Perception

1. Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment.
2. A perceptual set is a predisposition to perceive things in a certain way.
   
   

   The Necker cube and Rubin vase can be perceived in more than one way.

   
   
3. Perceptual constancy is the perception of an object or quality with consistency even though our sensation of the object changes.
   
   

   An example of shape constancy.

   
   
4. The binding problem refers to the problem of how our brains segregate elements in complex patterns of sensory input so that they are allocated to discrete objects.
5. Selective attention is the process of selecting one sensory channel while ignoring or minimizing others.
6. Donald Broadbent's filter model of attention proposed that the physical characteristics (e.g., pitch, loudness) of an auditory message were used to focus attention to only a single message.
7. The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of being able to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli.