PSYC 334 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Psychophysics, Appendicitis, Victim Blaming

• School: Chico State University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 334
• Professor: Martinusvanden Berg

Document Summary

We could never perform these processes if it wasn"t for our rich episodic and semantic knowledge. Psychophysics: the discipline that investigates the relationship between. Main finding: our perceptual experience is not a direct and perfect function of the physical stimulus. Just noticeable difference (jnd): the amount of change needed for people to detect a change. The phsycal change that is required to percieved a change depends on how much of the stimulus is already resent. It is a percentage, not a fixed amount. The distance or discriminability effect: very arge difference are judged faster than small diffferences. Distance effect is also found in decisions about symbolic comparisions, instead of physical comparisions. Symbolic distance effect: large symbolic differences (200 vs 300) are judged faster than small symbolic difference (2 vs. 3) Additionally , symbolic differences are faster when the question is phrased in a way that matches our semantic knowledge of the symbols: semantic congruity effect.