PERCEPTION

OFFICE HOURS: MWF 10:00-11:00 a.m., or by appointment

OFFICE: Briggs 311

TELEPHONE: (832)-6706

CLASS MEETING: MWF 8:30-9:40 a.m., Briggs Hall 420

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The study of perception concerns how we take in information from the world through our senses. In order to understand this process, we will examine the sensory organs, receptors, and properties of the stimulus that enable us to receive and transform physical signals. Then we look at neural connections to the brain and how these connections transmit and recode sensory information. Then we consider how this sensory information is organized and integrated, considering experiential and social factors that affect how we interpret and act on this information. The study of perception therefore requires an understanding of the physical signal, the physiological processes of the nervous system, and the psychological processes of cognition and emotion. Although we will study all of the sensory systems, we will concentrate our efforts on the visual and auditory senses, and will discuss perceptual aspects of aesthetic experience in music and the visual arts.

• Goldstein, E. Bruce. (2002).  Sensation and Perception  (6th Ed.).  Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

• Ryan, Colin. (1997).  Exploring Perception.  Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole and Nelson ITP. [text and CD-ROM]

• Ackerman, Diane (1990). Introduction and Postscript.  From A Natural History of the Senses (pp. xv-xix, 301-309). New York: Random House. 
• Deutsch, Diana (2002).  The puzzle of absolute pitch. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 200-204.
• Jusczyk, Peter W. (2002).  How infants adapt speech-processsing capacities to native-language structure. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 15-18.
• Martino, Gail, & Marks, Lawrence E. (2001).  Synesthesia: Strong and weak. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 61-65.
• Schellenberg, E. Glenn, & Trehub, Sandra E. (2003).  Good pitch memory is widespread.  Psychological Science, 14, 262-266.
• Solso, Robert L. (1994).  Perspective and the history of art.  From Cognition and the Visual Arts (pp. 189-230). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Werker, Janet F., & Desjardins, Renée N. (1995). Listening to speech in the 1st year of life: Experiential influences on phoneme perception. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 4, 76-81.

• INTERNET RESOURCES for Perception
• An interesting illusion for which I still have no explanation--see what you think!
  
• Some great demonstrations of Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling the World
•  A lengthy list of internet perceptual demonstrations from Hanover College
• Additional demonstrations of Perceptual effects in art, also from Hanover College
• A set of internet Sensation and Perception sites compiled by Social Psychology Network

• Course Requirements

• Course Schedule

• Rew-Gottfried's homepage

• Lawrence homepage