A Wisdom Archive on Psychophysics

List of publications in biology - Tracking an object through feature space. Blaser E, Pylyshyn ZW, Holcombe AO. Tracking an object through feature space. Nature. 2000 Nov 9;408(6809):196-9. Description: Importnace: ...

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Psychophysics is the branch of cognitive psychology dealing with the relationship between physical stimuli and their perception. While the majority of research has been done on vision, the discipline covers all the senses; papers have even been published on extrasensory perception, although more prosaic alternatives like hearing, taste, touch (including skin and enteric perception), smell, and sense of time are the more prevalent. The most straightforward use of psychophysics is the study of perceptual correlates for var ...

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A color circle is a way of representing the visible spectrum in a circular form, with colors arranged in sequence around the circumference in order of spectral frequency. Analogous to the use of a color wheel in art, the color circle performs a different purpose, as it is a psychophysical tool used in the exploration of visual perception, its anomalies and optical illusions connected with color vision. A normal color circle will appear with red at one end of the spectrum and violet at the other, and with a wedge-shaped gap repr ...

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Signal detection theory (sdt) is used when psychologists want to measure the way we make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, such as how we would perceive distances in foggy conditions. Sdt assumes that 'the decision maker is not a passive receiver of information, but an active decision-maker who makes difficult perceptual judgements under conditions of uncertainty." In foggy circumstances, we are forced to decide how far an object is away from us based solely upon visual stimulus which is impaired by the fog. Since the brightness of ...

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There are many different conceptions of the word "science". According to empiricism, scientific theories are objective, empirically testable, and predictive — they predict empirical results that can be checked and possibly contradicted. In contrast, scientific realism defines science in terms of ontology: science attempts to identify phenomena and entities in the environment, their causal powers, the mech ...

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The terms model, hypothesis, theory, and law have different meanings in science and colloquial speech. Scientists use model to refer to a description of something, specifically one which can be used to make predictions that can be tested by experiment or observation. A hypothesis is a contention that has been neither well supported nor ruled out by experiment yet. A physical law or law of nature is a scientific generalization based on empirical observations. The scientific method provides an objective proce ...

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The word science comes from the Latin word, scientia, which means knowledge; thus the phrase scientia potentia est: knowledge is power. Until the Enlightenment, the word science (or its Latin cognate) meant any systematic or exact, recorded knowledge. Science therefore had the same sort of very broad meaning that philosophy had at that time. It should be noted that in (at least) German, Finnish, and Scandinavian languages, the word corresponding "science" (German Wissenschaft) st ...

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The philosophy of science seeks to understand the nature and justification of scientific knowledge, and its ethical implications. It has proven difficult to provide an account of the scientific method that can serve to distinguish science from non-science. Science is reasoned based analysis of sensation upon our awareness. As such, the scientific method cannot deduce anything about the realm of reality that is beyond what is observable by existing or theoretical means. When a manifestation of our reality previously considered supernat ...

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List of publications in biology - Tempo and Mode in Evolution. George Gaylord Simpson Columbia University Press, 1944 Importance: ...

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Despite popular impressions of science, it is not the goal of science to answer all questions. The goal of the physical sciences is to answer only those that pertain to reality. Also, science cannot possibly address nonsensical, or untestable questions, so the choice of which questions to answer becomes important. Science does not and can not produce absolute and unquestionable truth. Rather, physical science often tests hypotheses about some aspect of the physical world, and when necessary revises or repla ...

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Science - Natural sciences.

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A basic understanding of science and technology has become indispensible for anyone living in a city or town, because technology - a product of science - has become an important part of peoples' lives. Science education aims at increasing common knowledge about science and widening social awareness. The process of learning science begins early in life for many people; school students start learning about science as soon as they acquire basic language skills, and science is always an essential part of curriculum. Science education is also a v ...

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Science is practiced in universities and other scientific institutes as well as in the field; as such it is a solid vocation in academia, but is also practiced by amateurs, who typically engage in the observational part of science. Workers in corporate research laboratories also practice science, although their results are often deemed trade secrets and not published in public journals. Corporate and university scientists often cooperate, with the university scientists focusing on basic research and the corporate scientists applying t ...

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List of publications in biology - DNA Sequencing with Chain-Terminating Inhibitors. Frederick Sanger, S. Nicklen, and A. R. Coulson PNAS, vol. 74, no. 12, p. 5463-5467 (1977) (Original text) Description: The basis of the DNA sequencing technique. (Sanger won his second Nobel prize thanks to it). Importance: Breakthrough, Impact List of publications in biology - Molecular Cloning : A Laboratory Manual. < ...

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