PSYC100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Absolute Threshold, Prosopagnosia

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC100
• Professor: Begosh Kristen

Document Summary

Sensation- the experience of having your sense organs stimulated. Perception- interpreting the sensations that are experienced, to recognize meaning objects & events. Prosopagnosia- inability to perceive faces even though vision is fine. Bottom-up processing analysis beginning with sensory receptors and works up to the brain"s integration of sensory information. Top-down processing- information processing guided by higher- level mental process (experiences, expectations) Psychophysicis- study of relationship between physical characteristics of a stimuli and our psychological experiences of them. Absolute threshold- minimum stimulation needed to detect particular stimulus 50% of the time. Weber"s law- to be detectable, the stimulus must vary by constant proportion- not constant amount. Sensory adaption- diminishing sensitivity to an unchanging stimulus. Transduction- transforming one form of energy to another. Retina- contains 4 types of photoreceptors- 1 for each to the three types of cones & one for the rods. Feature detectors- nerve cells that respond to specific features of the stimulus (shape, angle, movement)