AP Psych Unit 2

Top down processing:takes what you already know about the particular stimulation, to give meaning to your perceptions 

Bottom up processing: sensory receptors detect external stimulation and send this data to the brain for analysis   

schema: a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Perceptual sets: a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another 

Gestalt principles: an organized whole, emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of informations into meaningful whole 

Cocktail Party effect: attending to the mention of relevant information in loud or distracting environments 

Inattentional blindness: failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere  

Binocular depth cues: a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes 

Retinal disparity: binocular cue for perceiving depth. By comparing retinal images from the two eyes, the brain competes distance — the greater the disparity(difference) between the two images, the closer the object  

convergence: a cue to nearby objects’ distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images  

Monocular depth cues: a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone

Visual perceptual constancies:

assimilation: interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas  

accommodation: adapting our current schemas to incorporate new information

algorithms: methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrast with the usually speedier — but also more error-prone — use of heuristics  

heuristics: a simple thinking strategy - a mental shortcut — that often allow us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithm 

Mental shortcuts 

stereotypes:

Availability heuristic: judging 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  

Representative heuristic: judging the likelihood of events in terms of how eel they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information 

Gambler's fallacy: Occurs when individuals believe that past events or outcomes will influence future probabilities, despite there being no logical relationship between them 

 Sunk-Cost fallacy: individuals continue to pursue a goal or invest resources in a project because they have already invested significant time, effort, or money into it, even when it no longer makes rational sense 

Executive functions: cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior  

Creativity: the ability to produce new and valuable ideas 

Divergent thinking: expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions  

Convergent thinking: narrowing the available problems solutions to determine the single best solution