Iat201 Study Cards

Front 1

Fovea

Back 1

pit near center of eye packed with cones

Front 2

Rods

Back 2

very sensitive to light and are mostly responsible for night vision; concentrated in peripheral vision

Front 3

Cones

Back 3

colour sensitive; concentrated in center of retina

Front 4

S-cones...

M-cones...

L-cones...

Back 4

...detect blue

...detect green

...detect red

Front 5

What pathway (ventral)

Back 5

pathway of neural processing in the brain that is responsible for your ability to recognize what’s around you

Front 6

Where-and-how pathway (dorsal)

Back 6

pathway of neural processing in the brain that is responsible for you knowing where things are in the world and how to interact with them

Front 7

Primary visual cortex

Back 7

brain region located in occipital cortex (back of head) responsiblefor processing basic visual info like the detection, thickness, and orientation of simple lines,color, and small-scale motion

Front 8

Why do we have two eyes? What is binocular advantage?

Back 8

allows us to see same scene twice; our brains combine the 2D signals from both eyes into a “3D” image to create depth perception

Front 9

Contrast gain

Back 9

process where sensitivity of vision system can be tuned to be most sensitive to the levels of contrast most prevalent in an environment

Front 10

Dark adaptation

Back 10

process where you become sensitive to very small levels of light, so you can see even in its near-absence

Front 11

Lateral inhibition

Back 11

a signal produced by a neuron aimed at suppressing the response of nearby neurons

Front 12

Opponent process theory

Back 12

theory of color vision that assumes there are 4 basic colors organized in pairs (red/green, blue/yellow) and proposes colors in the world are encoded in terms of the difference between the colors in each pair. A black/white pair is responsible for coding light contrast

Front 13

Photoactivism

Back 13

a photochemical reaction that occurs when light hits photoreceptors in the retina, producing a neural signal

Front 14

Synesthesia

Back 14

blending of two or more sensory experiences

Front 15

Trichromacy theory

Back 15

theory that proposes all your colour perception is fundamentally based on the combination of three different colour signals

Front 16

Vestibulo-ocular reflex

Back 16

coordination of motion info with visual info that allows you to maintain your gaze on an object while moving your head

Front 17

Gestalt principle of proximity

Back 17

objects near each other (relative to other objects) appear grouped, while others do not

Front 18

Gestalt principle of similarity

Back 18

objects that look similar appear grouped

Front 19

Gestalt principle ofcontinuity

Back 19

our visual perception is biased to perceive continuous forms rather than disconnected segments

Front 20

Gestalt principle ofclosure

Back 20

our visual system automatically tries to close open figures so that they are perceived as whole objects rather than separate pieces

Front 21

Gestalt principle of symmetry

Back 21

we tend to parse complex scenes in a way that reduces the complexity. The data in our visual field usually has more than one possible interpretation, but our vision automatically organizes and interprets the data so as to simplify it and give it symmetry

Front 22

Gestalt principle of figure/ground

Back 22

our mind separates the visual field into the figure (the foreground) and ground (the background). The foreground consists of the elements of a scene that are the object of our primary attention, and the background is everything else

Front 23

Gestalt principle of common fate

Back 23

related to the Proximity and Similarity principles—like them, it affects whether we perceive objects as grouped. The Common Fate principle states that objects that move together are perceived as grouped or related

Front 24

Priming

Back 24

preparing our brain to perceive something in a certain way

Front 25

Frames

Back 25

include objects or events that are usually encountered in a familiar situation. Bias our perception of events and places because of what we expect to see. Applies to technology too (e.g. position of “back” and “next” buttons)

Front 26

Habituation

Back 26

repeated exposure to the same (or highly similar) perceptions dulls ourperceptual system’s sensitivity to them

Front 27

Attentional blink

Back 27

just after we spot or hear something important, for a very brief periodfollowing the recognition—between 0.15 and 0.45 second—we are nearly deaf and blindto other visual stimuli, despite our other sense still working

Front 28

Optical illusion

Back 28

trick us because our visual system does not use accurate, optimal methods to perceive the world due to evolution (i.e. our perception is full of “bugs”)

Front 29

Muller-Lyer illusion

Back 29

two horizontal lines are the same length, but the outward-pointing “fins” cause our visual system to see the top line as longer than the line with inward-pointing “fins.”

Front 30

McGurk effect

Back 30

watch a video of someone saying “bah, bah, bah,” then “dah, dah, dah,”then “vah, vah, vah,” but the audio is “bah, bah, bah” throughout, you will hear the syllableindicated by the speaker’s lip movement rather than the syllable actually in the audio track

Front 31

How do goals bias our perception?

Back 31

they guide our perceptions so we sample what we need from the world, and filter things that aren’t related to our goals out of our perceptions

Front 32

Cocktail-party effect

Back 32

if you are conversing with someone at a crowded party, you can focus your attention to hear mainly what he or she is saying even though many other people are talking near you. The more interested you are in the conversation, the morestrongly your brain filters out surrounding chatter

Front 33

What are three implications of our perceptual biases? How can be apply them?

Back 33

1. avoid ambiguity

2. be consistent

3. understand the goals

Front 34

What are three essential elements of science?

Back 34

1. science consists of systematic observation

2. science is democratic

3. science is cumulative

Front 35

What are five ethical guidelines for psychological research and what do they entail?

Back 35

Informed consent. Participants should know they are involved in research and have a choice whether or not to participate

Confidentiality. Findings about an individuality are kept private unless participant’s consent is given

Privacy. Researchers will not seek out private information without consent

Benefits. Researchers and participants should understand the risks and rewards of the research, and participants should only be exposed to risks if they understand them and if the benefits outweigh those risks

Deception. Researchers must debrief their participants after they have completed the study, so they understand the true nature of the research

Front 36

Empirical methods

Back 36

approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement andobservation

Front 37

Ethics

Back 37

professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that protect research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts of interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research

Front 38

Hypothesis

Back 38

a logical idea that can be tested

Front 39

Systematic observation

Back 39

the careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better understanding it. Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise organize information about the natural world

Front 40

Theories

Back 40

groups of closely related phenomena or observations

Front 41

Empiricism

Back 41

branch of psychology in which it is believed that“knowledge comes from experience”

Front 42

Structuralism

Back 42

branch of psychologyinterested in contents of the mind and what it is

Front 43

Functionalism

Back 43

branch of psychology nterested in activities of the mind and what it does

Front 44

Gestalt

Back 44

whole of any experience is richer than studying the individual parts; “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”; unity

Front 45

Behaviorism

Back 45

branch of psychology that deems overt and observable behavior the proper subject of psychology

Front 46

Cognitive psychology

Back 46

branch of psychology interested in the study of mental processes

Front 47

Eugenics

Back 47

practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits

Front 48

Flashbulb memory

Back 48

highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event

Front 49

Individual differences

Back 49

ways people differ in terms of behavior, emotion, cognition, development

Front 50

Design as a reflective practice (D. Schon)

Back 50

believes designers should use science to inform their designs

Front 51

Science of the artificial (H. Simon)

Back 51

uses structured design methods that will improve some situation; designer must insure that a design works in any likely set of external conditions andsituations

Front 52

Means-end analysis

Back 52

compares a design relative to the goals for the thing designed

Front 53

Satisficing

Back 53

happens when a decision is “good enough” to implement into a design

Front 54

Technology as a special case (W. Brian Arthur)

Back 54

at a minimum, technology harnesses some phenomenon to achieve an objective. Also...

1. tech provides some capability based on the principle of X

2. small technologies combine

3. tech designers learn language of capabilities

Front 55

Theory of natural science (the scientific method)

Back 55

scientists should make bold predictions in testable hypothesis; experiments should be designed to falsify those predictions

Front 56

Theory of design evaluation

Back 56

“design is a hypothesis” - if I do X users will do Y; the designer is predicting user behavior

Front 57

Conceptual models

Back 57

describe a phenomenon metaphorically

Front 58

Computational models

Back 58

computers program that makes predictions based on algorithm

Front 59

Computational theories

Back 59

computer program in which the algorithm must simulate real-world causal relationships

Front 60

SOAR (Newell)

Back 60

computational theory that uses mechanisms of “chunking” and procedural learning, means-end analysis

Front 61

ACT-R (Anderson)

Back 61

computational theory thatattempts to build subprograms for each aspect of the structure of mental processing that experimental psychologists discover

Front 62

Divided attention

Back 62

the ability to flexibly allocate attentional resources between two or more concurrent tasks

Front 63

Selective attention

Back 63

the ability to select certain stimuli in the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information

Front 64

Dichotic listening

Back 64

an experimental task in which two messages are presented to different ears of a subject, and they are required to repeat only the syllables spoken in their left ear

Front 65

Inattentional blindness

Back 65

the failure to notice a fully visible object when attention is devoted to something else

Front 66

Limited capacity

Back 66

the notion that humans have limited mental resources that can be used at agiven time

Front 67

Shadowing

Back 67

a task in which the individual is asked to repeat an auditory message as it is presented

Front 68

Subliminal perception

Back 68

the ability to process information for meaning when the individual is notconsciously aware of that information

Front 69

Inattentional deafness

Back 69

the auditory analog of inattentional blindness. People fail to notice anunexpected sound or voice when attention is devoted to other aspects of a

Front 70

Selective listening

Back 70

a method for studying selective attention in which people focus attention on one auditory stream of information while deliberately ignoring other auditory information.