AP Psychology Unit 2.1-Perception and Thought Processes

Cognition

The mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge

Perception, attention

Perception

A process that involved organizing sensory information

Affected by experiences, contexts, and emotions

Bottom-Up Processing

Processing something new or unfamiliar

Taking small details and making out a bigger picture

Top-Down Processing

Processing something with prior expectations

Seeing the bigger picture and then the fine details

Schemas

Mental structures or categories that help us organize and interpret information based on prior knowledge

Help us make sense of new information quickly by fitting it into a box

Can lead to biases or errors of perception

Perceptual Set

A predisposition to perceive things a certain way by the things around them

Gestalt principles

Our ability to perceive whole objects and not smaller parts of it

Closure, figure-ground, proximity, and similarity

Closure

The gestalt principle that refers to our tendency to perceive incomplete figures as complete holes

Figure-ground

The gestalt principle that refers to our ability to distinguish an object from its background

Proximity

The gestalt principle that refers to the way that we mentally group objects that are close together

Similarity

The gestalt principle that refers to our tendency to mentally group objects that look alike

Attention

Our minds focus and what we attend our thoughts to

Selective Attention

Our conscious attention on what our brain deems is important

Cocktail-Party Effect

Your ability to attend to only 1 voice when around many, and then shifting that attention to another voice

Inattentional Blindness

A phenomenon that occurs when individuals fail to notice unexpected objects and events in their environment because they are focused on something else

Change Blindness

Occurs when changes in an environment are not perceived due to inattentive blindness

Depth Perception

The brain’s ability to determine how far away objects are without touching them

Binocular Cues

Cues from both eyes for depth perception

Retinal disparity, convergence

Retinal disparity

The difference between the images captured by the different eyes because of the distance of the eyes.

Convergence

The inward movement of the eyes when focusing on an object that is close

Monocular Cues

Visual cues that help us determine the depth of objects with 1 eye

Relative size, relative clarity, texture gradient, linear perspective, interposition

Relative size

A monocular cue that helps us perceive depth by showing objects that are closer as larger than objects that are farther away

Relative Clarity

A monocular cue that relies on the difference in sharpness between objects at varying distances

Texture Gradient

A monocular cue that shows gradual change in surface texture the farther away you get

Linear perspective

A monocular cue that involves parallel lines appearing to converge at one point in the distance

Interposition

A monocular cue that makes partially covered objects appear farther than what is covering it

Perceptual constancy

The brain’s ability to recognize that perspective changes the apparent shape and size, and color and brightness of an object without it actually changing.

Apparent motion

A perceptual concept where we perceive movement in a series of still images or in a stationary object due to the way our brain processes static image sequences as continuous

Stroboscopic Effect

Occurs when a series of still images or light are flashed at a rapid rate to seem as if they have movement

Phi Phenomenon

Occurs when stationary lights blink on and off in succession, causing us to perceive motion

Autokinetic Effect

The illusion of movement that occurs when a stationary light in a dark environment seems to move on its own