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Selective attention
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The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus, as in the cocktail party effect
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Visual capture
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The tendency of vision to dominate the other senses
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Gestalt
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An organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasize our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes
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Figure-ground
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The organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground)
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Grouping
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The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups
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Depth perception
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The ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance
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Visual cliff
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A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young adults
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Binocular cues
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Depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes
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Monocular cues
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Distance cues, such as linear perspective and overlap, available to either eye alone
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Retinal disparity
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A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images the retina recieves of an object, the closer the object is to the viewer
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Convergence
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A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object
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Phi phenomenon
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An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in succession
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Perceptual constancy
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Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change
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Perceptual adaptation
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In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field
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Perceptual set
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A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another
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