Chapter Four: Sensation and Perception

In chapter four it focuses on our senses: seeing, hearing, taste, smell and touch. It first starts out by explaining how our senses work in creating the world around us through sensation and perception. Then the book goes through each sense a little more in depth, discussing how biologically our senses work through body parts like our eyes and ears. It also describes how our brains perceive these senses and why some people cannot use them. One topic I find extremely interesting in the chapter is selective attention. After thinking about it, I use selective attention a lot. For instance, the book talked about the cocktail party effect -where even if you are not paying attention to someone's conversation at a party, if they say your name, you hear it. I feel like this happens to me many times at parties and other places. It does not help having such a common name either. Also my selective attention works opposite as well. In some cases I will be so focused on getting to my next class, or woking on homework that when people call my name I do not hear them. I would really like to learn more about this and look into how the brain does that.