2.1 & 2.2 ap psych vocab

Inattentional Blindness

Failing to see visible objects when attention is directed elsewhere.

Gestalt Psychology

Emphasizes the organization of stimuli into meaningful wholes.

Visual Cliff

Lab device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.

Binocular Cues

Depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes.
Eg: Retinal Disparity

Convergence

the brain merges the images from both eyes to create a single perception (Binocular cue where eyes move inward to see near objects)

Retinal Disparity

Binocular cue from the different views each eye has of the world.

Relative Clarity

Hazy objects seen as more distant.

Relative Size

Assuming smaller objects are farther away.

Texture Gradient

Indistinct texture signals increasing distance.

Interposition

Objects that block the view of others are seen as closer.

Perceptual Constancies

Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change.

Color Constancy

Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color.

Apparent Motion

Perceiving a stationary object as moving. (eg video doesnt move, its just a sequence of frames)

Stroboscopic Movement

Perception of continuous movement in a rapid series of slightly varying images.

Concept

the building blocks of thought, helping us to categorize and understand the world

Mental Set

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

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response

Framing

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

Nudge

a concept in behavioral economics that subtly alters the environment or context in which people make decisions with the aim of influencing their behavior

Gambler's Fallacy

Believing that past events affect the likelihood of future events
Example: Thinking that a coin is "due" to land heads after several tails

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

a framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation

Functional Fixedness

the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving

Insight

a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem

Confirmation Bias

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

Fixation

according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved

Intuition

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

Belief Perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Convergent Thinking

narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events

Top-Down Processing

Using models, ideas, and prior expectations to interpret sensory information.

Schemas

Concepts or frameworks that organize and interpret information. (eg our schema for a dog is having 4 legs and a tail)

Cocktail Party Effect

Ability to focus on one voice among many. (eg hear own name said in noiisy room) (shows how we can selectively attend to certain stimuli in a noisy environment)

Change Blindness

Failing to notice changes in the environment due to innatention

Closure

Filling in gaps to create a complete, whole object.
we tend to see incomplete figures as whole

Proximity

Grouping nearby figures together.

Similarity

Grouping similar figures together. (eg group objects of same color together)

Prototype

The most typical example of a concept. For instance, when
you think of the concept "bird," a robin might be the _____ that comes
to mind because it has all the common characteristics of birds.

Accommodation

Changing schemas to incorporate new information.
Example: Learning that some birds can't fly and updating
your bird schema to include flightless birds like penguins.

Algorithm

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

Creativity

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

Divergent Thinking

expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions)

Bottom-Up Processing

relies on external sensory info, process as sensing

Perceptual Set

Mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another. (eg expect to see a certain shape in the clouds bc someone mentioned it)

Attention

Focusing awareness on a particular stimulus.

Selective Attention

Focusing on a specific aspect while ignoring others.

Figure and Ground (figure-ground)

we differentiate diff objects from their background

Grouping

Perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Depth Perception

Ability to see objects in three dimensions.

Monocular Cues

allow us to percieve depth even with one eye

Linear Perspective

Parallel lines appear to converge with distance.

Perceptual Adaptation

Ability to adjust to an artificially displaced visual field.

Phi Phenomenon

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

Autokinetic Effect

Perceived movement of a stationary point of light in a dark room.

Schema

frameworks for thinking that help us organize and interpret information.

Assimilation

ncorporating new information into existing schemas without changing them. Example: Seeing a new breed of dog and adding it to your existing schema of what dogs are.

Executive Functions

higher order thinking processes that include planning, organizing, inhibition, and decision-making

Heuristic

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

Representativeness Heuristic

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

Availability Heuristic

estimating 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 are common

Overconfidence

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