PSYC 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Jelly Bean, Neural Adaptation, Retina

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1000
• Professor: Anneke Olthof

Document Summary

Information comes in through our senses: our brains interpret this information. You look with your eyes, you see with your brain: sensation, perception: Organizing and giving meaning to input: the same sensory stimulus may be perceived differently in different contexts: The middle stimulus is physically identical in both words below, but tends to be per(cid:272)eived as (cid:858)h(cid:859) on left and as (cid:858)a(cid:859) on right: psychophysics: Studies relations between physical characteristics of stimuli and sensory capabilities. The lowest intensity at which a stimulus can be detected correctly 50% of the time. Difference threshold: smallest difference between two stimuli that can be detected 50% of the time. Just noti(cid:272)ea(cid:271)le differen(cid:272)e (cid:894)jnd(cid:895) (cid:894)we(cid:271)er, (cid:1005)83(cid:1004)(cid:859)s(cid:895: weber"s law. Sensory adaptation: diminishing sensitivity to unchanging stimulus, occurs in all sensory modalities. Adaptive value: frees senses from the unchanging to be more sensitive to changes in the environment. The stimulus that our visual system processes is light, or waves of electromagnetic radiation.