Cognition- Unit 2

bottom- up processing

the brain attempts to make sense: starts with and only uses sensory input to lead us to a perception

top down processing

all of our past experiences and expectations and other influences. starts with expectation and they influence the way we see the world. we see what we expect to see.

selective attention

to focus on just a particular stimulus among the many things, but we tend to only pay attention to some

cocktail party effect

your brain responds to something important in the midst of chaos 

inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention or focus is elsewhere 

change blindness

failure to notices changes in our visual environment 

gestalt psychology

empahsized our tendency to integrate pieces of information tino meaningful wholes

retinal disparity

the slight difference between the images seen by your left and right eyes,

concept

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

prototypes 

a mental image or best example of category. matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items 

schema

collection of multiple connected concepts

assimilation

try to take new information into a preexisting schema

accomidation

changing or creating a schema for new info

algorithms

step by step logical method that guarantees a solution

heuristics

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgement and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error- prone than algorrithms

representative heuristic

how do two things relate or match another to find a similar solution

availability heuristic

estimates the likelihood of events in availability in representative leads to sterotypes

divergent thinking

a way to find tons of solutions expands number of solution

convergent thinking

narrowing the available problems and solutions to determine the single best solution

conformation bias

your preference for things that confirm what you already thought was right. Ignore information that doesn’t match what we want.