Chapter 6: Perception Flashcards
Selective Attention
Focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus, as in the cocktail party effect.
Perception
Organizing & interpreting sensory info. Enables us to recognize meaningful objects & events.
Cocktail Party Effect
Your ability to attend to any one voice among many.
Inattentional Blindness
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Change Blindness
After a brief visual interruption you fail to notice changes in your visual field.(directions, gorilla)
Change Deafness
The failure to notice slight changes in our auditory field.
Choice-blindness blindness
Exhibiting denial (blindness) to falling victim to a hypothetical experiment.
Pop-out phenomenon
When distinct stimulus, such as a smiling face in a crowd of crying people, draws attention. Not our choice.
Illusions
A perception , as of visual stimuli, that represents what is perceived in a way different from reality.
Visual Capture
Tendency for vision to dominate other senses.
Gestalt
An organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of info into meaningful wholes.
Figure-ground
The organization of visual field (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground)
Grouping
Perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.
Proximity
We group nearby figures together. We are not 6 separate lines, but 3 sets of 2 lines.
Similarity
Group together figures similar to each other. We see triangles & circles as vertical columns of similar shapes, not as horizontal rows of dissimilar shapes.
Choice blindness
the failure to notice our selection of a particular stimulus has changed.
Depth perception
The ability to see objects in 3D although the images that strike the retina are 2D. Allows us to judge distance.
Visual cliff
A laboratory device used for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.
Binocular cues
Depth cues such as retinal disparity & convergence, that depend on the use of 2 eyes.
Retinal Disparity
By comparing images from the 2 eyeballs, the brain computes distance - the greater the disparity (distance) between 2 images, the closer the objects.
Convergence
A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes move inward when looking at an object. The greater the inward strain, the loser the object.
Monocular cues
Depth cues, such as interposition & linear perspective, available to either eye alone.
Relative size
In judging distance, the one that casts the smaller retinal image is perceived as further away.
Relative clarity
Because light from distant objects passes through more atmosphere, we perceive hazy objects as farther away than sharp, clear objects.
Continuity
Smooth continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones.
Closure
We fill in gaps to create a complete object.
Connectedness
Because they are uniform & linked, we perceive them as a single unit.
Perceptual constancy
Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape & size) even as illumination & retinal images change.
Perceptual adaption
In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.
Context effects
The influence of environmental factors in one’s perception of a stimulus.
Perceptual set
A mental predisposition to perceive one thing & not another.
Schema
A concept of framework that organizes and interprets info.
Human factors psychologists
A branch of psychology that explores how people & machines interact & how machines & physical environments can be made safe & easy to use.
Extrasensory perception
The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition)
Parapsychology
The study of paranormal phenomena (ESP, psychokinesis)
