Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
[18] Caruso, E. M., Mead, N. L., & Balcetis, E. (2009). Political partisanship influences perception of biracial candidates’ skin
tone. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(48), 20168–20173.
[19] Chua, H. F., Boland, J. E., & Nisbett, R. E. (2005). Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 12629–12633.
[20] Proctor, R. W., & Van Zandt, T. (2008). Human factors in simple and complex systems (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
[21] Lee, J., & Strayer, D. (2004). Preface to the special section on driver distraction.Human Factors, 46(4), 583.
[22] Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Applied experimental psychology. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 47, 155–173.
[23] Kraft, C. (1978). A psychophysical approach to air safety: Simulator studies of visual illusions in night approaches. In H. L.
Pick, H. W. Leibowitz, J. E. Singer, A. Steinschneider, & H. W. Steenson (Eds.), Psychology: From research to practice. New York,
NY: Plenum Press.
[24] Silverstein, L. D., Krantz, J. H., Gomer, F. E., Yeh, Y., & Monty, R. W. (1990). The effects of spatial sampling and luminance
quantization on the image quality of color matrix displays. Journal of the Optical Society of America, Part A, 7, 1955–1968;
Silverstein, L. D., & Merrifield, R. M. (1985). The development and evaluation of color systems for airborne applications: Phase I
Fundamental visual, perceptual, and display systems considerations(Tech. Report DOT/FAA/PM085019). Washington, DC:
Federal Aviation Administration.
4.6 Chapter Summary
Sensation and perception work seamlessly together to allow us to detect both the presence of,
and changes in, the stimuli around us.
The study of sensation and perception is exceedingly important for our everyday lives because
the knowledge generated by psychologists is used in so many ways to help so many people.
Each sense accomplishes the basic process of transduction—the conversion of stimuli detected
by receptor cells into electrical impulses that are then transported to the brain—in different, but
related, ways.
Psychophysics is the branch of psychology that studies the effects of physical stimuli on sensory
perceptions. Psychophysicists study the absolute threshold of sensation as well as the difference