PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Tablespoon, Absolute Threshold, Sound Intensity

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

Document Summary

Perception: refers to the higher-level processes that the brain uses to interpret, organize, and select sensations. Psychophysics: the study of how sensation relates to perception. Psychophysicists: individuals who study the relationships between physical stimuli and sensory response. Goal measure the relationship between the physical characteristics of the stimulus and the sensory experience. Sensory thresholds: the point at which a stimulus triggers the start of an afferent nerve impulse. The just-noticeable difference (jnd) between 2 stimuli the minimum change required in the intensity of something in order to detect that it is now stronger or weaker than it was. As the jnd goes up, intensity goes up. Weber"s law: the size of the jnd of a stimulus divided by its initial intensity is a constant. Weber observed that people could more easily detect a very small increase in weight when hefting two lightweights than when hefting 2 heavy weights.