PSYC 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Detection Theory, Absolute Threshold, Sensory Neuron

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1000
• Professor: Lisa Giguere

Document Summary

Sensation: the brain receives input from the sensory organs. Perception: the brain makes sense out of the input from sensory organs. Bottom-up process: taking sensory information and then assembling and integrating it (what are you seeing) Top-down processing: using models, ideas, and expectations to interpret sensory information (is it something you"ve seen before?) What you have stored in your mind shapes what you see. Reception: the stimulation of sensory receptor cells by energy (sound, light, heat) Transduction: transforming this cell stimulation into neural impulses. Transmission: delivering this neural information to the brain to be processed. Absolute threshold: the minimum level of stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus half the time. Subliminal: below our threshold for being able to consciously detect a stimulus, but still registered by sensory organ. Signal detection theory: whether or not we detect a stimulus, particularly with background noise. Detection depends on psychological factors such as alertness, expectations, motivation.