PSYCH 100 Lecture Notes - Bone Conduction, Interposition, Detection Theory

• School: UMASS-Amherst
• Department: Psychology & Brain Sciences
• Course: PSYCH 100
• Professor: tamararahhal

Document Summary

Stage #1: sensation: the processes of: a) converting the physical world into a mental representation (transduction) b) relaying that information to the brain (conduction) Example: variations of light experience of color / variations of air pressure experience of sound. Stage #2: perception: the processes by which we: select, organize and interpret these mental representations. Example: we can recognize the color green / we can distinguish bach from britney spears. Psychopsychics: the study of the relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli (energy) and our psychological experience of them: example: light brightness / sound -> volume / pressure weight / taste sweetness. Absolute thresholds: smallest magnitude of a stimulus that can be reliably discriminated from no stimulus at least 50% of the time. Difference thresholds: minimum difference between two stimuli that a person can detect at least 50% of the time: just noticeable difference.