CHAPTER 5

SENSORY, ATTENTIONAL AND PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES

SENSATION

Sensation is the immediate and direct experience or response produced by the stimulus on the
sense organs.

The sight of a breath-taking sunset, the taste of ice-cold lemonade on a hot day, the piercing
sound of music from a stereo, the warmth of a soothing bath and the smell of rose are all
experienced through sensation. The study of sensation generally deals with the structure and
process of the sensory mechanisms (ear, eye etc) and the stimuli (sound, light etc) that affect
those mechanisms.

Our physical environment contains a number of forms of energy (Stimuli) that impinge on the
individual. Human beings have developed both the structures (Sense organs) and responses
(Sensation) that utilize these forms of energy. Sensation is an important concept of psychology
and it is the first stage of consciousness.

SENSE ORGANS

Sense organs are the body organs by which humans are able to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch
or feel. The five sense organs are the eyes (for seeing), nose (for smelling), ears (for hearing),
tongue (for tasting), and skin (for touching or feeling).

KINESTHETIC SENSE

✓ Kinesthetic is the sensory organ that monitors the positions of the various parts of the
body.
✓ The sense of body position and movement of body parts.
✓ Senses of muscle movement, posture and strain on muscles and joints

This is the sense of the movement. Even after closing our eyes we can sense the movement of
our body parts and it is because of kinesthetic sense or kinesthesis. The sense of movement is
diffused throughout the body. The kinesthetic sense is internal and enables us to judge without
the help of the vision by the position and movement of the body parts. Without Kinesthetic you
could not touch your finger to your nose with your eyes shut. In fact, you could have trouble
with any voluntary movement.
VESTIBULAR SENSE

This is the sense of equilibrium or body balance. It also includes the sense of body position or
the orientation. We use this information to determine which way is up and which way is down.

SENSE MODALITY

Each sense organ is highly specialized for dealing with a particular kind of information.

PSYCHOPHYSICS

Study of relationship between the physical nature of stimuli and a person’s sensory response
to them.

Psychophysics played a central role in the development of the field of psychology and many
of the first psychologists studied issues related to psychophysics. It is easy to see why;
psychophysics bridges the physical world outside (stimulus) and the psychological world
within (response as sensation).

A particularly important contributor to psychophysics was Gustav Fechner, who coined the
term psychophysics and published a seminal work on the subject in 1860 “Elemente Der
Psychophysik”. Fechner was a German scientist working at the University of Leipzig where
Wilhelm Wundt later founded the first formal laboratory.

THRESHOLD

A threshold is a dividing point between energy levels that do not have a detectable effect.
Threshold is also known as limen (German for threshold) and it refers to limits of sensation.

The following are two important thresholds or limens of psychophysics.

1. Absolute Limen (AL) or threshold

2. Difference Limen (DL) or threshold

ABSOLUTE LIMEN (AL) OR THRESHOLD

✓ This is the lower limit of sensation, for example 20Hz is the lower limit for hearing
sensation.
✓ Absolute limen is the minimum stimulus that is required to produce sensation 50
percent of the time or half the time.
 ✓ It is the transition point below which no sensation occurs and above which definitely
we have sensation. Absolute limen is an index of sensitivity of the sense organ.
✓ Absolute limen is the lowest level at which an individual can experience a sensation.
✓ The least amount of energy that can be detected as a stimulation of 50 percent of the
time.
✓ The smallest intensity of a stimulus that must be present for it to be detected.

DIFFERENCE LIMEN (DL) OR THRESHOLD

✓ DL is the lower limit of differentiation.

✓ It can be defined as the stimulus change required to produce the ‘just noticeable
difference (JND)’. The j.n.d is the smallest detectable difference between two stimuli.
✓ Difference limen is the minimal difference that can be detected between two similar
stimuli. Difference threshold is also a point of transition. DL also indicates the
sensitivity of the sense organ.
✓ Difference limen is the smallest change in stimulation that can be detected 50 percent
of the time.

ATTENTION

The process through which certain stimuli are selected from a group of others is generally
referred to as attention.

Attention is the concentration of consciousness upon one object rather than others- Dumvile

Attention is the process of getting an object of thought clearly before the mind- Ross

Besides selection, attention also refers to several other properties like alertness, concentration
and search.

