Unit 5 Notes: Sensation and Perception

Sensation: 

• The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive stimulus from the environment. 

Perception:

• the process of organizing and interpreting information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events. 

1. Bottom-up Processing: begins with sense receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.
2. Top-Down Processing: information processing got it by higher level mental processes. 

1. Absolute Threshold: the minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time. 
2. Difference Threshold: The minimum difference that a person can detect between two stimuli.

Weber's Law: 

• The idea that, to perceive a difference between two stimuli, they must differ by a constant percentage; not a constant amount.

1. Vesticular sense: tells us our body is oriented in space.
2. Kinesthetic sense: tells us where our body parts are. 

Death Perception:

• the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional.
• allows us to judge distance.

Binocular Cues:

• the closer an object comes to you the greater the disparity is between the two images.