Sensory Attentional

CBSE Class 11 Psychology

NCERT Solutions
Chapter-5
Sensory, Attentional and Perceptual Processes

1. Explain the functional limitations of sense organs.
Ans. Our sense organs function with certain limitations. For example, our eyes cannot see things which are very dim or very bright. Similarly our ears cannot hear very faint or very loud sounds. The same is true for other sense organs also. As human beings, we function within a limited range of stimulation. For being noticed by a sensory receptor, a stimulus has to be of an optimal intensity or magnitude. The relationship between stimuli and the sensations they evoke has been studied in a discipline, called psycho-physics.

2. What is meant by light and dark adaptation? How do they take place?
Ans. Light adaptation refers to the process of adjusting to bright light after exposure to dim light. This process takes nearly a minute or two. On the other hand, dark adaptation refers to the process of adjusting to a dimly illuminated environment after exposure to bright light. This may take half an hour or even longer depending on the previous level of exposure of the eye to light.

3. What is colour vision and what are the dimensions of colour?
Ans. Colour is a psychological property of our sensory experience. It is created when our brain interprets the information received from the external world. Colour vision is thus a person's ability to distinguish different shades of colour.

Dimensions of colour

A person with normal colour vision can distinguish more than seven million different shades of colour.
Our experiences of colour can be described in terms of three basic dimensions, called hue, saturation, and brightness.
Hue is a property of chromatic colours. In simple words, it refers to the name of the colour, e.g., red, blue, and green. Hue varies with wavelength, and each colour is identified with a specific wavelength. For example, blue has a wavelength of about 465 nm, and green of about 500 nm. Achromatic colours like black, white or grey are not characterised by hues.
Saturation is a psychological attribute that refers to the relative amount of hue of a surface or object. The light of single wavelength (monochromatic) appears to be highly saturated. As we mix different wavelengths, the saturation decreases. The colour grey is completely unsaturated.
Brightness is the perceived intensity of light. It varies across both chromatic and achromatic colours. White and black represent the top and bottom of the brightness dimension. White has the highest degree of brightness, whereas black has the lowest degree.

4. How does auditory sensation take place?
Ans. Audition or hearing is also an important sense modality that carries great value for us. It provides us with reliable spatial information. Besides orienting us to certain objects or individuals, it plays a vital role in spoken communication also.
Auditory sensation begins when sound enters our ear and stimulates the chief organs of hearing. Sound servers as stimulus for auditory sensation. Loudness, pitch, and timbre are the properties of sound. Organ of corti located in the basilar membrane is the chief organ of hearing.
Auditory sensation begins when sound enters our ear and stimulates the chief organs of hearing.
Pinna collects the sound vibrations and serves them to the tympanum through the auditory meatus. From the tympanic cavity the vibrations are transferred to the three ossicles, which increase their strength and transmit them to the inner ear. In the inner ear the cochlea receives the sound waves.
Through vibrations the endolymph is set in motion, which also vibrates the organ of corti. Finally, the impulses are sent to the auditory nerve, which emerges at the base of cochlea and reaches the auditory cortex where the impulse is interpreted.

5. Define attention. Explain its properties.
Ans. The process through which certain stimuli are selected from a group of others is generally referred to as attention. Attention also refers to several other properties like alertness, concentration, and search. Alertness refers to an individual’s readiness to deal with stimuli that appear before her/him.

The properties of attentions are:

Selection: A large number of stimuli impinge upon our sense organs simultaneously, but we do not notice all of them at the same time. Only a selected few of them are noticed. For example, when you enter your classroom you encounter several things in it, such as doors, walls, windows, paintings on walls, tables, chairs, students, schoolbags, water bottles, and so on, but you selectively focus only on one or two of them at one time.
Alertness: Alertness refers to an individual’s readiness to deal with stimuli that appear before her/him. While participating in a race in your school, you might have seen the participants on the starting line in an alert state waiting for the whistle to blow in order to run.
Concentration: Concentration refers to focusing of awareness on certain specific objects while excluding others for the moment. For example, in the classroom, a student concentrates on the teacher’s lecture and ignores all sorts of noises coming from different corners of the school.
Search: In search an observer looks for some specified subset of objects among a set of objects. For example, when you go to fetch your younger sister and brother from the school, you just look for them among innumerable boys and girls. All these activities require some kind of effort on the part of people. Attention in this sense refers to “effort allocation”.

6. State the determinants of selective attention. How does selective attention differ from sustained attention?
Ans. Selective attention is concerned mainly with the selection of a limited number of stimuli or objects from a large number of stimuli. This means that it can deal only with a few stimuli at a given moment of time.
Psychologists have identified a number of factors that determine the selection of stimuli. They are generally classified as “external” and “internal” factors.

