psych unit 2

• selective attention

  focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.
• inattentional blindness

  failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
• change blindness

  failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional blindness.
• perceptual set

  a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
• gestalt

  an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.
• figure-ground

  the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground).
• grouping

  the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.
• depth perception

  the ability to see objects in three dimensions, although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance.
• visual cliff

  a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.
• binocular cue

  a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes.
• convergence

  a cue to nearby objects' distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images.
• retinal disparity

  a binocular cue for perceiving depth. By comparing retinal images from the two eyes, the brain computes distance — the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
• monocular cue

  a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone.
• stroboscopic movement

  an illusion of continuous movement (as in a motion picture) experienced when viewing a rapid series of slightly varying still images.
• phi phenomenon

  an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.
• autokinetic effect

  the illusory movement of a still spot of light in a dark room.
• perceptual constancy

  perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent color, brightness, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change.
• color constancy

  perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.
• perceptual adaptation

  the ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.
• cognition

  all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
• metacognition

  cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes.
• concept

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

  a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a crow).
• schema

  a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
• assimilation

  interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.
• accommodation (in developmental psychology)

  in developmental psychology, adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information.
• creativity

  the ability to produce new and valuable ideas.
• convergent thinking

  narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
• divergent thinking

  expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions.
• executive functions

  cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior.
• algorithm

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

  a simple thinking strategy—a mental shortcut — that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm.
• insight

  a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
• confirmation bias

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

  in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving.
• mental set

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

  an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.
• representativeness heuristic

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

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