Introduction
Hello! Have you encountered any web pages that are not perpetually under construction? Well, these pages are no different! Feel free to explore the pages, because they should be at least as useful as the earlier page that I'd constructed primarily to aid faculty delivering the perception course. I hope to include as many useful resources as I can on these updated pages. But expect to find changes to each page throughout the coming year (2007).
Overview of Theoretical Approaches to Sensation and Perception
The Empiricist Approach
The Gestalt Approach
The Behaviorist Approach
The Gibsonian Approach
The Information-Processing Approach
The Computational Approach
There will be a number of different ways in which you will be able to interconnect material from chapters in the book. And finding such linkages wil aid you in remembering the material. However, we have identified four major themes that we will make use of throughout the text. If you keep these themes in mind, you should be able to better integrate the material across chapters.
1.Our senses evolved over time to enable us to succeed in responding to our environment, so they share some clear similarities and interact with one another.
2. Our senses are exquisitely adapted to perceive a world containing stimuli that are rich with information and are found in a rich context.
3. The information falling on our sensory receptors is inherently ambiguous, yet we typically construct a sufficiently accurate perception of the world to enable us to interact with the world successfully.
4. Cognitive processes, such as the use of experience-derived knowledge and expectations, help shape our perceptions.
These web pages are intended to supplement the Matlin & Foley textbook. (With any luck, they will also serve to support a new edition of that textbook!) As such, you'll find information on the pages that will not appear in the textbook. I intend them to aid an inquisitive student who may want to learn about a topic in greater detail than is available in the textbook. I also intend them to aid my colleagues who teach the perception course, or the perception unit of an introductory course. However, I do not intend these pages to supplant the textbook. Thus, they will lack that coherence that we work so hard to achieve in writing the textbook. Nonetheless, I hope that you find the pages to be useful resources as a supplement to the textbook. To aid in that regard, the pages are organized in a fashion entirely consistent with the textbook.
At the top of each page, you'll find direct links to demonstrations that will serve to enhance your understanding of concepts described in the text. You'll also find some introductory remarks intended to orient you to the material in the text. Thus, you may want to take a look at the relevant web pages before beginning to read a chapter. And, as you read through a chapter and see a reference to a demonstration, go to the web pages to try out the demonstration while the material you've read in the chapter is still fresh in your mind.
• You'll find a variety of relevant general videos at Insight Media (drill down: Social Sciences, Psychology, Biological Foundations of Psychology) and at Films for the Humanities and Sciences (e.g., 6-part BBC series on the Human Senses).
• Because many of the approaches described in the chapter have roots in the early development of psychology, you may be interested in reading some primary sources, which you can find at Christopher Green's excellent Classics in the History of Psychology site.
Boring, E. G. (1942). Sensation and perception in the history of experimental psychology. Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Fancher, R. E. (1997). Pioneers of psychology (3rd Ed.). Norton.
Goldstein, E. B. (Ed.) (2001). Blackwell handbook of perception. Blackwell.
Gregory, R. L. (1997). Eye and brain: The psychology of seeing (5th Ed.). Princeton.
Hearst, E. (Ed.) (1979). The first century of experimental psychology. Erlbaum.
