Chapter Six Flashcards
the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events
perception
the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus
selective awareness
the ability to attend to only one voice among many (someones speaks your name)
cocktail party effect
failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere
inattentional blindness
when a strikingly distinct stimulus draws our eye
pop-out phenomenon
a perception, as of visual stimuli that represent what is perceived in a way different from reality
illusions
the tendency for vision to dominate the other senses
visual capture
an organized whole; psychologists emphasized our tendency to inter grate pieces of information into meaningful wholes
gestalt
the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground)
figure-ground
the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups (perceived whole differs from the sum of its parts)
grouping
we group nearby figures together
proximity
we group together figures that are similar to eachother
similarity
we perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones
continuity
we perceive them as a single unit because they are uniform and linked
connectedness
we fill in the gaps to create a complete, whole object
closure
the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance
depth perception