PSYC 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Psychophysics, Neural Adaptation, Psychometric Function
Document Summary
Use of psychophysics - relationship between the brain and the physical world. relating physical energy and sensation = psychophysical. The smallest stimulus we can detect reliably i. e. - least bright light. Smallest concentration of odour molecules for smell: difference threshold. The smallest difference in stimuli we can detect i. e. - one light to another: magnitude estimation. You keep doing it until we check all of the intensity levels. Perfect threshold -> (i. e. people do not always hear lower than 15, people always hear something higher than 15) This is because people do not have a clear sense of yes or no and they may change the mind. Usually calculate the average percent detected to see how much it could be detected. Psychometric function - how we measure someone"s perception. This is more useful than saying the perfect threshold by saying they did not detect it at 15 20% of the time. This allows to see that people are not perfect.
