PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Detection Theory, Retinal Ganglion Cell, Optic Nerve

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Sherri Atwood

Document Summary

After a sensation registers in the central nervous system, perception takes place at the brain. Damage to the visual processing centers in the brain can interfere with interpretation of information coming from the eyes. Sensory receptors communicate with the brain via transduction(occurs when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into encoded neural signals sent to the central nervous system) Fechner developed psychophysics(methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer"s sensitivity to that stimulus). A measure is the absolute threshold(minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus in 50% of the trails). People tend to be most sensitive to the range of tones corresponding to human conversation. Human perceptual system is better at detecting changes in stimulation- just noticeable difference(minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected detects difference between 2 stimuli, proportion of stimuli is important).