PSY403 Sensation and Perception Key Notes

The following document includes my own explanations and definitions using the textbook and resources to explain key points throughout the course. The notes include information on: Sensation and perception • The gestalt approach • Examples of psychophysical measurements • Studying massed brain activity • How light travels • The three types of ganglion cells • Viewing objects with normal eyes, or abnormalities (nearsighted, farsighted) • Visual acuity • The feature integration approach • Perceiving letters • Monocular and binocular cues • Size constancy • The trichromatic theory of color and the opponent-process theory of color • Retinal color vision deficiency • theoretical explanations for motion perception • the brain pathways involved in color perception • how sound travels through the ear and the different parts of the ear • two types of hair cells • sound frequency and sound intensity • auditory localization • central processes in auditory perception • relative pitch, absolute pitch, and tone deafness • the brain and cognition in music perception • theories of speech perception • the five qualities of taste • pheromones • three ways to control pain • passive touch and active touch • methods of studying perceptual development in infancy • The Gibson & Walk’s visual cliff experiments • Presbyopia (occurs in late adulthood or old age) • Problems and methodologies when studying perception in very young or old individuals