2.1a - 2.2a AP Psychology

Selective attention

Focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

Cocktail party effect

Hearing one's name in a loud setting.

Inattention blindness

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

Change blindness

Failure to notice a change in the environment, such as a person asking for directions being changed.

Perceptual set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Gestalt

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

Figure and Ground

The organization of visual fields into objects (figure) that stand out from their surroundings (ground).

Grouping

Perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Depth perception

The ability to see objects in three dimensions, although images arrive at the retina in two dimensions.

Visual cliff (Gibson and Walk)

A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals, indicating depth seems to be innate.

Convergence

Eyes move inward to nearby objects’ distance; brain combines retinal images.

Retinal disparity

The difference in images from two eyes, which the brain uses to compute distance.

Relative clarity

The concept that farther objects appear hazy.

Relative size

The perception that farther objects appear smaller.

Texture gradient

The principle that distant objects look smoother.

Linear perspective

The perception that parallel lines appear to meet in the distance.

Interposition

The principle that one object partially blocks our view of another, which we perceive as being closer.

Stroboscopic movement

The illusion of continuous movement created by a series of images or frames (e.g., flip book, motion picture).

Phi phenomenon

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

Auto-kinetic effect

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

Perceptual constancy

The perception of objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change.

Color and Brightness Constancy

The perception of familiar objects as having consistent color, regardless of changing illumination.

Brightness constancy

The perception of an object as having a constant brightness even as its illumination varies.

Cognition

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Meta cognition

Thinking about thinking; monitoring your learning.

Concepts

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a category.

Schemas (Jean Piaget)

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

Integrating new information into existing schemas without changing them.

Accommodation

Adjusting or creating new schemas to include new information.

Creativity

The ability to produce new and valuable ideas, which involves expertise, imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, and a creative environment.

Convergent thinking

Narrowing solutions to determine the single best answer, often used in aptitude tests.

Divergent thinking

Expanding the number of possible solutions to a problem.

Functional fixedness

The inability to see an object used for purposes other than its intended purpose.