Return to WISEBYTES.NET Home

These pages are demonstration pages of mixed mode deli very for an on-campus course. The curriculum and course structure has changed substantially for 1998, but these pages have been retained here as an example of a particular use of the Web in teaching.

Lecture unit objectives:

• to gain an understanding of sensory processing in vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell
• to examine epistemological issues concerning the nature and origins of what we know about our environment
• to consider the relationship between the structure and function of our sensory apparatus and what we perceive
• to examine the degree to which neurobiology constrains our cognitive processing abilities

Assessment

The unit will be assessed by a mid-semester take-home exam and an end-of-semester multiple choice exam.

Lecture Outlines

Lecture 1 - Introduction

The first half of this lecture will be taken up with administrative details of second year psychology. The second half of the lecture will be a brief overview of what will be covered by the lecture series.

Lecture 2 - Vision - general

This lecture will be a review of the general structure and function of the visual system as a revision and extension of material covered in first year. We will cover the basic structure and function of the eyeball and retina, the visual pathway, receptive fields and interactions in time and space.
Reference material: browse through Sekular and Blake Chapters 1-7

Lecture 3 - Vision - form and depth

In this lecture we will cover feature detectors and depth perception, reviewing monocular cues to depth and looking in detail at stereopsis.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Chapters 5 and 7

Lecture 4 - Vision - motion

Having considered perception of static visual images, we will now consider the role of motion in perception. Topics covered will include Gestalt principles, biological motion, eye movements and visual illusions involving motion.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Chapter 8

Lecture 5 - Vision - colour

This lecture will examine the psychological and physiological basis of colour perception.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Chapter 6

Lecture 6 - Psychophysics

In this lecture we consider the role of psychophsyics in studies of perception. We explore classical concepts in psychophysics and contemporary use of psychophysical tools.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Appendix

Lecture 7 - Basic Audition

This lecture reviews the basic structure and function of the peripheral auditory system up to and including the transduction of sound energy into neural impulses in the cochlea. We will briefly explore auditory pathologies leading to deafness.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Chapter 9

Lecture 8 - Auditory coding

This lecture will cover the coding of auditory attributes such as loudness, pitch and timbre.
Reference material: browse through Sekular and Blake Chapter 10

Lecture 9 - Comparative studies in audition

In this lecture we may explore some of the auditory specialisations occurring in nature which give us special insight into mechanisms of auditory processing. We may also cover issues of hearing impairment and deafness.

Lecture 10 - Somatosensory System

This lecture covers somatosensory receptor types, theories of sensory coding, active and passive touch, and somatosensory and motor maps in the cortex.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Chapter 11. Additional reading: Kandel and Schwartz, Principles of Neural Science, 2nd edition, Chapters 25-26; Goldstein, Sensation and Perception, Chapter 14; Matlin, M.W. Sensation and Perception, Chapter 11.

Lecture 11 - Olfaction

This lecture introduces the sense of smell and raises research issues to do with difficulty of stimulus specification.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Chapter 12

Lecture 12 - Taste

This lecture covers taste versus flavour, tastebuds, taste coding and adaptation.
Reference material: Sekular and Blake Chapter 12

Lecture 13 - Revision