External factors

External are related to the features of stimuli. Other things held constant, the size, intensity, and motion of stimuli appear to be important determinants of attention. Large, bright, and moving stimuli easily catch our attention. Stimuli, which are novel and moderately complex, also easily get into our focus. Studies indicate that human photographs are more likely to be attended to than the photographs of inanimate objects. Similarly, rhythmic auditory stimuli are more readily attended to than verbal narrations. Sudden and intense stimuli have a wonderful capacity to draw attention.

Internal factors

Internal factors lie within the individual. These may be divided into two main categories, viz. motivational factors and cognitive factors.

i) Motivational factors relate to our biological or social needs. When we are hungry, we notice even a faint smell of food. A student taking an examination is likely to focus on a teacher’s instructions more than other students.
ii) Cognitive factors include factors like interest, attitude, and preparatory set. Objects or events, which appear interesting, are readily attended by individuals. Similarly we pay quick attention to certain objects or events to which we are favourably disposed. Preparatory set generates a mental state to act in a certain way and readiness of the individual to respond to one kind of stimuli and not to others.

7. What is the main proposition of Gestalt psychologists with respect to perception of the visual field?

Ans. Gestalt psychologists, prominent among them are Koumlhler, Koffka, and Wertheimer. Gestalt means a regular figure or a form.

The main proposition of Gestalt psychologists with respect to perception of the visual filed are:

Humans perceive different stimuli not as discrete elements, but as an organised “whole” that carries a definite form. They believe that the form of an object lies in its whole, which is different from the sum of their parts. For example, a flower pot with a bunch of flowers is a whole. If the flowers are removed, the flower pot still remains a whole. It is the configuration of the flower pot that has changed. Flower pot with flowers is one configuration; without flowers it is another configuration.
The Gestalt psychologists also indicate that our cerebral processes are always oriented towards the perception of a good figure or pragnanz. That is the reason why we perceive everything in an organised form.
The most primitive organisation takes place in the form of figure-ground segregation.When we look at a surface, certain aspects of the surface clearly stand out as separate entities, whereas others do not. The figure-ground relationship helps clarity the distinction between sensation and perception.
Contours are formed whenever a marked difference occurs in the brightness or colour of the background. Contours give shape to the objects in our visual world because they mark one object off-from another or they mark an object off from the general ground. Contours determine shape, but by themselves they are shapeless.
Laws of grouping describe basic ways in which we group items together perceptually. These are simple principles through which we perceive the world around us. The principles of grouping include similarity, proximity, closure, and continuity.
The principle of similarity says that objects of similar shape, size, or colour tend to be grouped together. In the auditory sense, sounds of similar tone and intensity are grouped together.
The law of proximity says that items which are close together in space or time tend to be perceived as belonging together or forming an organized group
Principle of continuation describes the tendency to perceive a line that starts in one way as continuing in the same way.
Law of closure refers to perceptual processes that organize the perceived world by filling in gaps in stimulation.
In case of principle of continuity if interruptions are too pronounced or too long, continuity disappears and a unified whole is not perceived.
When contours are disrupted visually, objects are difficult to distinguish from the background. This is camouflage. It works because it breaks up contours. e.g. uniform of soldiers in the forest.

8. How does perception of space take place?

Ans. The visual field or surface in which things exist, move or can be placed is called space. The space in which we live is organised in three dimensions. We perceive not only the spatial attributes (e.g., size, shape, direction) of various objects, but also the distance between the objects found in this space. While the images of objects projected on to our retina are flat and two dimensional (left, right, up, down), we still perceive three dimensions in the space. It occurs due to our ability to transfer a two dimensional retinal vision into a three dimensional perception. The process of viewing the world in three dimensions is called distance or depth perception.

9. What are the monocular cues of depth perception? Explain the role of binocular cues in the perception of depth.
Ans. Depth perception is important in our daily life. For example, when we drive, we use depth to assess the distance of an approaching automobile, or when we decide to call a person walking down the street, we determine the loudness with which to call.
In perceiving depth, we depend on two main sources of information, called cues. One is called binocular cues because they require both eyes. Another is called monocular cues, because they allow us to perceive depth with just one eye. A number of such cues are used to change a two dimensional image into a three dimensional perception.

Monoclular cues

Monocular cues of depth perception are effective when the objects are viewed with only one eye. These cues are often used by artists to induce depth in two dimensional paintings. Hence, they are also known as pictorial cues. Some important monocular cues that help us in judging the distance and depth in two dimensional surfaces are described below.

Relative Size : The size of retinal image allows us to judge distance based on our past and present experience with similar objects. As the objects get away, the retinal image becomes smaller and smaller. We tend to perceive an object farther away when it appears small, and closer when it appears bigger.

Interposition or Overlapping : These cues occur when some portion of the object is covered by another object. The overlapped object is considered farther away, whereas the object that covers it appears nearer.

Linear Perspective : This reflects a phenomenon by which distant objects appear to be closer together than the nearer objects. For example, parallel lines, such as rail tracks, appear to converge with increasing distance with a vanishing point at the horizon. The more the lines converge, the farther away they appear.