✓ Alertness refers to an individual’s readiness to deal with stimuli that appears before a
person.
✓ Concentration refers to focusing of awareness on certain specific objects while
excluding others for the moment.
✓ Search refers to looking for some specified subset of others among a set of objects.

Attention has:

1. Focus: When the field of awareness is centered on a particular object or event.

 2. Fringe: When objects or events are away from the center of awareness and one is only
vaguely aware of them.

TYPES OF ATTENTION

i. SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Selective attention is simply the act of focusing on a particular object for a period of time while
simultaneously ignoring irrelevant information that is also occurring.

FACTORS AFFECTING SELECTIVE ATTENTION

i. External factors: Characteristics of the stimuli/outside situation which make the

strongest aid for capturing our attention.

✓ Nature of the stimulus: All types of stimuli are not able to bring the same degree of
attention. A picture attracts attention more readily than words. Among the pictures, the
pictures of human beings invite more attention. Similarly, rhythmic auditory stimuli are
more readily attended than to verbal narrations. In this way an effective stimulus should
always be chosen for capturing maximum attention.
✓ Intensity and size of the stimulus: In comparison with the weak stimulus, the immense
stimulus attracts more attention of an individual. Our attention become easily directed
towards a loud sound, a bright light or a strong smell, and also a large building will be
more readily attended to, than a small one.
✓ Contrast, change and variety: Change and variety strike attention more easily than
sameness and absence of change, e.g. we do not notice the ticking sound of a clock put
on the wall until it stops ticking, that is any change in the attention to which you have
been attracted immediately capture your attention. The factor, contact or change is
highly responsible for capturing attention of the organism and contributes more than
the intensity, size or nature of the stimulus.
✓ Repetition of stimulus: Repetition is the factor of great importance in securing
attention. Because one may ignore a stimulus at first instance, but if it is repeated for
several times it captures our attention, e.g. a miss-spelled word is more likely to be
noticed, if it occurs twice in the same paragraph than, if it occurs only once. While
giving lecture the important aspects of the speech are often repeated so that the attention
of the audience can be easily directed to the valuable points.
 ✓ Movement of the stimulus: The moving stimulus catches our attention more quickly
than a stimulus that does not move. We are more sensitive to objects that move in our
field of vision, e.g. advertisers make use of this fact and try to catch the attention of
people through moving electric lights.
ii. Internal factors: lie within the individual. These factors predispose the individual to
respond to objective factors, to attend to those activities that fulfil his desires and
motives and suit his interest and attitude. It is the mental state of the perceiver.
✓ Motivational factors: Our basic needs and motives to a great extent, determine our
attention, thirst, hunger, sex, curiosity, fear are some of the important motives that
influence attention, e.g. small children get attracted towards eatables.
✓ Cognitive factors:
• Interest: We attend to objects in which we have interest. We would like to watch a
movie or a serial in TV because we are interested in the subject around which the movie
or serial revolves. In any get-together if any subject of our interest is discussed that
attracts our attention easily and makes us to participate in the discussion. In our day-to-
day life we pay attention to the stimulus we are interested in.
• Attitude/mood: What we attend to is influenced by the moods and attitudes. When we
are disturbed or in angry mood, we notice the smallest mistake of others very easily.
Likewise, our favourable and unfavourable attitudes also determine our attention. After
discussing subjective and objective factors, we realize that these factors are interrelated.
How much or in what way we attend to a stimulus depends on subjective as well as
objective factors.
• Mindset/preparatory set: Person’s readiness to respond determines his attention. If
we are expecting a stimulus, occurrence of that stimulus along with many other stimuli
may not come in the way of attending to that particular stimulus. At a time when
students are expecting the examination time table by the end of the semester the time
table put out on the notice board along with other notices would attract their attention
easily.
THEORIES OF SELECTIVE ATTENTION
A. FILTER THEORY
• Developed by Donald Broadbent, 1956
• He suggested that our capacity to process information is limited in terms of
capacity, and our selection of information to process takes place early on in
 the perceptual process. In order to do this, we utilize a filter to determine which
information to attend to. All stimuli are first processed based upon physical
properties that include colour, loudness, direction, and pitch. Our selective filters
then allow for certain stimuli to pass through for further processing while other
stimuli are rejected.
• Many stimuli simultaneously enter our receptors creating a kind of “bottleneck”
situation, but allows only 1 stimulus to pass through for higher levels of processing
and uunattended messages are discarded.
B. FILTER-ATTENUATION THEORY
• Developed by Triesman, 1962.
• Modified filter theory.
• Stimulus are not completely blocked, but gets weak thus some of them manage to
reach higher levels especially those which are personal.
C. MULTIMODE THEORY
• Developed by Johnston & Heinz, 1978
• Multimode theory proposes that attention is flexible. Selection of one message over
another message can be made at any of various different points in the course of
information processing. Processing occurs in three stages.
• Stage 1: sensory representations (less effort)
• Stage 2: semantic representations (more effort)
• Stage 3: sensory + semantic (most effort)

