Chapter 6- Perception Flashcards
Selective Attention
the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus, as in the cocktail party effect
Perception
the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.
Cocktail Party Effect
Your ability to attend to only one voice among many (though let another voice speak your name and your cognitive radar will instantly bring that voice into consciousness).
Inattentional Blindness
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Change Blindness
inattentional blindness (gorilla in room, directions
Change Deafness
inattentional deafness (list of challenging words, voice change)
Change-Blindness Blindness
blindness to the phenomenon (picture change)
Pop-Out Phenomenon
when a strikingly distinct stimulus, such as a smiling face in a crowd of crying people, draws our attention. Not our choice
Illusions
reveal the ways we normally organize and interpret out sensations
Visual Capture
the tendency for vision to dominate the other senses.
Gestalt
an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes
Figure-Ground
the organization of the visual field (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground). (arrows/men going down staircase)
Grouping
the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.
Proximity
we group nearby figures together. We see not six separate lines, but three sets of two lines.
Similarity
we group together figures that are similar to each other. We see the triangles and circles as vertical columns of similar shapes, not as horizontal rows of dissimilar shapes.
Continuity
we perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones. This pattern could be a series of alternating semicircles, but we perceive it as two continuous lines—one wavy, one straight.
Connectedness
because they are uniform and linked, we perceive the two dots and the line between them as a single unit.
Closure
we fill in the gaps to create a complete, whole object. Thus we assume that the circles are complete but partially blocked by the triangle. Add nothing more than little line segments that close off the circles and now your brain stops constructing a triangle
Depth Perception
the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance.
Visual Cliff
a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.
Binocular Cues
depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes.
Retinal Disparity
a binocular cue for perceiving depth: By comparing images from the two eyeballs, the brain computes distance—the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
Convergence
a binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object. The greater the inward strain, the closer the object.
Monocular Cues
depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone
Phi Phenomenon
an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.
Perceptual Constancy
perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change.
Perceptual Adaption
in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual
Perceptual Set
a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
Human Factors Psychology
a branch of psychology that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made safe and easy to use.
Extra Sensory Perception (ESP)
the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input. Said to include telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition
Parapsychology
the study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis.
