PSYC 3310: Sensation & Perception

Fall 2026 — “Living” syllabus

General Information

When: TuTh 2:20PM - 3:40PM

Where: Pomerene Hall 260

Instructor: Dr. Sami Yousif

Teaching Assistant: XXX

Email: yousif.36@osu.edu

Office hours: TBD / By appointment (PSYC 233)

Prerequisite for enrollment: 1100 or 1100H

Course materials: An Immense World by Ed Yong

Class type: Lecture with Discussion

Course description

The broad goal of this course is to better understand the basic sensory and perceptual systems that support our interaction with the external world. In the first half of the course, we’ll discuss each of the five human sensory systems in turn, and then we’ll discuss various ‘sixth senses’ that exist elsewhere in the animal kingdom. With this as our foundation, we’ll spend the second half of the course discussing the rich perceptual systems that act as an interface between sensation and cognition. Along the way, we’ll reflect on our own, unique umwelt — fostering awareness for all the ways that our perceptual experience is fundamentally illusory.

Assignments & Grading

For more information on assignments and grading, see the “official” syllabus.

Course outline

Part I: Vision & Audition

Class #1 (Tuesday, August 25th): Intro to the course

Class #2 (Thursday, August 27th): What is Sensation; What is Perception?

·         An Immense World, Introduction

Class #3 (Tuesday, September 1st): Do you see what I see? (Vision I)

·         An Immense World, Chapters #2 & #3

Class #4 (Thursday, September 3rd): Attention, please! (Attention)

·         Key reading: Scholl, B. J. (2001). Objects and attention: The state of the art. Cognition, 80(1-2), 1-46.

Class #5 (Tuesday, September 8th): Vision as a construction

Class #6 (Thursday, September 10th): A splash of color, A dash of motion (Color and motion)

·         Key reading: Suchow, J. W., & Alvarez, G. A. (2011). Motion silences awareness of visual change. Current Biology, 21(2), 140-143.

Class #7 (Tuesday, September 15th): One, two, three — more! (Quantity)

·         Key reading: Franconeri, S. L., Bemis, D. K., & Alvarez, G. A. (2009). Number estimation relies on a set of segmented objects. Cognition, 113(1), 1-13.

Class #8 (Thursday, September 17th): Like looking in a mirror… (Faces)

·         Key reading: Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions: Making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychological Science, 17(7), 592-598.

Class #9 (Tuesday, September 22nd): The psychophysics of Tinder (Signal detection + Weber’s law)

Class #10 (Thursday, September 24th): Now you hear me (The perception of sound)

·         An Immense World, Chapter #8

Class #11 (Tuesday, September 29th): Making (sense of) space (The perception of space)

·         Key reading: Yousif, S.R., & Sherman, B.E. (2026). Distortions of space and time in and around objects and events. Psychonomics Bulletin & Review, 33, 98.

Class #12 (Thursday, October 1st): Mind the clock (The perception of time)

·         Key reading: Yousif, S.R., & Sherman, B.E. (2026). Distortions of space and time in and around objects and events. Psychonomics Bulletin & Review, 33, 98.

Class #13 (Tuesday, October 6th): Mid-term prep

Class #14 (Thursday, October 8th): Mid-term Exam #1

Class #15 (Tuesday, October 13th): Mid-term Review

Part II: Everything else!

Class #16 (Tuesday, October 20th): Hands-on perception (Somatosensation)

·         An Immense World, Chapter #6

Class #17 (Thursday, October 22nd): Scent and sensibility (Gustation & Olfaction)

·         An Immense World, Chapters #1 & 2

Class #18 (Tuesday, October 27th): Sixth senses! (Everything else!)

·         An Immense World, Chapters #4, 5, 9, 10, & 11

Class #19 (Thursday, October 29th): Putting it all together (Cross-modal perception)

Class #20 (Tuesday, November 3rd): Writing day!

Class #21 (Thursday, November 5th): What does it mean to say something is perceived? (Adaptation)

·         Key reading: Burr, D., & Ross, J. (2008). A visual sense of number. Current Biology, 18(6), 425-428.

 Class #22 (Tuesday, November 10th): Carving the mind at its joints (Top-down effects)

·         Key reading: Firestone, C., & Scholl, B. J. (2016). Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e229.

Class #23 (Thursday, November 12th): To what extent does culture influence perception?

·         Key reading: Amir, D., & Firestone, C. (2025). Is visual perception WEIRD? The Müller-Lyer illusion and the cultural byproduct hypothesis. Psychological Review.

Class #24 (Tuesday, November 17th): TBD

Class #25 (Thursday, November 19th): TBD

[THANKSGIVING BREAK!]

Class #26 (Tuesday, December 1st): Mid-term prep

Class #27 (Thursday, December 3rd): Mid-term Exam #2

Class #28 (Tuesday, December 9th): Exam Review

(Optional) Final Exam (XXX): Cumulative (!) Final Exam.