SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

To survive, PP must be able

to perform 3 interrelated
activities:
-Sensing events (stimuli),

-Processing stimuli and

-Responding to stimuli

-> Sensation & Perception

 READ THE STORY
You have been planning to invite some close friends for
dinner at your family and you are the very cook to
prepare the dinner. To be sure that everything tastes as
good as its smells, you sample the offerings frequently.
However, the more you sample, the less satisfied you
are. The spicy sauce tastes bland, and the potato dish
does not seem to have any flavor. Some additional
spices will cure this problem, you hope.

Are more spices the solution to your problem ?

 SENSATION AND PERCEPTION
What’s sensation? What’s perception ?

Sensation: Perception: The

Activation of process of organizing
receptors by and making sense of
stimuli in the sensory information
environment received
 Why is sensation be seen as the basic building
blocks of perception ?

If receptors:
- Not receive info ?
- Can’t process the info they receive ?
-> No info -> the brain -> no perception occurs

Ex: Color-blind people ?

 PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION
*Adaptation:

Loss of sensitivity to a stimulus by the receptors as a

results of continued presentation of that stimulus

(Think back to the story of preparing dinner ?)

-Applying the principle in daily activities ?

Teaching ?
Business ?
 PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION

*Signal detection theory ?

How have you thought you heard the ringing of the

telephone (signal) while you were watching TV
(background noise)?

The contention that the threshold (level) varies with

nature of the stimulus (signal) and background
stimulation (noise)
Ex ?
 PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION

Can stimuli that are below the threshold (level) for

perception have any effect on us ?

Subliminal perception?
(Subliminal stimuli)
-Stimuli that are below the level of awareness
-> having a direct effect on unconscious motivation
 PRINCIPLES OF SENSATION

How can this principle (subliminal stimulus) be

applied in business activities? Examples ?
- What is subliminal
stimulus in this
liquor ad ?

- Many liquor ads

appear to contain
cleverly disguised
sexual stimuli (Key,
1989)
- Subliminal
stimulus?
 The Five Senses
Vision : light (what we experience)
Hearing (Audition): sounds
Taste (Gustation): tastes
Smell (Olfaction): odors
Touch (Cutaneous): pressure, temperature, pain

What is the most important and most highly

valued sense ? Why ?
 What is the most important and most highly
valued sense ? Why ?

Our brain has more neurons devoted to vision than

to hearing, taste or smell (Restak, 1994)

Thinking about watching a 4-D cartoon at a

Disneyland cinema and this similar film on our
home TV, What are the differences ?
 PERCEPTION

Perception: The process of organizing and

making sense of the stimuli in our surroundings

-Why do we heavily rely on the visual sense ?

 Basic Perceptual Abilities

*Pattern perception?
The ability to discriminate among different shapes
and figures
The feature analysis theory of pattern perception
states that we perceive basic elements of an
object and mentally assemble them to create a
complete object (Lindsay & Norman, 1977)
Ex ?
 Basic Perceptual Abilities
*Perceptual
Constancies?
The tendency to
perceive the size
and shape of an
object as constant
even though its
retinal image
changes
 Basic Perceptual Abilities

*Depth Perception (self study)

 Gestalt Principles of Perceptual
Organization
Gestalt: German word: “pattern”, “shape” or
“configuration”
Founders of Gestalt psychology: We are born with the
ability to organize the elements of our perceptual world
in very predictable ways (Shapes & Wertheimer, 2000)

-Figure and ground relation

-Principles of grouping
 FIGURE AND GROUND RELATION
What can you see in
this picture ?

Figure and ground

relation: Organization
of perceptual elements
into a figure (the focus
of attention) and a
background
 WHAT CAN YOU SEE IN THE PICTURE ?
Young woman
or old woman ?
 Figure and Ground Relation

Find some examples of this principle

application in daily activities
Principles of Grouping

Group reading
(pages 120 – 122)
 Principles of Grouping

Proximity ?
Similarity?
Good continuation?
Closure ?

Applications of the principles in daily

activities ?
 Apparent motion:
Illusion of movement in a stationary object

Can you give some examples of apparent

motion in our environment ?
 Perceptual Hypotheses and
Illusions
Perceptual hypotheses: inferences about the
nature of stimuli received from the environment
Perceptual illusions: misconceptions or
interpretations of stimuli that do not correspond
to the sensations received

How can we explain the case “grass looks

greener on the other side of the fence” ?
Examples of Perceptual Illusion ?
ARE THE HORIZONTAL LINES THE SAME LENGTH ?
ARE THE CENTER CIRCLES THE SAME SIZE ?
Thank you !