Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
49 results found in Perception.
- Active Perception (Active Sensing, Sensorimotor Exploration)
- A view of perception in which the perceiver is not a passive receiver of stimuli but an active agent who moves, orients, and manipulates the environment to gather the sensory information needed for a …
- Attention Tunneling (Visual Tunneling, Attentional Tunneling, Cognitive Tunneling)
- A phenomenon in which a user concentrates so narrowly on a primary information source - typically a visual overlay, head-up display, or instrument - that they fail to notice relevant events, objects, …
- Awe (Awe Experience)
- Awe is an emotional response to perceived vastness — physical, conceptual, social, or spiritual — that requires a person to update their mental models to accommodate it. It blends wonder, reverence, a…
- Color Perception (Color Vision, Chromatic Vision)
- Color perception is the ability to detect, distinguish, and identify colors. Impairments in color perception range from complete color blindness (achromatopsia) to partial deficiencies in distinguishi…
- Cross-Modal Perception (Multisensory perception, Cross-modal integration)
- The neural and perceptual integration of information arriving through two or more sensory channels — such as vision, hearing, touch, and proprioception — into a coherent experience of the world. Cross…
- Cross-modal Congruency
- The temporal, spatial, and semantic alignment of sensory cues during an interaction — for example, a visual event and its accompanying sound occurring at the same moment and in the same location, with…
- Cutaneous Perception (Cutaneous Sense, Cutaneous Feedback, Tactile Perception)
- The sensory experience derived from receptors beneath the surface of the skin that respond to temperature, pain, and pressure. In the context of assistive technology, cutaneous perception enables user…
- Discrimination Ellipse (Discrimination Ellipsoid, MacAdam Ellipse)
- A region in a color space surrounding a given color within which other colors cannot be distinguished from it by an observer. In two dimensions this region forms an ellipse; in three-dimensional color…
- Emotional Mediation Hypothesis
- A theoretical account, originating in work by Palmer and colleagues, that explains cross-modal associations between sensory attributes (such as colors and musical timbres) as being mediated by shared …
- Environmental Flow (Optic Flow, Sensory Flow)
- The ordered changes in a pedestrian's distances and directions to surrounding objects that occur while walking, providing continuous feedback about spatial position and movement through the environmen…
- Exploratory Procedures (EPs)
- Exploratory procedures are stereotyped movement patterns that people use when examining objects through touch to identify specific properties. Defined by Lederman and Klatzky in tactile perception res…
- Frequency Selectivity (Auditory Frequency Resolution, Critical Band Selectivity)
- Frequency selectivity is the auditory system's ability to separate closely-spaced frequencies into distinct perceptual streams — the reason a typical listener can follow one voice in a crowd, hear the…
- Graphical perception (Chart perception, Visual data perception)
- The cognitive process by which people extract quantitative information from visual data representations such as charts, graphs, and maps. Graphical perception involves comparing positions, lengths, ar…
- Head-related transfer function (HRTF)
- A response function that describes how sound from a specific point in space is filtered by the shape of the outer ear, head, and torso before reaching the eardrum. HRTFs are unique to each individual …
- Inattentional Blindness (Perceptual Blindness)
- Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected object or feature when attention is directed elsewhere. It is distinct from change blindness (failure to notice a change…
- Kinaesthetic Perception (Kinesthetic Perception, Kinaesthesia, Kinesthesia, Proprioception)
- The sensory awareness of the position, movement, and force of body parts, derived from receptors in muscles, tendons, and joints. In the context of haptic technology and accessibility, kinaesthetic pe…
- Kinesthetic (Kinaesthetic)
- Kinesthetic refers to the sense of body movement, limb position and muscular effort, arising from receptors in muscles, tendons and joints and closely related to proprioception. In accessibility and i…
- Kinesthetic Perception (Kinesthesia, Proprioceptive Perception)
- The sensory ability to perceive the position, movement, and forces acting on one's body and limbs through receptors in muscles, tendons, and joints. Kinesthetic perception encompasses awareness of lim…
- Kinesthetic Perception (Kinesthesia, Kinesthetic Sense, Kinesthetic Feedback)
- The sensory awareness of body position, movement, and force through receptors located in muscles, tendons, and joints. In assistive technology, kinesthetic feedback is a component of haptic interactio…
- Material Perception (Material recognition)
- The perceptual processes by which people identify and characterize the materials that objects are made of — such as wood, metal, glass, leather, fabric, or stone — using visual, tactile, auditory, and…