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Chapter 3

Sensation and Perception

Sensation is the ability to detect external stimuli using specific sensory receptors present in the eyes, ears, nose, skin, and taste buds. For instance, …
Perception is the process through which sensory inputs are organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced. It involves interactions between sensory …
Depth perception enables the perception of objects in three dimensions. It uses both binocular and monocular cues to create a sense of depth. Binocular …
Light enters the eye through the cornea, a thin transparent layer that refracts light to help focus it as it enters the eye, directing the light towards …
Researchers have developed two theories to explain color vision. The trichromatic theory suggests that color perception arises from three types of cone …
The auditory system in the ear facilitates sound perception. Sound waves enter the outer ear and transmit through the ear canal, causing the eardrum to …
Place theory and frequency theory are two primary theories that explain how the brain receives pitch information. Place theory suggests that the brain …
The tactile sense is a sense of touch that can recognize sensations such as pressure, temperature, or pain through specialized receptors in the skin. For …
Gestalt principles of perception explain how objects are naturally grouped together to form whole, organized patterns or shapes. It includes the following …
Subliminal perception refers to the processing of sensory information that occurs below the level of conscious awareness. Researchers study subliminal …
Extrasensory perception, or ESP, is the ability to perceive events beyond the known senses, such as sight, hearing, and touch. Parapsychologists, …
Perception is influenced by the perceptual set, context, motivation, and emotion. Perceptual set, or perceptual expectancy, is the tendency to perceive …
Perceptual constancy refers to the recognition that objects remain constant even when they appear different due to changes in lighting, distance, or …
Parallel processing allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and depth, simultaneously. The information is …
Pain is a crucial sensation that alerts the body to potential damage. Pain receptors are widely dispersed throughout the body, present in the skin, muscle …
Visual agnosia is a condition where individuals can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or recognize it despite having normal …
Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is the inability to recognize faces. In severe cases, individuals with prosopagnosia may not recognize close …
Synesthesia is a condition in which the networks of interconnected neurons that process specific types of information for two or more senses are joined, …
Collective animal behavior arises from individual motivations and social interactions that are critical for individual fitness. Fish have long inspired …
To quantify an individual's subjective pain severity, standardized pain rating scales such as the numeric rating scale (NRS), visual analog scale …
Eye-tracking methods may allow the online monitoring of cognitive processing during visual duration perception tasks, where participants are asked to …