Perception and Attention

Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to produce a meaningful experience.

Habituation is a decrease in response to a repeated stimulus, while selective attention, divided attention, and sustained attention are all types of attention.

Selective attention is the ability to focus on a single task or stimulus while ignoring distractions.

Divided attention is the ability to attend to two or more tasks or stimuli simultaneously.

Sustained attention is the ability to maintain attention on a single task or stimulus over a period of time.

Genetics does not influence perception, while past experiences, expectations, and culture all do.

Gestalt principles are a set of principles that describe how humans tend to perceive objects as being grouped together based on their proximity, similarity, or continuity.

Depth perception is the ability to perceive the relative distance and depth of objects.

Figure-ground segregation is the process of separating an object from its background.

Size constancy is not a perceptual illusion, but rather a perceptual phenomenon that allows us to perceive objects as being the same size even when they are at different distances from us.

Assimilation is the tendency to perceive objects as being more similar to each other than they actually are.

Contrast is the tendency to perceive objects as being more different from each other than they actually are.

Perceptual set is the tendency to perceive objects in a way that is consistent with our expectations.

Cognitive dissonance is the tendency to experience discomfort or tension when our beliefs or expectations are challenged.

Positivity bias is not a type of attentional bias, but rather a cognitive bias that leads us to focus on positive information more than negative information.