CBSE BoardEnglish MediumSTD 11 HumanitiesPsychologySensory, Attentional And Perceptual Processes2 Marks
Question
Explain the concept of Absolute limit.
✓
Answer
The minimum value of stimulus required to activate a given sensory system is called Absolute Limit. e.g., if we add a granule of sugar to a glass of water you may not experience any sweetness in that water. But if we go on adding sugar granules one after another, there will come a point when we will say that the water is now sweet. The minimum number of sugar granules required to say that the water is sweet will be the Absolute Limit of sweetness.
This suggests that at levels above a certain intensity, a person would, always report detecting the stimulus. In practice this pattern, of results almost never occurs. The reason is that our sensitivity to stimuli changes from moment to moment because it varies considerably across individuals and situations depending on the people's organic conditions and their motivational states.
Hence, we have to assess it on the basis of a number of trials. The number of sugar granules that may produce the experience of "sweetness" in water on 50% of occasions will be called the Absolute Limit of sweetness.
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