Unit 2 Flashcards
Selective Attention
Book: Focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.
IMOW: Focusing on one thing while ignoring other things around you.
Inattentional Blindness
Book: Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
IMOW: Not noticing something right in front of you because you’re focused on something else.
Change Blindness
Book: Failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional blindness.
IMOW: Failing to notice big changes in something when you’re distracted.
Perceptual Set
Book: A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
IMOW: Expecting something to be a certain way, so you see it that way.
Gestalt
Book: An organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate.
IMOW: The idea that we see things as a whole shapes or patterns, not just parts.
Figure-Ground
Book: The organization of the visual field into the objects that stand out from their surroundings.
IMOW: The ability to focus on an object and separate it from the background.
Grouping
Book: The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.
IMOW: Organizing objects or information into groups based on similarity.
Depth Perception
Book: The ability to see objects in three dimensions, although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance.
IMOW: The ability to see how far away things are.
Visual Cliff
Book: A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.
IMOW: An experiment showing that babies can perceive depth and fear falling.
Binocular Cue
Book: A depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes.
IMOW: Clues about depth that involve both eyes working together.
Convergence
Book: A cue to nearby objects’ distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images.
IMOW: The way our eyes turn inward to focus on objects that are close.
Retinal Disparity
Book: A binoculars cue for perceiving depth. By comparing retinal images from the two eyes, the brain computes distance - the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
IMOW: The difference in images seen by each eye that helps us judge distance.
Monocular Cue
Book: A depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone.
IMOW: Clues about depth that can be seen with just one eye.
Stroboscopic Movement
Book: An illusion of continuous movement experienced when viewing a rapid series of slightly varying still images.
IMOW: Seeing motion when a series of still images are shown quickly.
Phi Phenomenon
Book: An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.
IMOW: The illusion of movement when lights blink on and off in a sequence.
Autokinetic Effect
Book: The illusory movement of a still spot of light in a dark room.
IMOW: The illusion of a stationary light moving when you stare at it for long time.
Perceptual Constancy
Book: Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change.
IMOW: Adjusting to changes in what you see, like when glasses distort vision.
Color Constancy
Book: Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.
IMOW: Recognizing that the color of an object stays the same, even in different lighting.
Perceptual Adaptation
Book: The ability to adjust to changes sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.
IMOW: Adjusting to changes in what you see, like when glasses distort vision.
Cognition
Book: All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
IMOW: The mental process of thinking, understanding and remembering.
Metacognition
Book: Cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes.
IMOW: Thinking about your own thinking or being aware of how you learn.
Concept
Book: A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
IMOW: A mental category or idea that helps you group things together.
Prototype
Book: A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method of sorting items into categories.
IMOW: The best example or typical member of a category.
Schema
Book: A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
IMOW: A mental framework or structure for understanding the world.