6th grade Psychology

What you’ll learn to do: differentiate between sensation and perception

1890, Portrait of Félix Fénéon, Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, oil on canvas, 73.5 x 92.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Man in a suit holding a top hat is reaching out with a flower in his hand. The background is multicolored swirls.

Sensation and perception are two separate processes that are very closely related. Sensation is input about the physical world obtained by our sensory receptors, and perception is the process by which the brain selects, organizes, and interprets these sensations. In other words, senses are the physiological basis of perception. Perception of the same senses may vary from one person to another because each person’s brain interprets stimuli differently based on that individual’s learning, memory, emotions, and expectations.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Define sensation and explain its connection to the concepts of absolute threshold, difference threshold, and subliminal messages
Discuss the roles attention, motivation, and sensory adaptation play in perception

Sensation

What does it mean to sense something? Sensory receptors are specialized neurons that respond to specific types of stimuli. When sensory information is detected by a sensory receptor, sensation has occurred. For example, light that enters the eye causes chemical changes in cells that line the back of the eye. These cells relay messages, in the form of action potentials (as you learned when studying biopsychology), to the central nervous system. The conversion from sensory stimulus energy to action potential is known as transduction.

You have probably known since elementary school that we have five senses: vision, hearing (audition), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation), and touch (somatosensation). It turns out that this notion of five senses is oversimplified. We also have sensory systems that provide information about balance (the vestibular sense), body position and movement (proprioception and kinesthesia), pain (nociception), and temperature (thermoception).

small candlelight with black background.

Figure 1. The absolute threshold for detecting light is greater than you probably imagined—the human eye can see a candle on a clear night up to 30 miles away!

The sensitivity of a given sensory system to the relevant stimuli can be expressed as an absolute threshold. Absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulus energy that must be present for the stimulus to be detected 50% of the time. Another way to think about this is by asking how dim can a light be or how soft can a sound be and still be detected half of the time. The sensitivity of our sensory receptors can be quite amazing. It has been estimated that on a clear night, the most sensitive sensory cells in the back of the eye can detect a candle flame 30 miles away (Okawa & Sampath, 2007). Under quiet conditions, the hair cells (the receptor cells of the inner ear) can detect the tick of a clock 20 feet away (Galanter, 1962).

It is also possible for us to get messages that are presented below the threshold for conscious awareness—these are called subliminal messages. A stimulus reaches a physiological threshold when it is strong enough to excite sensory receptors and send nerve impulses to the brain: this is an absolute threshold. A message below that threshold is said to be subliminal: we receive it, but we are not consciously aware of it. Therefore, the message is sensed, but for whatever reason, it has not been selected for processing in working or short-term memory. Over the years there has been a great deal of speculation about the use of subliminal messages in advertising, rock music, and self-help audio programs. Research evidence shows that in laboratory settings, people can process and respond to information outside of awareness. But this does not mean that we obey these messages like zombies; in fact, hidden messages have little effect on behavior outside the laboratory (Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Rensink, 2004; Nelson, 2008; Radel, Sarrazin, Legrain, & Gobancé, 2009; Loersch, Durso, & Petty, 2013).

In This Article

Psychologists often define learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience. The psychology of learning focuses on a range of topics related to how people learn and interact with their environments.

One of the first thinkers to study how learning influences behavior was the psychologist John B. Watson who suggested that all behaviors are a result of the learning process. The school of thought that emerged from Watson's work was known as behaviorism. The behavioral school of thought proposed studying internal thoughts, memories, and other mental processes were too subjective. Psychology, the behaviorists believed, should be the scientific study of observable behavior. Behaviorism thrived during the first half of the twentieth century and contributed a great deal to our understanding of some important learning processes.

Are you preparing for a big test in your psychology of learning class? Or are you just interested in a review of learning and behavioral psychology topics? This learning study guide offers a brief overview of some of the major learning issues including behaviorism, classical and operant conditioning.

Let's learn a bit more about the psychology of learning.

Learning

Learning can be defined in many ways, but most psychologists would agree that it is a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from experience. During the first half of the twentieth century, the school of thought known as behaviorism rose to dominate psychology and sought to explain the learning process. The three major types of learning described by behavioral psychology are classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism was the school of thought in psychology that sought to measure only observable behaviors. Founded by John B. Watson and outlined in his seminal 1913 paper Psychology as the Behaviorist View It, the behaviorist standpoint held that psychology was an experimental and objective science and that internal mental processes should not be considered because they could not be directly observed and measured.

Watson's work included the famous Little Albert experiment in which he conditioned a small child to fear a white rat. Behaviorism dominated psychology for much of the early twentieth century. While behavioral approaches remain important today, the later part of the century was marked by the emergence of humanistic psychology, biological psychology, and cognitive psychology.

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is a learning process in which an association is made between a previously neutral stimulus and a stimulus that naturally evokes a response. For example, in Pavlov's classic experiment, the smell of food was the naturally occurring stimulus that was paired with the previously neutral ringing of the bell. Once an association had been made between the two, the sound of the bell alone could lead to a response.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is a learning process in which the probability of response occurring is increased or decreased due to reinforcement or punishment. First studied by Edward Thorndike and later by B.F. Skinner, the underlying idea behind operant conditioning is that the consequencesof our actions shape voluntary behavior. Skinner described how reinforcement could lead to increases in behaviors where punishment would result in decreases. He also found that the timing of when reinforcements were delivered influenced how quickly a behavior was learned and how strong the response would be. The timing and rate of reinforcement are known as schedules of reinforcement.

Observational Learning

Observational learning is a process in which learning occurs through observing and imitating others. Albert Bandura's social learning theorysuggests that in addition to learning through conditioning, people also learn through observing and imitating the actions of others. As demonstrated in his classic "Bobo Doll" experiments, people will imitate the actions of others without direct reinforcement. Four important elements are essential for effective observational learning: attention, motor skills, motivation, and memory.

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