AP Psychology: Principles of Perception and Gestalt Psychology

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering sensation, top-down versus bottom-up processing, selective attention, Gestalt grouping principles, binocular and monocular depth cues, perceptual constancies, and apparent motion phenomena.

Sensation

The process of detecting, converting, and transmitting raw sensory information from the external and internal environments to the brain.

Perception

The process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory information.

Top-down processing

Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.

Bottom-up processing

Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.

Schema

A collection of basic knowledge about a concept or entity that serves as a guide to perception, interpretation, imagination, or problem solving.

Perceptual set

A mental predisposition or expectation that heavily influences what we perceive, exemplified by hearing every house noise as a threat when home alone.

Context effect

The influence of environmental factors and surrounding information on one's perception of a stimulus, such as reading an identical symbol as the letter 'H' in 'THE' and as 'A' in 'CAT'.

Cocktail party effect

The ability to focus one's listening attention on a single talker among a mixture of conversations and background noises.

Inattentional blindness

The failure to notice the existence of an unexpected item in the visual field when attention is diverted to another task or aspect of the scene.

Change blindness

The failure to notice obvious visual changes occurring within an environment.

Continuity principle (Gestalt)

The Gestalt rule stating that when individual elements of a visual image are aligned in a way that suggests a continuous line, they will be perceived as an integrated whole.

Closure (Gestalt)

The Gestalt tendency to perceive an incomplete or fragmented pattern as a complete, unified whole by filling in the visual gaps.

Figure and ground

The Gestalt organization principle involving the visual separation of an object of interest (the figure) from its surrounding background (the ground).

Similarity (Gestalt)

The Gestalt grouping principle stating that visual stimuli sharing similar physical properties (such as shape, color, or texture) are perceived as belonging together.

Proximity (Gestalt)

The Gestalt grouping principle stating that elements located close to one another in physical space are perceived as a single group.

Depth perception

The ability to perceive the relative distance of objects in one's visual field.

Retinal disparity

The slight difference between the right and left retinal images caused by the horizontal separation of the eyes, which provides a binocular cue to depth perception when compared and fused by the brain.

Convergence

A binocular depth cue involving the inward rotation of the two eyes toward a light source or nearby object so that the image falls on corresponding points of the foveas.

Relative clarity

A monocular depth cue where nearer objects appear sharp and clear in detail under atmospheric conditions, whereas more distant objects appear less distinct and bluer.

Relative size

A monocular depth cue where, if two separate objects are expected to be the same size, the one casting the larger visual image on the retina is perceived as closer.

Texture gradient

A monocular depth cue characterized by a progressive decline in the resolution and sharpness of textures as distance from the observer increases.

Linear perspective

A monocular depth cue based on the principle that parallel lines appear to grow closer together and converge as distance from the eye increases.

Interposition

A monocular depth cue that occurs when two objects are in the same line of vision and the closer object partially obstructs or conceals the farther object.

Perceptual constancies

The visual tendency to recognize familiar objects as maintaining consistent properties such as size, shape, brightness, and color, even as retinal sensations shift.

Stroboscopic movement

An illusion of motion created by presenting a rapid succession of slightly different, stationary images, such as in a flipbook or motion picture.

Phi phenomenon

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