Aerial Perspective : The air contains microscopic particles of dust and moisture that make distant objects look hazy or blurry. This effect is called aerial perspective. For example, distant mountains appear blue due to the scattering of blue light in the atmosphere, whereas the same mountains are perceived to be closer when the atmosphere is clear.

Light and Shade : In the light some parts of the object get highlighted, whereas some parts become darker. Highlights and shadows provide us with information about an object’s distance.

Relative Height : Larger objects are perceived as being closer to the viewer and smaller objects as being farther away. When we expect two objects to be the same size and they are not, the larger of the two will appear closer and the smaller will appear farther away.

Texture Gradient : It represents a phenomenon by which the visual field having more density of elements is seen farther away.

Motion Parallax : It is a kinetic monocular cue, and hence not considered as a pictorial cue. It occurs when objects at different distances move at a different relative speed. The distant objects appear to move slowly than the objects that are close. The rate of an object’s movement provides a cue to its distance. For example, when we travel in a bus, closer objects move “against” the direction of the bus, whereas the farther objects move “with” the direction of the bus.

Binocular cues

Some important cues to depth perception in three dimensional space are provided by both the eyes. Three of them have particularly been found to be interesting.

Retinal or Binocular Disparity : Retinal disparity occurs because the two eyes have different locations in our head. They are separated from each other horizontally by a distance of about 6.5 centimetres. Because of this distance, the image formed on the retina of each eye of the same object is slightly different. This difference between the two images is called retinal disparity. The brain interprets a large retinal disparity to mean a close object and a small retinal disparity to mean a distant object, as the disparity is less for distant objects and more for the near objects.

Convergence : When we see a nearby object our eyes converge inward in order to bring the image on the fovea of each eye. A group of muscles send messages to the brain regarding the degree to which eyes are turning inward, and these messages are interpreted as cues to the perception of depth. The degree of convergence decreases as the object moves further away from the observer. Convergence can be experienced by holding a finger in front of your nose and slowly bringing it closer. The more the eyes turn inward or converge, the nearer the object appears in space.

Accommodation : Accommodation refers to a process by which we focus the image on the retina with the help of cilliary muscle. These muscles change the thickness of the lens of the eye. If the object gets away (more than 2 meters), the muscle is relaxed. As the object moves nearer, the muscle contracts and the thickness of the lens increases. The signal about the degree of contraction of the muscle is sent to the brain, which provides the cue for distance.

10. Why do illusions occur?
Ans. Our perceptions are not always vertical. Sometime we fail to interpret the sensory information correctly. This results in a mismatch between the physical stimuli and its perception. These misperceptions resulting from misinterpretation of information received by our sensory organs are generally known as illusions.

Illusions are experienced more or less by all of us. They result from an external stimulus situation and generate the same kind of experience in each individual. That is why illusions are also called “primitive organisations”.

Although illusions can be experienced by the stimulation of any of our senses, psychologists have studied them more commonly in the visual than in other sense modalities. Some perceptual illusions are universal and found in all individuals. For example, the rail tracks appear to be converging to all of us. These illusions are called universal illusions or permanent illusions as they do not change with experience or practice. Some other illusions seem to vary from individual to individual; these are called personal illusions.

11. How do socio-cultural factors influence our perceptions?
Ans. Several psychologists have studied the processes of perception in different socio- cultural settings.

Psychologists have used the Muller-Lyer and Vertical-Horizontal illusion figures with several groups of people living in Europe, Africa, and many other places. Segall, Campbell, and Herskovits carried out the most extensive study of illusion susceptibility by comparing samples from remote African villages and Western urban settings. It was found that African subjects showed greater susceptibility to horizontal-vertical illusion, whereas Western subjects showed greater susceptibility to Muller-Lyer illusion.

Similar findings have been reported in other studies also. Living in dense forests the African subjects regularly experienced verticality (e.g., long trees) and developed a tendency to overestimate it. The Westerners, who lived in an environment characterised by right angles, developed a tendency to underestimate the length of lines characterised by enclosure (e.g., arrowhead). This conclusion has been confirmed in several studies. It suggests that the habits of perception are learnt differently in different cultural settings.

In some studies people living in different cultural settings have been given pictures for identification of objects and interpretation of depth or other events represented in them. Hudson did a seminal study in Africa, and found that people, who had never seen pictures, had great difficulty in recognising objects depicted in them and in interpreting depth cues (e.g., superimposition). It was indicated that informal instruction in home and habitual exposure to pictures were necessary to sustain the skill of pictorial depth perception.

Sinha and Mishra have carried out several studies on pictorial perception using a variety of pictures with people from diverse cultural settings, such as hunters and gatherers living in forests, agriculturists living in villages, and people employed and living in cities. Their studies indicate that interpretation of pictures is strongly related to cultural experiences of people. While people in general can recognise familiar objects in pictures, those less exposed to pictures have difficulty in the interpretation of actions or events depicted in them.

Sensory Attentional - Solutions