Psychology 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Detection Theory, Sensory Threshold, Psychophysics

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Laura Fazakas- Dehoog

Document Summary

Sensation: stimulation of the sense organs (look with your eyes) Perception: selection, organization, interpretation of sensory input (see with your brain) Psychophysics: the study of how physical stimuli are translated into psychological experience, information. Stimulus: information in the environment that"s picked up by the receptors in our ns. Absolute threshold: detected 50% of the time. Difference threshold (aka. just noticeable difference (jnd)): the minimum amount that the stimulus needs to be increased, or decreased, to be judged as different from the original stimulus. Weber"s law: the difference threshold (jnd) is directly proportional to the magnitude of the stimulus with which the comparison is being made. Signal detection theory: factors that influence individual"s sensory judgement. Sensory adaptation (habituation): the diminishing sensitivity to a constant stimulus over time. Survival value: attend to new stimuli in the environment. Signal detection theory: factors that influence an individual"s sensory judgements. Subliminal stimuli: stimuli that register on our ns but are below our sensory threshold.