PSY 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Olfactory Receptor, Absolute Threshold, Psychophysics

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 105
• Professor: William Huggon

Document Summary

Sensation: the act of using our sensory receptors to detect a stimulus present in the environment and to transmit signal to the brain with info about this environmental stimulus. Transduction: sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into neural signals sent to the nervous system. Perception: the conscious recognition and identification of a sensory stimulus. Sensory receptor cells: specialized cells that convert a specific form of environmental stimuli into neural impulses. Sensory transduction: the process of converting a specific form of environmental stimuli into neural impulses. Psychophysics: methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer"s sensitivity to that stimulus, experiments involving making judgments. Absolute threshold: smallest amount of a stimulus that one can detect. Minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time. Difference threshold (jnd): the minimal difference needed to notice a difference between two stimuli.