PSYC 1010 Chapter 4: Chapter 4 Notes.docx

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Rebecca Jubis

Document Summary

Sensation: the process where our sensory organs gather information from the outside world (the stimulation of the sensory organs) Perception: the process where the brain organizes and interprets these sensations so that they have meaning. Psychophysics: the study of how physical stimuli are translated into psychological experience. As stimulus intensity increases, subjects" probability of responding to stimuli gradually increases (so it"s not really absolute) Fechner"s law: the magnitude of a sensory experience is proportional to the number of. Jnds that the stimulus causing the experience is above the absolute threshold: ex: three equal increases in stimulus intensity produce progressively smaller differences in the magnitude of sensation (think 3 light bulbs pg. Perceptions can"t be measured on absolute scales but they can be measured on psychophysical scales. The criterion how sure you must feel before you react. The noise in the system irrelevant stimuli.