2. DIVIDED ATTENTION

Divided attention is a type of simultaneous attention that allows us to process different

information sources and successfully carry out multiple tasks at a time. Examples are
singing along to a song while driving, having a conversation while walking, or listening to
music while grocery shopping.

Automatic processing has 3 main characteristics:

i. It takes place unconsciously

ii. It occurs without intention
iii. It involves very little (or no) thought processes
 3. SUSTAINED ATTENTION

Ability to focus on one specific task for a continuous amount of time without being distracted.
Also known as “vigilance”.

FACTORS INFLUECING SUSTAINED ATTENTION

✓ Performance is found to be superior when the stimuli are auditory than when they are
visual.
✓ Intense and long-lasting stimuli facilitate sustained attention and result in better
performance.
✓ Temporal uncertainty: when stimuli appear at regular intervals of time, they are
attended better than when they appear at irregular intervals.
✓ Spatial uncertainty: stimuli that appear at a fixed place are readily attended, whereas
those appear at random locations are difficult to attend.

SPAN OF ATTENTION

The number of objects one can attend to at a brief exposure (i.e. a fraction of a second). Also
known as “perceptual span”. This can be determined by the use of an instrument called
Tachistoscope. Miller’s magic number= 7+/-2 (means that at a time, people can attend to a set
of 5-7 numbers, which can be extended to 9 or more under exceptional conditions)

PERCEPTION

Perception is the organization of sensory information into meaningful experiences.

PROCESSING APPROACHES

BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING

✓ The idea that recognition process begins from the parts, which serve as the basis for the
recognition of the whole.
✓ Lays emphasis on the features of stimuli in perception, and considers perception as a
process of mental construction.
TOP-DOWN PROCESSING

✓ The notion that recognition process begins from the whole, which leads to identification
of is various components.
✓ Lays emphasis on the perceiver, and considers perception as a process of recognition
or identification of stimuli.

In perception both the processes interact with each other to provide us with an understanding
of the world.

FACTORS INFLUENCING PERCEIVER

• Motivation: the needs and desires of a perceiver strongly influence their perception.
People want to fulfil their needs and desires through various means. One way to do this
is to perceive objects in a picture as something that will satisfy their need. Experiments
show that when hungry persons were shown ambiguous pictures, they were found to
perceive them as food objects more often than non-hungry persons.
• Expectations/perceptual sets: the expectations about what we might perceive in a
given situation also influence our perception. The phenomenon of perceptual
familiarisation or perceptual generalisations reflects a strong tendency to see what we
expect to see even when the results do not accurately reflect external reality.
• Cognitive styles: refers to a consistent way of dealing with our environment. It
significantly affects the way we perceive the environment. Field dependent people
perceive the external world in its totality, i.e. in a global or holistic manner. Field
independent people perceive the external world by breaking it into smaller units, i.e. in
an analytic or differentiated manner.

CULTURAL BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE

Different experiences and learning opportunities available to people in different cultural

settings also influence their perception. People coming from a pictureless environment fail to
recognise objects in pictures. Hudson studied the perception of pictures by African students,
and noted several difficulties. The studies indicate that the perceiver plays a key role in the
process of perception. People process and interpret stimuli in their own ways depending on
their personal, social and cultural conditions.
PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTUAL ORGANSATION

The process of organising visual field into meaningful wholes is known as “form perception”.
According to Gestalt psychologists, we perceive different stimuli not as discrete elements, but
as an organised whole that carries a definite form (whole is different from some of its parts).

