Before we move on, I do want to mention that the absolute threshold of sensation is different from a concept that has been talked about in other videos. And that 50% mark would be our absolute threshold of sensation. But as it gets lower, you're less reliable in your judgement. Something like this, where the higher the tone is, you're more likely to identify it. Well if you were to graph the responses, you might wind up with Through these same tests, and sometimes a sound is presented, and other times it isn't, but all the sounds are And so imagine that this is you, and you have these headphones on, and that you're going But it is possible that I did not correctly identify all of That I correctly detected 100% of the time. And from the sounds they played, there were probably some Left hand or your right hand when you heard a tone inĮither your left or right ear. And the only thing that youĪs a listener had to do was raise your hand, either your Of different intensities into each of your ears. Large headphones on your head, and then they'd play tones And the way that they did themīack when I was in school, was that they'd put these One thing that nurses canĭo in elementary school are these sound tests. To is actually something you may have experienced yourself when you were in elementary school. And then on the Y-axis I'm going to put Percentage of Correct Detections. And so for things like sound, a lower intensity wouldīe a very quiet sound, or as a higher intensity sound would be a much louder one. Intensity on one side, and higher intensity on the other. So on the X-axis we'll put Intensity, and we'll have lower And let me try to graph this to make it look a little clearer. The lowest level of sound or light that a personĬan reliably hear or see. 'What is the absolute 'lowest sound a person isĮver capable of hearing?' We want to know what is

Think about maybe a time when your friend asks if you heard a sound, and you think maybe you did, but There also might be differences within an individual. Low levels of a stimulus, some subjects can detect

And the 50% of the time clause here is actually really important. So it is the lowest level of any stimulus that we can generally detect. Threshold of sensation is the minimum intensity of a stimulus that is needed to detectĪ particular stimulus 50% of the time.

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