PSYC 1001 Chapter 4: Sensation & Perception

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1001
• Professor: Vessela Stamenova

Document Summary

Seeing a red apple, and seeing a speeding car and thinking you need to move so it won"t hit you. Hearing a song but not hearing the words. Translation of physical energy from the environment to neural signals. Entry-level processing, based entirely on sensory input. The process by which the sense organs convert energy from environmental events into neural activity. Sensory coding: anatomical coding, temporal coding: rate of firing. Code: a system of symbols or signals representing information. How sensitive are we: gustav fechner: psychophysicist, wilhelm wundt: introspection. Stimulus: any detectable input from the environment. Threshold: a dividing point between energy levels that do and do not have a detectable effect. Absolute threshold: minimum amount of a stimulation that an organism can detect (vary significantly; so 50% of the time) Measured the just noticeable difference (jnd: the smallest changes in the magnitude of a stimulus that a person can detect, similar to absolute thresholds.