Receiving External Stimuli: Sensation 3.1.1 Flashcards
Absolute Threshold
The point where something becomes noticeable to your senses (undetectable to detectable)
Difference Threshold
Amount of change needed for you to recognize that a change has occurred.
(feather and weight)
Just Noticeable Difference
The point when your senses recognize a change
(from Weber’s Law)
Perception
The way you refer, organize, and consciously experience sensory information (interpreting information)
ex. associating a memory with a smell
Psychophysics
Gustav Fechner
-Believed a relationship between sensory and different brain states existed.
-Used empirical measurements to examine this
empirical = observations
Sensation
How you gather information from your senses and transport them to the brain
(gathering information)
Sensory Adaptation
When you become less aware or sensitive to sensory stimuli after constant exposure to them
(slow down, getting used to, less aware/sensitive)
Sensory Transduction
Process of concerting stimuli from the environment into neural impulses that are sent to the brain.
Signal Detection Theory
-how motivated you are to detect a specific stimulus
Ex. new mom with her baby
Stimulus
Anything that activates a sense organ (needs stimulus to respond/activate)
Ex. feeling heat, smelling campfire smoke.
Theory of Functionalism
William James
Believed that the purpose of psychology was to determine the function of the behavior of the world
(interested in mental activity, an organism adapting to its environment)
Weber’s Law
Ernst Heinrich Weber
States the amount of change needed to detect a stimulus is proportional to the original intensity of the stimulus.
Theory on functionalism
(known as the foundation stone of experimental psychology)
