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Sensation and Perception (PSYC450)

Details

Course Title: “Sensation and Perception”.
Course Code: PSYC 450,3 credits.
Textbook: 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 <PSYC450_01.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 2 Study Guide: The First Steps in Vision docx <PSYC450_02.docx>
- 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 3 Study Guide: Spatial Vision docx <PSYC450_03.docx>
- 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 4: Perceiving and Recognizing Objects docx <PSYC450_04.docx>
- 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 5: Color docx <PSYC450_05.docx>
- 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 6 Study Guide: Space Perception and Binocular vision docx <PSYC450_06.docx>
- 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 7 Study Guide: Attention and Scene Perception docx <PSYC450_07.docx>
- 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 8 Study Guide: Motion Perception docx <PSYC450_08.docx>
- 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 9 Study Guide: Hearing docx <PSYC450_09.docx>
- 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 10 Study Guide: Hearing in the Environment docx <PSYC450_10.docx>
- 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 11 Study Guide: Music and Speech Perception docx <PSYC450_11.docx>
- 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 12 Study Guide: Spatial Orientation and the Vestibular System docx <PSYC450_12.docx>
- 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 13 Study Guide: Touch docx <PSYC450_13.docx>
- 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 14 Study Guide: Olfaction docx <PSYC450_14.docx>
- 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 15 Study Guide: Taste docx <PSYC450_15.docx>
- 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)

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.
- 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). Adding the high frequency to the original image emphasizes the edges, a method referred to as an unsharp mask.
- 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.
- Fourier Transform to visualize the impact of filters
- David Heeger’s Signal Detection 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 3: Spots to stripes
Chapter 4: Object Recognition
- Gestalt demos
- 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
- David Heeger’s color matching tutorial
Chapter 6: Space perception, binocular vision
- Binocular rivalry
- Akiyoshi Kitaoki’s Rollers Illusion
- Kinetic depth perception
Chapter 7: Attention and scene perception
- Visual search: feature vs conjunction
- Neglect: egocentric vs allocentric
Chapter 8: Motion perception
- The color wagon wheel shows that motions perception is color blind - isoluminant stimuli modulate our perception.
- Motion after effects
- 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 9: Physiology of hearing
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)
- Caloric stimulation (requires expertise)
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?
- Human_pheromones
Chapter 15: Taste
- Miraculin: makes acid taste sweet
- Gymnema Sylvestre tea can (temporarily) abolish your sense of sweet taste.
- Are you a super taster? Can you tast PROP?
- Foley and Matlin describe some elegant taste and smell demonstrations

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