In perception process, the stimuli or the sensory information is organized based upon the
Gestalt Principle. The following are the important organizing principles:

1. FIGURE GROUND PRINCIPLE

Our first task in perception is to perceive any object, called the figure, as distinct from its
surroundings, called the ground. As you read this note, the words are the figure; the white
paper, the ground. In the figure and ground concept figure is the stimulus and ground are the
back ground. For example, when you look at the moon, moon is the figure and sky is the back
ground.

We distinguish figure from ground on the basis of following characteristics:

• Figure has a definite form, while the background is relatively formless.

• Figure is more organised as compared to its background.
• Figure has a clear contour, while the background is contour less.
• Figure stands out from the background, while the background stays behind the figure.
• Figure appears clearer, limited and relatively nearer, while the background appears
relatively unclear, unlimited and away from us.
2. PERCEPTUAL GROUPING

It is tendency to group the incoming stimuli into same pattern. It is based upon the innate
Gestalt Principle. The principle of perceptual grouping refers to the tendency to perceive
stimuli as meaningful wholes or patterns. The principles of perceptual grouping were
studied extensively by proponents of Gestalt psychology, such as Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang
Kohler and Max Wertheimer.

i. The principle of Proximity: It is the law of nearness. The principle or law of

nearness states that objects that are closer together in space or time are perceived as
belonging together or as group.

ii. The principle of Similarity: Objects that are similar to one another and have
similar characteristics are perceived as a group.

iii. The principle of Continuity: Tendency to perceive objects as belonging together

if they appear to form a continuous pattern.
iv. The principle of Smallness: Smaller area tends to be seen as figures against a larger
background.

v. The principle of Symmetry: Symmetrical areas tend to be seen as figures against

asymmetrical background.

vi. The principle of Surroundedness: Areas surrounded by others tend to be

perceives as figures.

vii. The principle of Closure: Tendency to perceive objects as whole rather than their
separate parts.
PERCEPTION OF SPACE DEPTH AND DISTANCE

Depth perception is the ability to see 3-dimensional space and to accurately judge the
distances. From the two-dimensional images that fall on our retina, we somehow organize
three dimensional perceptions. Seeing objects in three dimensions, depth perception, allows
us to estimate the distance of an oncoming car or the height of a mountain. Without depth
perception we can’t drive a car, bi-cycle, thread a needle or simply navigate around our
room and the world would be a flat surface.

Experiment: Depth perception ability is partly innate Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk
(1960) discovered this using a miniature visual cliff – a laboratory device with a drop off
covered by sturdy glass, for testing depth perception in infants and other animals. Back in
their Cornel University laboratory, Gibson and Walk placed 6 to 14-month-old infants on
the edge of a visual cliff. Then their mothers coaxed them to crawl out on the glass. Most
refused to do so, indicating they could perceive depth. Perhaps by crawling age they had
learned to perceive depth. Yet new born animals with virtually no visual experience
respond similarly.

CUES FOR DEPTH PERCEPTION

To perceive depth and distance we make use of many cues, these cues can be divided into
two categories:

1. Monocular cues: It includes visual cues requiring the use of one eye. Also
known as pictorial cues

✓ Relative size: if we consider two objects of the same size, the one which appears to be
small in size will be far away from the one which provides a larger image.
✓ Interposition/overlapping: occurs when one object partly blocks a second object. The
first object is perceived as being closer, the second as more distant.
✓ Linear perspective: parallel lines appear to converge in the distance, the greater the
effect the farther away an object appears to be.
✓ Aerial perspective: distant objects have a hazy appearance and somewhat blurred
outline.
 ✓ Light and shade: in the light some parts of the object get highlighted, whereas some
parts become darker.
✓ Relative height: larger objects are perceived as being closer and smaller objects as
being farther away.
✓ Texture gradient: visual field having more density of elements is seen farther away.
✓ Motion parallax- distant objects appear to move slowly than the objects which are
close. Kinetic monocular cue.

