AP Psych Unit 2A

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; a form of inattentional blindness.

Perceptual Set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Gestalt (a German word meaning a “form” or “whole”)

an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Figure-ground

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

Grouping

the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Depth perception

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

Visual cliff

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

Binocular cues

a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, 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. 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.

Monocular Cue

a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone.

Stroboscopic movement

an illusion of continuous movement (as in a motion picture) 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 (having consistent color, brightness, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change.

Color constancy

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

Brightness constancy

(also called lightness constancy) similarly depends on context. We perceive an object as having a constant brightness even as its illumination varies. This perception of constancy depends on relative luminance -the amount of light an object reflects relative to its surroundings.

Perceptual adaptation

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

Executive Functions

cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior.

Algorithm

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier - but also more error-prone use of heuristics.

Heuristic

a simple thinking strategy - a mental shortcut - that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm

Insight

a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

Confirmation Bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Fixation

In cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving.

Mental Set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, of ten a way that has been successful in the past.

Intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

Representative Heuristic

judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

Availability Heuristic

judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events as common.

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.

Belief perseverance

The persistence of one’s initial conceptions even after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

Nudge

framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions.