Summary: Sensation & Perception | 9781605358758 | Jeremy M Wolfe

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• 1 Introduction

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• Define two-point touch threshold

  The minimum distance at which two stimuli (e.g., two simultaneous touches) are just perceptible as separate.

• Define just noticeable difference (JND) or Difference threshold

  The smallest detectable difference between two stimuli, or the minimum change in a stimulus that enables it to be correctly judged as different from a reference stimulus.

• Define method of constant stimuli

  A psychophysical method in which many stimuli, ranging from rarely to almost always perceivable (or rarely to almost always perceivably different from a reference stimulus), are presented one at a time. Participants respond to each presentation: “yes/no,” “same/different,” and so on.

• Define steven's power law

  A principle describing the relationship between stimulus and resulting sensation that says the magnitude of subjective sensation is proportional to the stimulus magnitude raised to an exponent.

• Define signal detection theory

  A psychophysical theory that quantifies the response of an observer to the presentation of a signal in the presence of noise. Measures obtained from a series of presentations are sensitivity (d′) and criterion of the observer.

• Define receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve

  In reference to studies of signal detection, the graphical plot of the hit rate as a function of the false-alarm rate. If these are the same, points fall on the diagonal, indicating that the observer cannot tell the difference between the presence and absence of the signal. As the observer’s sensitivity increases, the curve bows upward toward the upper left corner. That point represents a perfect ability to distinguish signal from noise (100% hits, 0% false alarms).

• Define doctrine of specific nerve energies

  A doctrine, formulated by Johannes Müller, stating that the nature of a sensation depends on which sensory fibers are stimulated, rather than how they are stimulated.

• Define olfactory (I) nerves

  The first pair of cranial nerves. The axons of the olfactory sensory neurons bundle together after passing through the cribriform plate to form the olfactory nerve, which conducts impulses from the olfactory epithelia in the nose to the olfactory bulb.

• Define positron emission tomography (PET)

  An imaging technology that enables us to define locations in the brain where neurons are especially active by measuring the metabolism of brain cells using safe radioactive isotopes.

• Define blood oxygen level–dependent (BOLD) signal

  The ratio of oxygenated to deoxygenated hemoglobin that permits the localization of brain neurons that are most involved in a task.