Basic Principles
Sensation
The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.
Selective attention
The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.
Absolute threshold
The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.
Weber's Law
The principle where to be perceived different , two stimuli need to differ by a constant minimum percentage.
Perception
The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.
Inattentional blindness
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Signal detection theory
Predicts when we will detect stimuli.
Sensory adaptation
Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.
Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.
Change blindness
Failing to notice changes in the environment.
Subliminal
Below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness.
Perceptual Set
A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
Top-down processing
Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
Transduction
Conversion of one form of energy into another. Sensation into interpretation.
Priming
the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response.
Psychophysics
The study of relationships between physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience of them.
Difference threshold
Minimum difference needed to be perceived