Sensation & Perception

1. Sensation & Perception Lecture 6 2/09/04

2. Scent of a Woman

3. Does smell really signify attractiveness?

4. From Scentsational Sex: The Secret to Using Aroma for Arousal, 1998 “PPL are powerfully influenced no by manly, sweet, or earthy colognes, but by odd mixtures of everyday odors- pumpkin pie and lavender for men, or licorice candy mixed with cucumber for women”

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6. How does physical energy become a psychological experience? • Sensation • Sensory receptors in eyes, ears, nose absorb raw, physical energy • Transduction • Raw energy converted to neural signals to be sent to brain • Perception • Signals selected, organized & interpreted

7. Example- Vision Sunset Sensory receptors in eyes Neural impulses (Chemical rxn of light sensitive cells) Brain (occipital lobe)

8. Importance of Smell • Past: used sweat, brain, urine, odor to diagnose illness • Today: Aromatherapy (inhalation of odors) to ward off illness • Dogs have 200 million olfactory receptors, we have only 10 million • Dogs mark territory, signal danger, establish dominance, attract mates, track down animals, criminals, drugs, disease… • Can our behavior influenced by odor?

9. How our nose knows • Breathe through nose and mouth to inhale airborne oderant molecules • Molecules dissolved and trapped by olfactory receptors • Like lock & key, AP activated in olfactory bulb • Info DIRECTLY distributed throughout cortex & limbic system • What do I smell, how do I feel about that smell, have I smelled that before & Awareness

10. Olfactory System

11. Individuals differ in smelling sensitivity • We can distinguish among 10,000 different odor molecules • Primary odors are vinegar, rose, mint, rotten egg, mothballs, dry-cleaning fluid, musk • Women > men in ID-ing different smells • Some are anosmic (Ben Cohen)

12. Age • Nursing infants (2wks) prefer their own mother’s body odor to others. • Olfactory sensitivity peaks in middle age and declines in 70’s + 80’s • Based on National Geographic scratch n’ sniff recognition test.

13. How early? • Expose fetal rat pups to lemon scent • Nursing preference • Place-preference task • Mate preference

14. How sensitive to scent are we? • Sniffing Studies • College students can ID own shirts • Mothers can pick out children’s • Most can ID Men vs. women • Women can ‘sniff’ attractive men

15. Pheromones • Chemicals secreted by animals of same species to transmit signals • Dogs in heat… • E.g. male Emperor Moth • Chemoreceptors on antennae can detect scent of virgin female > 6 miles away!

16. 4 categories of behavior affected by Pheromones • Mother-Infant Interaction • Territorial Marking • Reproductive Synchrony • Sexual Attraction

17. “if you had to smell it all the time” • 49 unmarried women • Chose smell of genetically similar men to fathers • Women who had pheromone added to perfume reported 50% increase in sexual attention from men • Sexual intercourse, kissing, heavy petting, affection, slept closer

18. Fragrance enhanced performance Yale Chocolate Study, 1991 RETEST Odor No Odor Odor LEARNING No Odor

19. Fragrance & Arousal • Write description of personality • Exchange with partner • Rate partner • Exchange • Angry vs. Nonangry • “Aggression Machine” • Jungle gardenia vs. no scent

20. Fragrance enhances aggression

21. Organization and interpretation of visual information

22. How well do our senses sense? • Experience is subjective • The same visual input can result in radically different perceptions • Psychophysics • Relationship between physical stimulation AND subjective sensations • Signal Detection Theory • Detection based on signal AND response criterion

23. Perceptual Set • Center figure depends on the order in which one looks at the figures: • If scanned from the left, man’s face • If scanned from the right, a woman’s figure

24. Perceptual Set: Letter B or Number 13?

25. Gestalt Principles Applied • Figure & Ground • Dividing visual displays into the THING being looked at and the BACKGROUND against which it stands • THING has substance, stands in front of ground • Fundamental Attribution Error • Discounting the situation, attributing behavior to dispositions • Why did she litter? And you?

27. Gestalt Laws of Grouping • We tend to group collections of shapes, sizes, colors, and other features into perceptual wholes

28. Proximity • Seeing 3 pair of lines in A • Similarity • Seeing columns of orange and red dots in B • Continuity • Seeing lines that connect 1 to 2 and 3 to 4 in C • Closure • Seeing a horse in D

29. Stereotypes • Generalizations about groups with identical characteristics • We tend to see members of stereotyped groups as more similar to stereotype than they actually are • Cliques, sports teams, majors, Greek life • Read description of b-ball player…

30. White men can’t jump, 1997

31. Closure • The Zeingarnik Effect • Tendency to remember an uncompleted task rather than a completed one • Unfinished business creates “psychic tension” • Tension motivates us to seek closure by completing the task

32. Highly adept, yet often fooled

33. S.B. • Blind until 52 • Corneal Transplant performed, sight restored • Looked out hospital window • Small objects below • Climbed out on 4th floor ledge to check them out by lowering himself with hands! • No depth perception

34. The Visual Cliff Eleanor Gibson & Richard Walk, 1960 • Visual illusion of a cliff • At which point in dvlptl process can humans perceive depth • Nativist vs. empiricist perspective

35. Procedure • 36 infants 6-14 months • Placed on ‘shallow side’ • Mothers called from deep side • *also chicks, turtles, rats, lambs, kids, pigs & kittens

36. Results • ALL p’s crawled when called from shallow side • ONLY 3 crept across “cliff” • Animal abilities varied by when skill was needed for survival • Chicks less than 24hrs made no mistakes • Rats showed no preference

37. Binocular Cues to Depth

38. The Müller-Lyer Illusion • Perceived length of line altered by position of other lines enclosing it

39. The Ponzo Illusion • Illusion in which the perceived line length is affected by linear perspective cues. • Side lines seem to converge • Top line seems farther away • But the retinal images of the red lines are equal.