PSYC304 Perception Full Course Assignments Week 6 Forum

The idea behind selective adaptation is that when we view a stimulus with a specific property, neurons tuned to that property fire, and if viewing continues for long enough, these neurons adapt. Discuss how the psychophysical procedure of selective adaptation has been used to demonstrate the link between feature detectors and (a) the perception of orientation, and (b) the perception of size. Be sure to include a discussion of your understanding of the rationale behind selective adaptation experiments and how we can draw conclusions about physiology from the results of such a psychophysical procedure. Provide two examples for the class that support your conclusions. For this week’s discussion, it is expected students will use their readings and outside scholarly web sources to answer this question completely.

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The psychophysical procedure of selective adaptation

Introduction

Selective adaptation is a perceptual phenomenon in which the brain responds to certain stimuli by creating a neural representation of those stimuli that is not identical to the original. It occurs when we try to perceive an object or its features from different angles, viewing it from one side yields a different result than viewing it from another. The effect can be seen in everyday life as well as in experiments where subjects are presented with two identical images but only one will look right at first glance while the other appears upside down or backwards due to selective adaptation.

Selective adaptation

Selective adaptation is the process of reducing a stimulus’s intensity so that it becomes undetectable to your eye. For example, if you stare at a light bulb for too long, your eyes will become desensitized and unable to detect its brightness anymore. This can be compared with what happens when you look at something bright: Your pupil dilates so much that only one-third of its total area is used for light sensitivity (the rest is responsible for focusing).

This phenomenon occurs in all types of vision systems, including color vision and night vision. But selective adaptation plays an especially important role in color perception because it helps us distinguish between different colors on a spectrum before each one reaches threshold (the point where we cannot see any more).

The effect of selective adaptation

Selective adaptation is a phenomenon that occurs when a stimulus is repeatedly presented in the absence of its complement. It is a non-linear effect, meaning that it has no constant relation between stimulus magnitude and response amplitude. As such, it can be used to determine the contrast sensitivity function (CSF).

The CSF describes how much contrast you need for perception to occur at any given point on your retina’s visual field. The standard method for measuring this involves presenting grating stimuli through an aperture located in front of your eye, which allows us to measure how much light enters through each facet of your eye’s lens as well as where exactly on those facets we detect these images (the fovea).

Simultaneous contrast

Simultaneous contrast is a phenomenon in which the intensity of one stimulus is perceived to be greater when presented simultaneously with another stimulus of lower intensity. This effect can occur even when there is no change in either stimulus’s luminance or color, and it has been shown to be independent of other factors that affect perception such as distance and motion.

Simultaneous contrast was first studied by psychologists such as Titchener (1897), who proposed that it reflected an increase in the ability of our brains to detect changes in light levels at a given location on our retinas. Since then, researchers have found evidence supporting this hypothesis: they’ve found that there are specialized cells within our visual cortex—the part responsible for processing information about shapes—that respond differently depending on whether two different images are simultaneously visible or not; these cells may be involved with detecting objects’ edges (which require different neural responses than edges created by moving objects).

Explanation of selective adaptation

Selective adaptation is a phenomenon that occurs in the brain when it encounters new stimuli. The effect of selective adaptation is a result of the brain’s non-linear response to stimuli. This means that the brain isn’t a linear processor and can be influenced by other stimuli in the environment.

The way we perceive things depends on what kind of information has been stored in our memories, which requires awareness and attention from us before we can react appropriately. If you were suddenly presented with something completely new—say, an alien spaceship—you might not know how to respond until after you’ve had time for information about this new experience (such as looking at pictures or videos) so that your brain could process it properly through selective adaptation processes like binocular rivalry or masking tasks where one stimulus disappears while another replaces it with equal intensity on both eyes simultaneously without focusing directly on either eye alone at any given moment!

Evidence for non-linear mechanisms of selective adaptation

As you might expect, the evidence for non-linear mechanisms of selective adaptation is mixed. Some studies have found that the rate of adaptation increases with increasing stimulus intensity or duration, while others report no such relationship. One explanation for this discrepancy is that some experiments fail to control for other factors (e.g., arousal level) that could affect how quickly organisms adapt to a stimulus; however, some researchers argue that this does not account for all possible explanations.

Some evidence also suggests non-linearity in the results of experiments: when an organism’s response reaches its maximum value after being trained with repeated trials at low levels of noise exposure, it can take longer before reaching saturation at higher levels due to habituation effects—which suggests there may be more room between these two points than what researchers originally thought! This suggests there may be room within which certain individuals’ responses could change over time without necessarily reaching either end point immediately upon exposure.”

Takeaway:

• Selective adaptation is a psychophysical procedure that involves the comparison of two stimuli, one of which is a standard and the other is a test stimulus.

• It’s used to study perceptual adaptation.

Conclusion

We have seen that the psychophysical procedure can be applied to explain selective adaptation. The basic idea behind this method is that a stimulus with a large contrast difference between its center and surround will produce an apparent contrast difference in the center of the stimulus, but not around it. This is because we tend to use our eyes as part of our visual system. We might be able to see something as close at hand or farther away than some other object when trying to describe what we’re seeing, but if we think about it, there’s really only one thing being described here—the distance from our eyes to some point on the surface of whatever we’re observing (or vice versa). So by using different portions of your brain for different purposes (e.g., vision vs hearing), you can actually get people to perceive things differently without them realising .