Sensation and Perception

What is sensation?

• Anytime a stimulus activates one of your receptors

• The ability to feel pain
• The ability to see colors
• The ability to hear sounds

What is perception?

• The organization of sensory information into meaningful experiences

• The process of thinking or understanding something
• The act of looking at something
• The ability to speak or write

What is the goal of psychophysics?

• To understand how stimuli from the world affect the sensory experiences produced by them

• To study the physical properties of the human brain
• To study the physical effects of psychological disorders
• To study the physics of human behavior

What does absolute threshold mean?

• The minimum intensity of a stimulus that can be detected 50% of the time

• The maximum intensity of a stimulus that can be detected 50% of the time

• The average intensity of a stimulus that can be detected 50% of the time

• The intensity of a stimulus that can be ignored

What is the difference threshold?

• The minimum difference in stimulation that a person can detect 50 percent of the time
• The maximum difference in stimulation that a person can detect 50 percent of the time
• The average difference in stimulation that a person can detect 50 percent of the time
• The difference in stimulation that a person can detect 100 percent of the time

What are your five senses?

What are the "extra" senses that are listed in your book?

• Smell, Taste, Sight, Hearing, Touch
• Vestibular and Kinesthesis

• ESP, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Precognition
• Humor, Irony, Metaphor, Rhythm

Match the sense to the stimuli

• Sound Waves

• Touch

• Odiferous Substances

• Hearing

• Soluble Substances

• Smell

• Light Waves

• Taste

• External Contact

• Sight

What is the signal-detection theory?

• The relations between motivation, sensitivity, and decision-making in detecting the presence or absence of a stimulus

• A theory that explains how we detect different types of music
• A theory that explains how we detect different types of food
• A theory that explains how we detect different types of colors

What is retinal disparity?

• A type of color blindness
• A condition where the retina detaches from the eye
• The difference in image location of an object seen by the left and right eyes
• A disease causing blurred vision