Sensation

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Sensation Perception

• Lecture 6
• 2/09/04

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Scent of a Woman
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• Does smell really signify attractiveness?

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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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Sniffing out the truth
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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

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Example- Vision

• Sunset
• Sensory receptors in eyes
• Neural impulses (Chemical rxn of light sensitive
  cells)
• Brain (occipital lobe)

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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?

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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

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Olfactory System
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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 gt men in ID-ing different smells
• Some are anosmic (Ben Cohen)

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Age

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

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How early?

• Expose fetal rat pups to lemon scent
• Nursing preference
• Place-preference task
• Mate preference

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How sensitive to scent are we?

• Sniffing Studies
• College students can ID own shirts
• Mothers can pick out childrens
• Most can ID Men vs. women
• Women can sniff attractive men

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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 gt 6 miles away!

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4 categories of behavior affected by Pheromones

1. Mother-Infant Interaction
2. Territorial Marking
3. Reproductive Synchrony
4. Sexual Attraction

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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

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Fragrance enhanced performance

• Yale Chocolate Study, 1991

RETEST
Odor
No Odor
21 14
13 14
Odor
LEARNING
No Odor
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Fragrance Arousal

• Write description of personality
• Exchange with partner
• Rate partner
• Exchange
• Angry vs. Nonangry
• Aggression Machine
• Jungle gardenia vs. no scent

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Fragrance enhances aggression
NO SCENT PERFUME
NOT ANGRY 3 2
ANGRY 3 4
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• Organization and interpretation of visual
  information

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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

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Perceptual Set

• Center figure depends on the order in which one
  looks at the figures
• If scanned from the left, mans face
• If scanned from the right, a womans figure

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Perceptual Set Letter B or Number 13?
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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?

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Gestalt Laws of Grouping

• We tend to group collections of shapes, sizes,
  colors, and other features into perceptual wholes

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• 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

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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

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White men cant jump, 1997
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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

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Highly adept, yet often fooled
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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

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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

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Procedure

• 36 infants 6-14 months
• Placed on shallow side
• Mothers called from deep side
• also chicks, turtles, rats, lambs, kids, pigs
  kittens

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Results

• ALL ps 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

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Binocular Cues to Depth
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The Müller-Lyer Illusion

• Perceived length of line altered by position of
  other lines enclosing it

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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.

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