PSYCH 3A03 Lecture Notes - Psychometric Function, Limen, Detection Theory

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH 3A03
• Professor: Paul Faure

Document Summary

Now that we understand the fundamentals of the hearing, we will next focus on the perception of simple and complex sounds during audition. We have examined how sound frequency, amplitude, and starting phase (time) and received and processed by the auditory system, but now we want to examine our perceptual sensitivity to these same physical parameters. Psychophysics is the branch of science that examines the relationship between the perceptual and physical aspects of a stimulus. Absolute detection thresholds tell psychoacousticians what the limits of detection are for sound parameters (e. g. frequency, amplitude and time) Often researchers are interested in the sensitivity of a listener to changes in an acoustic parameter. In these cases discrimination procedures are employed to measure what a listener can respond to or just detect. S. s> stevens correctly pointed out that psychophysicists measure what a listener does respond to, and often, this measure corresponds to what a listener can respond to, but not necessarily.