Perception

Selective attention

Our tendency to focus on just a particular stimulus among the many that are being received.

Cocktail party effect

The ability to focus your attention on one particular voice amidst the noise of many other voices.

Inattentional Blindness

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

Change Blindness

Failing to notice changes in the visual environment.

Subliminal Stimuli

Stimuli that are not detectable 50% of the time and are below the absolute threshold.

Perceptual Set

Expectations of a particular environment that lead to a tendency to perceive some aspects of sensory data while ignoring others.

Top Down Processing

The process of making meaning out of sensory information based on expectations and experiences.

Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

The claimed ability to gain information through means other than the known senses.

Gestalt Psychology

A set of principles that explain how we perceive and organize visual information.

Figure-Ground

The ability to distinguish an object from its surroundings.

Binocular depth cue

Visual information that requires both eyes to perceive depth and distance.

Retinal Disparity

The slight difference in images seen by each eye due to their separate positions.

Convergence

The inward movement of both eyes toward each other to focus on a close object, aiding depth perception.

Relative Clarity

A depth cue where clearer and more detailed objects are perceived as closer, while hazy objects seem farther away.

Relative Size

A visual cue where closer objects appear larger than those farther away.

Texture Gradient

The perception that texture becomes denser as objects get further away.

Linear perspective

A depth cue where parallel lines appear to converge in the distance.

Interposition

The perception that an overlapping object is closer than the object it overlaps.

Relative Motion

The perception that objects closer to a fixation point move faster and in the opposite direction than those farther away.

Perceptual Constancies

The brain's ability to perceive objects as unchanging despite changes in sensory input.