Psychophysics

Eadweard Muybridge lived from 1830 to 1904 and gained worldwide recognition for photographing animal and human movement. He was hired by railroad baron Leland Stanford in 1872 and used photography to prove that there was a moment in a horse’s gallop when all four hooves were off the ground at once. Much of his later career was spent at the University of Pennsylvania, producing thousands of images that capture progressive movements within fractions of a second. Muybridge made these discoveries at…

The prominent psychologist Edward Titchener expressed the value that Hermann Ebbinghaus played in experimental psychology while giving his eulogy, saying, As I approach the topic of this lecture, what is uppermost in my mind is a sense of irreparable loss. When the cable brought the bad news, last February, that Ebbinghaus was dead… the feeling that took precedence even of personal sorrow was the wonder of what experimental psychology would do without him. (Hoffman & Bamberg, 2005) Fortunately,…

For a few years all researches have been agreed that the behavior and the human mind, in normal and pathological conditions, are directly related to the function of nervous system. Also psychiatric disorders of affective or cognitive origin are interpreted as the consequence of a particular pathology of the nervous system. Therefore, neuroscience involves all the different branches of psychology that have the suffix “psych”, as for example psychology, psychiatry, psychopathology. All these…

Introduction A common issue persisting throughout the history of psychology is the ongoing debate on the relation of the cognitive mind and physical body. Inquiry surrounding this issue deals with the perceived entities of mind and body and concerns their nature, existence, and interaction. It is important to the field because physiology and psychology are generally seen as interacting and the outcome of this interaction has consequences on both, one influencing the other. The Ancients The…

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE My motivation to study machine perception is a long-term passion for mathematics, programming, and the human brain. Before knowing much about machine intelligence, my primary motivation was to take part and securing the first place in Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad for three times. Following this achievement, I graduated in Electrical Engineering taking major classes on theoretical signal processing at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Additionally, I…

furthering the idea that when a hardship is encountered, the brain tries to continue as before the occurrence. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist well known for his contributions in the field of behavioral neurology as well as visual psychophysics, explains in “The Perception of Phantom Limbs” that “there are hints that the incidence may be higher following…a pre-existing…

R.H. Ettinger describes and details the topic of sensation and perception in chapter four of Psychology: The Science of Behavior. Sensation and perception go hand in hand together to form the basis of every organism 's behavior. Sensation is the direct and immediate experience that affects a sense organ whereas perception is the organization and interpretation of each sensation. The five major senses: vision, audition, gustation, olfaction, and skin senses all go through the process of…

Abstract The introduction of an abrupt sudden-onset to a goal-directed task may result in at least partially automatic attentional capture, though its occurrence will be more probable when the sudden-onsets occur rarely (Neo & Chua, 2006), and the cognitive load is low (Lavie, 2005). Yantis and Jonides (1990) measured sudden-onset attentional capture, and concluded that capture is modulated according to the level of focus the observer has on a particular task. Attentional capture was stated to…

Introduction In this essay I will discuss many reasons why Wilhelm Wundt is considered the father of experimental psychology. Topics such as the laboratory of experimental psychology in the University of Leipzig, many influences Wundt had that shaped and guided his work, and the impact his work had on future psychologists and how it helped the development of modern psychology, will be discussed and viewed throughout this essay. There will also be an overview of Wundt’s life and beliefs according…

multiple fingers interact is poorly understood. In this study, we investigated how tactile information is processed over fingers and this processing depends on proprioceptive information indexed as the relative positions of the fingers. Using human psychophysics, we show that the vibrotactile frequencies simultaneously presented on fingers are integrated even when one cue is ignored. Importantly, the distance between the attended (target) and ignored (distractor) fingers determines the strength…