Sensation and Perception

Written by experts on each of the senses, this book provides a comprehensive yet accessible survey of the major topics in the field. A new chapter on the vestibular system has been added. There is new coverage of visual development, the neural basis of object recognition, body image and out-of-body experiences, brain plasticity, and pheromones and chemicals that may influence human sexual attraction. More connections have been made between the senses so that students can understand how facts about one sense inform our understanding of the others. It is revised throughout to include the most recent work. New demonstrations and exercises are being added to the popular Companion Website.Written by experts in each of the five senses who have an enthusiasm for conveying the excitement of this field to students, this introductory text provides comprehensive descriptions of vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. The second edition has been revised to include the most up-to-date research and theories, and new coverage of key topics.

JEREMY M. WOLFE is Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, USA. His early work includes papers on binocular vision, adaptation, and accommodation. Dr. Wolfe was trained as a vision researcher/experimental psychologist and remains one today. The bulk of his recent work has dealt with visual search and visual attention. He has taught Introductory Psychology for over twenty years, first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, where he won the Baker Memorial Prize for undergraduate teaching in 1989, and now, also, at Harvard. KEITH R. KLUENDER is Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. His research encompasses how people hear complex sounds such as speech, how experience shapes the way we hear, how what we hear guides our actions and communication, clinical problems of hearing impairment or language delay, and practical concerns about computer speech recognition and hearing aid design. Dr. Kluender is deeply committed to teaching, and has taught a wide array of courses, philosophical, psychological, and physiological. DENNIS M. LEVI has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, USA since 2001. He is Dean/Professor in the School of Optometry and Professor at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. In the lab, Dr. Levi and colleagues use psychophysics, computational modelling, and brain imaging (fMRI) to study the neural mechanisms of normal pattern vision in humans, and to learn how they are degraded by abnormal visual experience (amblyopia). LINDA M. BARTOSHUK is Professor of Otolaryngology and Psychology at Yale University, USA. Her research on taste has opened up broad new avenues for further study, establishing the importance of the genetic basis of taste preferences (and their impact on health) and demonstrating the significant anatomical differences underlying these preferences. Her work has also improved the treatment of oral pain in cancer patients and people with neurological damage resulting in a loss of taste. RACHEL S. HERZ is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour at Brown University Medical School, USA. Her research focuses on olfactory cognition and perception and the roles and features of emotion, memory, and language. Using an experimental approach grounded in evolutionary theory and incorporating both cognitive-behavioural and psychological techniques, Dr. Herz aims to understand how biological mechanisms and cognitive processes interact to influence perception, cognition, and behaviour ROBERTA L. KLATZY is Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, where she also holds faculty appointments in the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and the Human--Computer Interaction Institute. She has done extensive research on haptic and visual object recognition, human navigation under visual and nonvisual guidance, and motor planning. Her work has application to haptic interfaces, navigation aids for the blind, exploratory robotics, teleoperation, and virtual environments. SUSAN J. LEDERMAN is Professor of Psychology at Queen's University, USA, with cross-appointments in the School of Computing and in the Centre for Neuroscience. Her research interests span both perception and cognition, with particular emphases on psychophysics, haptic perception and recognition of objects and their underlying neural processes and representations, multisensory perception, and sensory-guided motor control. She has applied the results of her research to a number of real-world problems, including the design of haptic and multisensory interfaces for virtual environments and teleoperation.