PSY 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Absolute Threshold, Psychophysics, Prosopagnosia

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1101
• Professor: Najwa Haddad

Document Summary

Applies to all of our senses: the musts of sensation. In order for sensation to happen, there must be 3 things occurring: detection. We must be able to detect specific forms of energy. Human beings only detect a tiny portion of energy in the world: transduction. Taking physical energy and translating it into a message it understands. Must be translated into electrochemical messages: transmission. Information must be transmitted to the brain for further processing sensory neurons: The brain takes information that has been collected by the senses and organizes, integrates, and interprets the information in a meaningful way bottom-up processing: Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain"s integration of sensory information. It starts with the basics information and builds up from there top-down processing: Information processing guided by higher level mental processes. Using our knowledge, experience, biases, expectations, background, culture, religion, preferences etc. to analyze information.