PSYC 1000 Chapter Notes -Sensory System, Psychophysics, Absolute Threshold

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1000
• Professor: Benjamin Giguere

Document Summary

Module 17 basic principals of sensation and perception. Sensation: the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment. Perception: the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events. In everyday experiences, sensation and perception blend into one continuous process. Bottom up processing; starts at the sensory receptors and works up to higher levels of processing. Top down processing; constructs perceptions from the sensory input by drawing on our experience and expectations. As our brains absorb information, bottom up processing enables our sensory system to detect the lines, angles and colours that form the image and we then interpret what our senses detect using top down processing. Conversion of one form of energy into another; in sensation, it is the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret.