Untitled Flashcards Set

Selective Attention

Focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

Inattentional Blindness

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

Change Blindness

Failing to notice changes in the environment.

Perceptual Set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Gestalt

An organized whole; emphasizes our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Figure-Ground

The organization of the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings.

Grouping

The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Depth Perception

The ability to see objects in three dimensions, allowing us to judge distance.

Visual Cliff

A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.

Binocular Cue

A depth cue that depends on the use of two eyes.

Convergence

A cue to nearby objects’ distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images.

Retinal Disparity

A binocular cue for perceiving depth.

Monocular Cue

A depth cue available to either eye alone.

Stroboscopic Movement

An illusion of continuous movement experienced when viewing a rapid series of slightly varying still images.

Phi Phenomenon

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

Autokinetic Effect

The illusory movement of a still spot of light in a dark room.

Perceptual Constancy

Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change.

Color Constancy

Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.

Perceptual Adaptation

The ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.