Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Auditory Cortex, Color Blindness, Detection Theory

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Mark Holden

Document Summary

General principles in perception research: psychophysics, studies how physical stimuli are translated into psychological experiences, studies relations between physical characteristics of stimuli and sensory capabilities, includes: Idea: we can"t detect everything, so what is the weakest/lowest level we can detect: absolute threshold, lowest intensity necessary for a stimulus to be detected 50% of the time, lower threshold means we are more sensitive. Stimulus detection theory: signal detection theory, concerted with factors that influence sensory judgments, decision criterion: a standard of how certain they must be that a stimulus is present before they will say they detect it. This can change from time to time depending on factors such as fatigue, expectation, potential significance of stimulus: experiment of perceptible tone outcomes: yes (hit), no (miss), yes (false alarm), No (correct rejection: at low stimulus intensities, both participants and situation"s characteristics influence decision criterion.