2. Binocular cues: It includes depth cues that function only when both eyes are
used.

✓ Retinal disparity- It is also known as binocular parallax. Our eyes observe objects
from slightly different positions in space. The difference between these two images is
interpreted by our brains to provide another cue to depth.
✓ Convergence- One binocular cue for distance perception comes from the muscles that
control the convergence of the eyes. When we look at objects that are fairly close to us,
our eyes tend to converge-to turn slightly inward towards each other. The sensation
from the muscles that control the movement of the eyes thus provide another cue to
distance.
✓ Accommodation- visual action of ciliary muscles to change the shape of the lens.
These muscles change he thickness of the lens of the eye. As object moves nearer, the
muscle contracts and the thickness of the lens increases. The signal about the degree of
contraction of the muscle is sent to the brain, which provides the cue for distance.

PERCEPTUAL CONSTANCIES

Perception of objects as relatively stable in spite of changes in the stimulation of receptors

is called perceptual constancy.

We have learned to perceive certain objects in the same way regardless of changing
conditions; In perpetual constancy, the individual gives the same meaning despite the
variation in the sensation. There are three types of perceptual constancy. They are:

✓ Size constancy: In this the size of the familiar stimulus is perceived as the same despite
the variation in the size of the retinal image. For e.g. when we stand in front of a pillar
 the size of the retinal image will be big and if we see it from a long distance the size of
the retinal image is small, even though it looks small we tend to say pillar is huge
because we knew that a pillar is huge.
✓ Shape constancy: In this the shape of the familiar object is perceived as the same
despite the variation in the shape of the stimulus in retinal image. For e.g. when we look
at the pencil it is cylindrical in shape but when we look at the pencil in different angle
the shape of the retinal image varies but we know that the pencil is cylindrical.
✓ Brightness constancy: In this the individual gives the same meaning to a familiar
stimulus despite the variations in the sensation i.e. colour of the retinal image, for e.g.
when the individual looks at the milk under different colour lights, the colour of the
retinal image varies but the individual will constantly say that the colour of the milk is
white. It is also known as colour constancy.

ILLUSIONS

In the perception we give meaning to the stimulus or sensation. Since the perception is
subjective there are chances for errors in the perception. One such error is the illusion.

Misperceptions resulting from misinterpretation of information received by our sensory organs

are known as illusions. Examples: sometimes we may mistake a rope for a snake and vice versa,
Mirages, converging railway tracks at the distance, A straight pencil dipped into water appears
to be bent inside the water.

Illusion involves all the sensation it may be Visual illusion, Auditory illusion, Gustatory
illusion, Olfactory illusion, Touch (or) Somesthesis illusion. But the most widely studied
illusion is the visual illusion.

Characteristics

• For the illusion stimulus is required.

• Illusion involves all the sensation (Visual, Auditory, Gustatory, olfactory and
Somesthesis)’
• Illusion is a normal experience
Geometrical illusions

✓ Muller-Lyer illusion – a distorted visual perception of length. The Muller-Lyer effect,

the apparent difference in the length of a line as the result of its adornment with
arrowheads or arrow tails.

✓ Vertical-Horizontal illusion: The vertical–horizontal illusion is the tendency for

observers to overestimate the length of a vertical line relative to a horizontal line of the
same length. This involves a bisecting component that causes the bisecting line to
appear longer than the line that is bisected.

Apparent movement illusions

Illusion is also experienced in perception of movement. Such an illusion occurs when a person
watches a movie. The movement of the object and the individual on the screen appears to be
real even though no movement of object or person occurs on the screen. This illusion is
produced by perceiving a series of still pictures in rapid speed. Another example is the serial
and the neon sign light. Such illusion in perception of movement is known as phi phenomenon
or stroboscopic movement.

SOCIO-CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON PERCEPTION

✓ Several psychologists have studied the processes of perception in different socio-

cultural settings.
✓ It was found that African students showed greater susceptibility to horizontal-vertical
illusion, whereas Western subjects showed greater susceptibility to Muller-Lyer
illusion.
✓ Living in dense forests the African subjects regularly experienced verticality and
developed a tendency to overestimate it.
✓ The Westerners who lived in an environment characterised by right angles, developed
a tendency to underestimate the length of lines characterised by enclosure.
✓ It suggests that the habits of perception are learnt differently in different cultural
settings.
✓ Hudson found that people who had never seen pictures had great difficulty in
recognising objects depicted in them and in interpreting depth cues.
✓ Sinha and Mishra have carried out several studies on pictorial perception in diverse
cultural settings and found that pictures are strongly related to the cultural experiences
of people.