Sensation and perception is an area in experimental psychology. It covers processes with which humans achieve perception of the environments: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. We tend to overlook complexity of such processes because they seem self-evident. For instance, isn't it so easy to recognize the face of your best friend among a dozen of strangers? Or don't you know immediately that it is your mom as soon as you pick up the phone and the woman speaks one word? Yet, even these seemingly simple and effortless behaviors involve many processes and various parts of the nervous system if we were to scientifically explain how they happen. For this purpose, we will look at each sense from both neuroscientific and behavioral aspects.
Prerequisite:
- PSY 201 Elementary Statistics
- PSY 202 Research Methods in Psychology
This course provides hands-on experience in classical experiments of sensation and perception as well as demonstrations of perceptual phenomena and physiological basis of perception. We will study selected topics such as visual illusion, depth perception, and tactile sensitivity. Students are expected to be able to identify experimental designs and variables, and perform appropriate statistical tests on the data we collect with SPSS. Students will practice writing research papers in the APA style and understand the forms of conference presentations. Because this course heavily relies on research methods, computer applications and statistics, it is ideal for students planning to pursue graduate studies in psychology.
Prerequisite:
- PSY 201 Elementary Statistics
- PSY 202 Research Methods in Psychology
- PSY 300 Computer Applications in Psychology
- PSY 303 Sensation and Perception (or concurrent enrollment)