Psychology Exam 2 and Feedback on Exam 1

Exam 2

• It is an in-person Scantron exam.
• The exam covers chapters 9 and 4 topics.
• Takes place Monday 2/24 from 4:10 - 6:00pm in class.
• Extra proctors will monitor cheating.
• Review syllabus exam section for procedures.
• Come prepared to follow all instructions prompted, like removing smartwatches and putting away belongings.
• If experiencing text anxiety, practice relaxation techniques in addition to studying content for the test.

Exam 1 Feedback

• d2l has tools and resources to help in Psy 101.
• Only 27% of students had looked at the "Study Tips for Psy 101" doc.
• Tips are available for before, during, and after the exam, not only for studying.
• Do not skip concepts to have known before class.
• Many students missed IVs, DVs, and control questions on Peardeck, Unit 1.
• Many students missed the IV question in Peardeck, on Monday.
• Item-level statistics indicated some items were not good.
• Credit was given for multiple responses.
• Everyone got credit for a duplicate question, in which the answer was only taken once.

Sensation vs Perception

• Sensation reflects how the outside world gets in.
• Perception reflects how internal representations of the world are constructed.

Basic Principles

• Sensation is the process of receiving stimulus energies from the external environment and transforming them into neural energy.
• Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to make sense of it.

Bottom-Up Processing

• Initiated by sensory input.
• It's the outside world's influence on perception.

Top-Down Processing

• Initiated by cognitive processing.
• It's the internal/mental world's influence on perception, including expectations and prior understanding.

Sensory Receptors

• Specialized cells that selectively detect and transmit sensory information to the brain.
• Cells send signals via distinct neural pathways.

Sensation

• Photoreception is vision and the detection of light.
• Mechanoreception is touch and detection of pressure, vibration, and movement.
• Chemoreception is smell and taste and detection of chemical stimuli.
• Synesthesia is a phenomenon where one sense induces an experience in another sense, such as "seeing" music or "tasting" color.

Basic Principles: Sensory Thresholds

• Absolute threshold is the minimum stimulation necessary to detect physical stimulation half the time, for light, sound, pressure, taste, or odor.
• The absolute threshold for human vision is equivalent to the amount of energy emitted by a single candle on a completely dark night from 30 miles away.
• The absolute threshold for human hearing is equivalent to the amount of energy emitted by the tick of a watch at 20 feet.
• Noise causes any external or internal stimulus which interferes with the perception of another stimulus/stimuli.
• The Just Noticeable Difference (JND) is how much stimulus difference is necessary for detection.
• JND increases with stimulus magnitude.
• Low stimulus levels allow small changes to be detected.
• High stimulus levels make small changes less noticeable.

Weber's Law

• To be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion (%) instead of a constant amount.
• Equation: Constant x Intensity of Stimulus.
• Example: 0.10 x 40 = 4.

Sensing the World: Critical Thinking

• Extended studies of the senses go beyond basic physiological principles to understand the cultural, historical, and political dimensions of the senses.

Psychophysics

• The study of the relationship between physical characteristics of physical stimuli and our perceptual experiences of them.
• Signal detection theory predicts how and when we detect faint stimuli amid other background stimuli, including contextual factors.

Signal Detection Theory

• In a signal detection task conducted across a number of trials, stimuli of different intensities are presented.
• A Signal Detection Task measures the observer's response versus true situation.
• Test-takers indicate perception of the stimulus.
• A "hit" is when a signal is present and detected correctly.
• A "miss" is when a signal is present but not detected, which is a mistake.
• A "false alarm" is when a signal is absent but detected, which is a mistake.
• "Correct rejection" happens when a signal is absent and not detected, which is correct.
• A graph shows that the absolute threshold (correct 50% of the time) for vision is about 12 lumens.

Factors Affecting Perception

• Attention includes focusing awareness on a narrowed aspect of the environment.
• Selective attention means a mental "spotlight" that focuses conscious attention/awareness on a very limited aspect of all that is experienced, while ignoring others.
• Selective attention allows concentrating to study and filter out irrelevant sights and sounds.
• The Stroop Effect describes a failure of selection when "noise" stops an ability to focus attention on a specific aspect of a stimulus, like colors.
• Factors Affecting Attention include attention's ability to be attracted by novelty, size, color, and movement.
• Emotional Stimuli, Emotion-induced blindness, and Inattentional blindness also affect attention

Subliminal Stimuli

• Stimuli below the absolute threshold.
• People are influenced by subliminal stimulation.
• Experimental studies can demonstrate detection of subliminal stimuli.
• Subliminal stimuli has an influence on information below the level of conscious awareness.
• Priming activates a particular concept or idea in memory so that the person is affected by that concept.
• Experimental studies show that people identified the location of a geometric figure if it appeared where a naked photo was located, even though they didn't think they `saw' it

Sensing the World: Basic Principles

• Perceptual Set is a predisposition or readiness to perceive something in a particular way through top-down processing.
• Perceptual sets influence what we hear, taste, feel, and see.
• Preschoolers thought French fries tasted better when presented in a McDonald's bag.

Details for Psychology Exam 2 on 2/24, covering chapters 9 and 4. Includes feedback from Exam 1 related to study habits, confusing questions, and IV/DV comprehension. Access D2L resources and study tips for preparation.