PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Absolute Threshold, Psychophysics, New Approach

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

Document Summary

Sensory branding: exploiting senses to advertise and sell products. Sensation and perception are related but are separate events. Registered by cns of light, sound, smell, taste, pressure. Perception: organization, identification and interpretation of a sensation to form mental representation. Eyes (sensory organs) encodes the lines and curves on a page the brain perceives these as letters and words. Transduction: occurs when many sensors in the body convert physical stimuli from environment into neural signals that are then sent to the cns. From sensory organs to brain: reception: sensory receptors stimulated by stimuli, transduction: convert stimuli to neural signals, transmission: delivers neural signals to brain to be processed. Psychophysics: method to measure the strength of a stimulus and the sensitivity of the stimulus" observer. New approach to measuring sensation and perception. Absolute threshold: minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus in 50% of trials. Threshold being the doorway separating the aware from the unaware.