PSYB51H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Detection Theory, Gustav Fechner, Absolute Threshold

• School: UTSC
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYB51H3
• Professor: Matthias Niemeier

Document Summary

Sensation: ability to detect a stimulus & perhaps, turn that detection into a private experience. Perception: the act of giving meaning to a detected sensation. Qualia: private conscious experiences of sensation of perception: ex. When you say that you hear or taste something. Gustav fechner: founder of experimental psychology (even if this title is usually given to william wundt, invented psychophysics, severe eye damage from gazing too much at the sun while performing vision experiment. Majority view in scientific psych the mind is only what the brain does: panpsychism: the mind exists as a property of all matter- that is, that all matter has consciousness. Not only in animals, but inanimate objects too. Imagined that the mind, or consciousness, is present in all of nature: psychophysics: defining quantitative relationships btwn physical & psychological (subjective) events. Fechner did this as he tried to describe the r/s btwn sensation (mind) and the energy (matter) that gave rise to that sensation.