PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Perceptual Psychology, Detection Theory, Sensory System

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jordan Poppenk

Document Summary

Objectives: explain the processes by which physical energy is interpreted by the brain, describe how physical characteristics correspond to psychological characteristics. What can the typical human sense: humans can only detect ultraviolet light when it has colours associated with it, humans cannot detect very low-frequency vibrations (infrasound), uv light w/o colours, radio waves, infra-red light, and magnetic fields. What is the evolutionary advantage to limiting the amount of information that your senses can detect: limiting the information we detect lets us focus quickly on the most important information. Out there : neurons in different places signal different qualitative features, retina is a bit like a page scanner, the particular cells in the retina that are activated by a stimulus tell the organism where the stimulus is. If a neuron becomes fatigued b/c of sensory adaption, its rate of signalling lowers below spontaneous rate so body no longer notices stimulus.