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Consciousness

• our awareness of ourselves and our environment

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Sensation

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• the process by which we receive physical energy from the environment and encode it into neural signals.

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Perception

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• the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information

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Bottom-up processing

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• analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information

Top-down processing

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• information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations

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Selective attention

• the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus. Also known as the cocktail party effect.

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Inattentional blindness

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

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Change blindness

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• failing to notice changes in the environment. Ex. The bearded man not noticing that the man giving directions was replaced by someone else after the board passed by.

Psychophysics

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• the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them

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Absolute threshold

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• the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time.

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