Sensation vs. Perception
Date Posted:
September 19, 2023
Date Recorded:
September 19, 2023
CBMM Speaker(s):
Jarrod Hicks All Captioned Videos #TeachMeSomething
Description:
#MITTeachMeSomething
Jarrod Hicks, PhD Candidate in Computational Audition, MIT Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Want to learn more? https://teachmesomething.mit.edu/tms/sensation-vs-perception
#MITTeachMeSomethingTuesday #MIT #TeachMeSomething #TeachMeSomethingTuesday #audition #sensation #perception #illusion #auditoryillusions
Sine wave speech credit: Chris Darwin - http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/Chris_Darwin/SWS/
KRIS: Hey, Jarrod.
JARROD HICKS: Hey, Kris.
KRIS: Teach me something.
JARROD HICKS: Sure. Do you know the difference between sensation and perception?
KRIS: No.
JARROD HICKS: So sensation is when you detect or measure some external stimulus out in the world-- like when light goes into your eye, sound enters your ear, or when your skin touches some surface. But perception is when your brain actually interprets this incoming sensory information and tries to figure out what's out there in the world.
Check this out. So this is a mystery sound. It's going to sound really weird and strange, but just have a listen.
COMPUTER AUDIO: [DISTORTED SOUND]
Sounds super strange. What you're actually hearing is something called a sine wave speech, and it's essentially a degraded version of someone saying "the floor was quite slippery." So here's the original audio that it was taken from.
COMPUTER AUDIO: The floor was quite slippery.
JARROD HICKS: Now that you know this, you're going to perceive that mystery sound completely differently. So here's the exact same mystery sound that you heard from before, and hopefully you'll hear something a little bit different.
COMPUTER AUDIO: The floor was quite slippery.
JARROD HICKS: So hopefully this time you could clearly hear "the floor was quite slippery." So even though it's the exact same sensory stimulus, you perceived it completely differently.