Psychophysics Flashcards
What is psychophyics?
the field of psychology in cognitive psychology which explores the relation between subjective perceptual experiences and the objective physical stimuli that give rise to that experience
What is JND?
Just-noticeable difference - refers to the smallest difference between two stimuli we can detect
What are the different types of perceptual response to stimuli?
Describing, recognising, detecting, perceiving magnitude, searching
What is description?
When a researcher asks a person to describe what he or she is perceiving or to indicate when a particular perception occurs. The
What is recognition
When we categorise a stimulus by naming it
What is detection
There are a number of quantitative methods of for measuring the relationship between stimuli and perception.
What is The Absolute Threshold?
The smallest amount of stimulus energy necessary to detect a stimulus
What is the method of adjustment?
E.g the experimenter adjusts the stimulus intensity continuously until the observer can just barely detect the stimulus. Differs from the method of limits as the observer does not say yes or no.
What is the method of constant stimuli?
The experimenter presents five to nine stimuli with different intensities in random order.
What is the difference threshold>
The smallest difference between two stimuli that a person can detect
What is magnitude estimation procedure?
The experimenter first presents a standard stimulus to the observer and assigns it a value of perhaps 10. They then present lights of different intensities and the observer is asked to assign a number to each of these that is proportional to the standard stimulus
What tone is used in signal detection experiment
Single low-intensity tone
How does a signal detection experiment differ from a classic psychophysical experiment
1) only one stimulus identity is presented 2) on some of the trials no stimulus is presented
How can we understand how the person’s sensitivity to a stimulus affects the shape of the ROC curve.
By considering what the probability distributions would look like.
