PSYC-1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Receptive Field, Ponzo Illusion, David H. Hubel
27 Jul 2013
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Document Summary
Sensation = process by which sense organs gather info from the world and transmit it to the brain for initial processing. Perception = process by which the brain selects, organizes, and interprets sensations. Emphasizing incoming sensory information is insufficient to explain perception considerations of context and of the perceiver"s expectations and prior learning must also be made. Fundamental principle: there is no one-to-one correspondence between physical and psychological reality. Senses share common features: translation, transduction. Anatomical coding (doctrine of specific nerve energies (johaness muller, Chromesthesia - color hearing letter/digit color synaesthesia most common. Brain codes for intensity and quality of sensory stimulation: thresholds. Absolute threshold- measuring the acuity of our senses. The smallest intensity of a stimulus that must be present for it to be detected: decision-making. Response bias: tuning out irrelevant information. Neurons stop firing when the stimuli is constant. Sensory systems are more sensitive to changes in the environment than to steady states.
