Ch.06 - Perception

Front 1

selective attention

Back 1

the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus, as in the cocktail party effect

Front 2

cocktail party effect

Back 2

the ability to attend selectively to only one voice among many

Front 3

change blindness

Back 3

lack of awareness of happenings in their visual environment

Front 4

visual capture

Back 4

the tendency for vision to dominate the other senses

Front 5

gestalt

Back 5

an organized whole; gestalt psychologists emphasize our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful words

Front 6

figure-ground

Back 6

the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground)

Front 7

grouping

Back 7

the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups

Front 8

proximity

Back 8

grouping nearby figures together

Front 9

similarity

Back 9

grouping figures similar to each other

Front 10

continuity

Back 10

perceiving smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones

Front 11

connectedness

Back 11

uniforming and linking objects together to form spots, lines or areas as a single unit

Front 12

closure

Back 12

filling in gaps to create a complete, whole object

Front 13

depth perception

Back 13

the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance

Front 14

visual cliff

Back 14

a laboratory devise for testing depth perception in infants and young animals

Front 15

binocular cues

Back 15

depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes

Front 16

monocular cues

Back 16

distance cues, such as linear perspective and overlap, available to either eye alone

Front 17

retinal disparity

Back 17

a binocular cue for perceiving depth: by comparing images from the two eyeballs, the brain computes distance - the great the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object

Front 18

convergence

Back 18

a binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object

Front 19

relative size

Back 19

a monocular cue which allows one to determine how close objects are to an object of known size

Front 20

lunar illusion

Back 20

when the moon is higher in the sky, there are no known objects or frame of references to judge the moon's closeness, and thus, appears smaller and farther away

Front 21

interposition (aka occulsion)

Back 21

the overlap of the image of one object over the image of another; when this happens, we judge the image which is obscured to be behind the other image, and thus farther away

Front 22

texture gradient

Back 22

graduated change in the texture, or grain, of the visual field; texture appears less detailed as distance increases

Front 23

relative clarity

Back 23

closer objects are seen as more clear; objects further away are seen as more hazy, slightly fuzzy

Front 24

relative height

Back 24

perceiving objects higher in our field of vision to be farther away

Front 25

relative motion (motion parallax)

Back 25

as one is moving, objects that are actually stable may appear to move

Front 26

linear perspective

Back 26

parallel lines appear to converge with distance; the more lines converge, the greater their perceived distance

Front 27

light and shadow

Back 27

nearby objects reflect more light to our eyes; the dimmer one seems farther away

Front 28

phi phenomenon

Back 28

an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in succession

Front 29

perceptual constancy

Back 29

perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape and size) even as illumination and retinal images change

Front 30

size constancy

Back 30

perceiving objects as having a constant size, even while our distance from them varies

Front 31

lightness constancy (aka brightness constancy)

Back 31

perceiving an object as having a constant lightness even while its illumination varies

Front 32

relative luminance

Back 32

the amount of light an object reflects relative to its surroundings

Front 33

perceptional adaptation

Back 33

in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field

Front 34

perceptual set

Back 34

a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

Front 35

human factors psychology

Back 35

a branch of psychology that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be adapted to human behaviors

Front 36

extrasensory perception (ESP)

Back 36

the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; said to include telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition

Front 37

parapsychology

Back 37

the study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis

Front 38

telepathy

Back 38

mind-to-mind communication - one person sending thoughts to another or perceiving another's thoughts

Front 39

clairvoyance

Back 39

perceiving remote events, such as sensing that a friend's house is on fire

Front 40

precognition

Back 40

perceiving future events, such as a political leader's death or sporting event's outcome