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Other Important Senses

Other Important Senses Touch

Taste

Smell

Body Position and Movement

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Other Important Senses

Sense of touch is a mix of four distinct skin senses- pressure, warmth, cold, and pain.

Bru

ce A

yers

/ Sto

ne/ G

etty

Im

ages

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Skin Senses

Only pressure has identifiable receptors, all other skin sensations are variations of

pressures, warmth, cold and pain.

Burning hot

Pressure Vibration Vibration

Cold, warmth and pain

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Pain

Pain tells the body that something has gone wrong. Usually pain results from damage to the skin and other tissues. There is a rare disease in which the person feels no pain.

Ashley Blocker (right) feels neither painnor extreme hot or cold.

AP Photo/ Stephen M

orton

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Biopsychosocial Influences

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Gate-Control Theory

Melzak and Wall (1965, 1983) proposed that our spinal cord contains neurological

“gates” that either block pain or allow it to be sensed.

Gary C

omer/ PhototakeU

SA.com

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Pain Control

Pain can be controlled by a number of therapies including, drugs, surgery,

acupuncture, exercise, hypnosis and even thought distraction.

Todd R

ichards and Aric V

ills, U.W

. ©

Hunter H

offman, w

ww

.vrpain.com

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Taste

Traditionally taste sensations consisted of sweet, salty, sour and bitter tastes. Recently

receptors for a fifth taste have been discovered called “Umami”.

Sweet Sour Salty Bitter Umami(Fresh

Chicken)

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Sensory Interaction

When one sense affects another sense sensory interaction takes place. So the taste of strawberry interacts with its smell and its

texture on the tongue to produce flavor.

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Smell

Like taste smell is a chemical sense. Odorants enter the nasal cavity to stimulate 5 millions receptors to sense smell. Unlike

taste there are many different forms of smells.

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Age, Gender and Smell

Ability to identify smell peaks during early adulthood but steadily decline after that. Women are better at detecting odors than

men.

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Smell and Memories

Brain region (red) for smell is closely

connected with brain regions (limbic

system) involved with memory, that is

why strong memories are made through the sense of

smell.

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Body Position and Movement

The sense of our body parts’ position and movement is called kinesthesis. And the vestibular sense monitors the head (and

body’s) position.

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://ww

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m

Whirling Dervishes Wire Walk

Bob D

aemm

rich/ The Im

age Works

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Perceptual Organization

Perceptual Organization Perceptual Illusions

Form Perception

Motion Perception

Perceptual Constancy

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Perceptual Illusions

To understand how perception is organized, illusions provide good

examples. It is as good to study faulty perception as other perceptual

phenomena.

Line AB is longer than line BC.

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Tall Arch

Vertical dimension of the

arch looks longer than the

horizontal dimension when both are equal.

Rick F

riedman/ B

lack Star

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Illusion of a Worm

Figure on the right gives us the illusion of a blue hazy “worm” when it is nothing else but blue

lines identical to the picture on the left.

© 1981, by perm

ission of Christoph R

edies and L

othar Spillmann and Pion L

imited, L

ondon

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3-D Illusion

To perceive this figure in two dimensions takes a great deal of effort.

Reprinted w

ith kind permission of E

lsevier Science-NL

. Adapted from

H

offman, D

. & R

ichards, W. Parts of recognition. C

ognition, 63, 29-78

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Perceptual Organization

When vision competes with other senses vision usually wins – a phenomenon called

visual capture.

How do we form meaningful perceptions from sensory information?

We organize it. Gestalt psychologists showed that a figure formed a “whole”

different than its surroundings.

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Organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their

surroundings (ground).

Form Perception

Tim

e Savings S

uggestion, © 2003 R

oger Sheperd.

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Grouping

Having discriminated figure from ground our perception needs to organize figure

into meaningful form using grouping rules.

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Grouping & Reality

Usually grouping principles help us construct reality but at times lead us astray.

Both photos by W

alter Wick. R

eprinted from G

AM

ES

Magazine. .©

1983 PCS G

ames L

imited Partnership

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Depth Perception

Visual Cliff

Depth perception enables us to judge distances. Gibson and Walk (1960) suggested that human infants (crawling age) have depth perception.

Even new born animals show depth perception.

Inne

rvis

ions

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Binocular Cues

Retinal disparity: Images from the two eyes differ. Try looking at your two fingers half

an inch apart about 5 inches away. You will see a “finger sausage” as shown in the inset.

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Binocular Cues

Convergence: Neuromuscular cues. When two eyes move inward (towards the nose) to see near objects, and outward (away from the nose) to see far away objects.

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Monocular Cues

Relative Size: If two objects are similar in size, we perceive one that casts a smaller

retinal image as farther away.

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Monocular Cues

Interposition: Objects that occlude (block) other objects tend to be perceived as

closer.R

ene Magritte, The B

lank Signature, oil on canvas, N

ational Gallery of A

rt, Washington. C

ollection of M

r. and Mrs. Paul M

ellon. Photo by Richard C

arafelli.

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Monocular Cues

Relative Clarity: Because light form distant objects passes through more air, we

perceive hazy objects as farther away than sharp clear objects.

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Monocular Cues

Texture Gradient: Indistinct (fine) texture signals increasing distance.

© E

ric Lessing/ A

rt Resource, N

Y

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Monocular Cues

Relative Height: We perceive objects higher in our field of vision as farther away.

Image courtesy of S

haun P. V

ecera, Ph. D

., adapted from

stimuli that appered in V

ecrera et al., 2002

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Monocular Cues

Relative motion: Objects closer to a fixation point move faster and in opposing direction to objects farther away from a fixation point, which move slower and in the same direction.

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Monocular Cues

Linear Perspective: Parallel lines like rail road tracks, appear to converge with

distance. The more the lines converge, the greater their perceived distance.

© T

he New

Yorker C

ollection, 2002, Jack Ziegler

from cartoonbank.com

. All rights reserved.

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Monocular Cues

Light and Shadow: Nearby objects reflect more light to our eyes. Given two identical objects,

the dimmer one seems further away.

From

“Perceiving S

hape From

Shading” by V

ilayaur S

. Ram

achandran. © 1988 by S

cientific Am

erican, Inc. A

ll rights reserved.

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Motion Perception

Motion Perception: Objects that tend to travel towards us grow in size and ones that move away shrink in size. The same is true when the observer moves to or from an object.