PSYC 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Detection Theory, Absolute Threshold, Visual Cortex
Document Summary
They all begin with a physical stimulate and turn it into action potentials: perception: mental process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, ***** All sensory input into our bodes starts with bottom-up processing of simple features: all our sensory systems. Receive sensory stimulation, using specialized receptor cells. Deliver the neural information to our brain: transduction. A receptor cell converts the energy in a stimulus into a change in the electrical potential across its membrane. All 5 senses detect physical stimuli: photons of light; pressure changes. A super clever field in psychology studying the relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli that we can detect and their effects on our psychological experience. The brightness or contrast of a visual stimulus. The intensity of a smell, taste or tough. Signal detection theory: predicts how and when we will detect a weak/ faint stimulus (signal) amid background noise. Psychophysics asks: why do different people respond differently to the same stimuli.
