psych chapter 8-1 quiz

Sensation

Occurs anytime a stimulus activates one of your receptors

-Temp, light, sound, physical pressure, smell

Perception

Organizing of sensory information into meaningful experiences

-Taking of sensation and putting with past experiences makes perception

Psychophysics

The study of the relationship between sensory experiences and the physical stimuli that causes them

threshold

To set-up laws about senses psychologist must first know the minimums for that stimulus to be detected

Absolute threshold

The weakest amount of stimulus that is required to produce sensation

-Stimulus must produce a response 50% of the time

difference threshold

The smallest amount of chnge in a stimulus that can be detected

webers law

The larger or stronger the stimulus, The larger the change required for a person to notice that anything has happened to it

sensory adaptation

Your senses adapt to stimuli and therefore fade out the information

-Clothing and pressure on your body

signal-detection theory

The study of people tendencies to make correct judgments in detedting the presence of stimuli

preattentive process

is a method for extracting information automatically

attentive process

is a procedure that only considers one stimuli at a time