final score reflects 85% of your homework score).
Plagiarism¶
University policy regarding plagiarism, cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty is followed explicitly [See Carolina Community: Student Handbook and Policy Guide, Academic Responsibility]. Any case will be reported to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. A “0” score will be given on a plagiarized assignment, and may result in an “F” for the course in extreme cases.
Disabilities¶
Students who have disabilities must have certification from the Office of Disability Services and must make clear during the first week of class what accommodations they expect. Students with disabilities must complete the same exams and assignments as other students in order to get course credit.