Explains why we stop noticing background noises or smells after a while.

Expectations can bias what eyewitnesses remember and report.

Determining the just noticeable difference in price changes to influence consumer perception.

Balances correctly identifying threats with minimizing false alarms.

Highlights the challenge of focusing on study material in a distracting environment.

Artists use monocular and binocular cues to create realistic depth in paintings.

Allows us to recognize objects despite changes in viewing angle, distance, or illumination.

Shows how visual information (lip movements) can influence auditory perception (what we hear).

Chefs combine flavors to create balanced and appealing dishes.

Explains how massage or acupuncture might reduce pain by closing the 'gate'.

Analysis that begins with sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.

Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, drawing on experience and expectations.

To be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage.

Predicts how and when we detect a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise).

Ability to attend to only one voice among many.

Organizing visual information into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground).

Depth cues available to either eye alone, such as relative size and linear perspective.

Depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes, such as retinal disparity and convergence.

Perceiving objects as unchanging (consistent shape, size, lightness, color) even as illumination and retinal images change.

Retina contains three color receptors (red, green, blue) that produce perception of any color when stimulated in combination.

Opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) enable color vision.

The spinal cord contains a neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain.

Process where sensory receptors receive and represent stimulus energies.

Process of organizing and interpreting sensory information.

Minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time.

Minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time.

Stimulus below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness.

Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.

Mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Concepts or mental frameworks that organize and interpret information.

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

Failing to notice changes in the environment.

The difference between the images seen by the left and right eyes.

Process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus on near or far objects.

The system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts.

The sense of the position of one's own body.