PSYC 1010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Slow-Wave Sleep, Color Vision, Binocular Disparity

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Agnieszka Kopinska

Document Summary

Perception: selection, organization, and interpretation of sensory input. Psychophysics: the study of how physical stimuli are translated into psychological experience. Fechner: came up with the concept of the threshold. A threshold is a dividing point between energy levels that do and do not have a detectable effect. Ex: a lamp that turns on in the dark, the lowest amount of light that the lamp turns on at is its threshold. Absolute threshold is the smallest strength of stimulus that can be detected half of the time (not really absolute bc it"s not that it is detected or it is not, sometimes its detected and sometimes it is not) Difference threshold is the smallest difference that can be detected. Weber"s law: size of the difference threshold proportional to the size of the initial stimulus. Sensory adaptation: gradual decline in sensitivity due to constant stimuli.