Sensation and Perception Notes

Sensation and Perception

• Sensation: Your window to the world
• The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive stimulus from the environment
• Perception: Interpreting what comes in your window
• Bottom-Up v. Top-Down Processing
• Bottom-Up- Begins within the sense receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information (Thalamus)
• Top-Down Processing- Information processing guided by higher level mental processes
• Absolute Threshold
• The minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time
• Difference Threshold
• The minimum difference that a person can detect between two stimuli
• Also known as Just Notable Difference
• Weber’s Law
• The idea that, to perceive a difference between two stimuli, they must differ by a constant percentage; not a constant amount
• Signal Detection Theory
• Predicts how we detect a stimulus amid other stimuli
• Assumes that we do not have an absolute threshold
• Sensory Adaptation
• Decreased responsiveness to stimuli due to constant stimulation
• Selective Attention
• The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus
• Cocktail-Party Phenomenon
• Ability to focus one’s listening attention on a single talker among a mixture of conversations and background noises, ignoring other conversations
• Form of selective attention