Although Thomas was sitting right next to his friends in the park, he was able to smell buttered popcorn a couple of minutes before they did. He has a lower __________ for smells than his friends.

The absolute threshold is the weakest intensity of a stimulus that a person can detect. Thomas noticed the popcorn smell before his friends, so he could detect a weaker smell and therefore has a lower absolute threshold. A difference threshold concerns noticing a change between two stimuli, not detecting a smell in the first place.

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