Visual Perception explores fundamental topics underlying the field of visual perception, including the perception of brightness and color, the physics of light, and the optics of the eye. Although the text leans heavily on physical and physiological concepts, explanations of the relevant physics and physiology are considered. This book is organized into 16 chapters and begins with an overview of the relationship between information assimilation and the physiology of the visual system based on data gathered both in physiological and perceptual experiments. More specifically, this text discusses the nature of the human perceptual system in terms of the kinds of information that are assimilated from the world, and how this selection of information is governed by the structure of receptors and the neural circuits that are connected to them. The relationships between symbols and their corresponding physical and physiological variables are also examined. Finally, the book addresses the presence of strong lateral inhibition in the visual system and how it fits the concept of evolution. This book is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, regardless of their academic backgrounds.
Vision is our most dominant sense, from which we derive most of our information about the world. From the light that enters the eye and the processing in the brain that follows we can sense where things are, how they move and what they are. The first edition of Visual Perception took a refreshingly different approach to perception, starting from the function that vision serves for an active observer in a three-dimensional environment. This fully revised and expanded new edition continues this approach in contrast to the traditional textbook treatment of vision as a catalogue of phenomena. Following a general introduction to the main theoretical approaches, the authors discuss the historical basis of our current knowledge. Placing the study of vision in its historical context, they look at how our ideas have been shaped by art, optics, biology and philosophy as well as psychology. Visual optics and the neurophysiology of vision are also described. The core of the book covers the perception of location, motion and object recognition. There is a new chapter on representation and vision, including a section on the perception of computer generated images. This readable, accessible and truly relevant introduction to the world of perception aims to elicit both independent thought and further study. It will be welcomed by students of visual perception and those with a general interest in the mysteries of vision.
An engrossing guide to seeing—and communicating—more clearly from the groundbreaking course that helps FBI agents, cops, CEOs, ER docs, and others save money, reputations, and lives. How could looking at Monet’s water lily paintings help save your company millions? How can checking out people’s footwear foil a terrorist attack? How can your choice of adjective win an argument, calm your kid, or catch a thief? In her celebrated seminar, the Art of Perception, art historian Amy Herman has trained experts from many fields how to perceive and communicate better. By showing people how to look closely at images, she helps them hone their “visual intelligence,” a set of skills we all possess but few of us know how to use properly. She has spent more than a decade teaching doctors to observe patients instead of their charts, helping police officers separate facts from opinions when investigating a crime, and training professionals from the FBI, the State Department, Fortune 500 companies, and the military to recognize the most pertinent and useful information. Her lessons highlight far more than the physical objects you may be missing; they teach you how to recognize the talents, opportunities, and dangers that surround you every day. Whether you want to be more effective on the job, more empathetic toward your loved ones, or more alert to the trove of possibilities and threats all around us, this book will show you how to see what matters most to you more clearly than ever before. Please note: this ebook contains full-color art reproductions and photographs, and color is at times essential to the observation and analysis skills discussed in the text. For the best reading experience, this ebook should be viewed on a color device.
This volume takes a contemporary and novel look at how people see the world around them. We generally believe we see our surroundings and everything in it with complete accuracy. However, as the contributions to this volume argue, this assumption is wrong: people’s view of their world is cloudy at best. Social Psychology of Visual Perception is a thorough examination of the nature and determinants of visual perception, which integrates work on social psychology and vision. It is the first broad-based volume to integrate specific sub-areas into the study of vision, including goals and wishes, sex and gender, emotions, culture, race, and age. The volume tackles a range of engaging issues, such as what is happening in the brain when people look at attractive faces, or if the way our eyes move around influences how happy we are and could help us reduce stress. It reveals that sexual desire, our own sexual orientation, and our race affect what types of people capture our attention. It explores whether our brains and eyes work differently when we are scared or disgusted, or when we grow up in Asia rather than North America. The multiple perspectives in the book will appeal to researchers and students in range of disciplines, including social psychology, cognition, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience.
Grades 2-3 Builds visual, motor, and critical thinking skills for reading, writing, and math. Develops the child's recognition of letters, words, number, and similar/dissimilar objects. It also improves sequencing and visual memory skills. Designed specifically for shorter attention spans. No reading is required. Directions may be read aloud as needed. Each book includes eight progressively more challenging skill sections with pretests and post-tests to evaluate students' beginning and ending skill levels."
A comprehensive and integrated introduction to the phenomena and theories of perceptual learning, focusing on the visual domain. Practice or training in perceptual tasks improves the quality of perceptual performance, often by a substantial amount. This improvement is called perceptual learning (in contrast to learning in the cognitive or motor domains), and it has become an active area of research of both theoretical and practical significance. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the phenomena and theories of perceptual learning, focusing on the visual domain. Perceptual Learning explores the tradeoff between the competing goals of system stability and system adaptability, signal and noise, retuning and reweighting, and top-down versus bottom-down processes. It examines and evaluates existing research and potential future directions, including evidence from behavior, physiology, and brain imaging, and existing perceptual learning applications, with a focus on important theories and computational models. It also compares visual learning to learning in other perceptual domains, and considers the application of visual training methods in the development of perceptual expertise and education as well as in remediation for limiting visual conditions. It provides an integrated treatment of the subject for students and researchers and for practitioners who want to incorporate perceptual learning into their practice.Practice or training in perceptual tasks improves the quality of perceptual performance, often by a substantial amount. This improvement is called perceptual learning, in contrast with learning in the cognitive or motor domains. Perceptual learning has been a very active area of research of both theoretical and practical interest. Research on perceptual learning is of theoretical significance in illuminating plasticity in adult perceptual systems, and in understanding the limitations of human information processing and how to improve them. It is of practical significance as a potential method for the development of perceptual expertise in the normal population, for its potential in advancing development and supporting healthy aging, and for noninvasive amelioration of deficits in challenged populations by training. Perceptual learning has become an increasingly important topic in biomedical research. Practitioners in this area include science disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, computer sciences, and optometry, and developers in applied areas of learning game design, cognitive development and aging, and military and biomedical applications. Commercial development of training products, protocols, and games is a multi-billion dollar industry. Perceptual learning provides the basis for many of the developments in these areas. This book is written for anyone who wants to understand the phenomena and theories of perceptual learning or to apply the technology of perceptual learning to the development of training methods and products. Our aim is to provide an introduction to those researchers and students just entering this exciting field, to provide a comprehensive and integrated treatment of the phenomena and the theories of perceptual learning for active perceptual learning researchers, and to describe and develop the basic techniques and principles for readers who want to successfully incorporate perceptual learning into applied developments. The book considers the special challenges of perceptual learning that balance the competing goals of system stability and system adaptability. It provides a systematic treatment of the major phenomena and models in perceptual learning, the determinants of successful learning and of specificity and transfer. The book provides a cohesive consideration of the broad range of perceptual learning through the theoretical framework of incremental learning of reweighting evidence that supports successful task performance. It provides a detailed analysis of the mechanisms by which perceptual learning improves perceptual limitations, the relationship of perceptual learning and the critical period of development, and the semi-supervised modes of learning that dominate perceptual learning. It considers limitations and constraints on learning multiple tasks and stimuli simultaneously, the implications of training at high or low levels of performance accuracy, and the importance of feedback to perceptual learning. The basis of perceptual learning in physiology is discussed along with the relationship of visual perceptual learning to learning in other sensory domains. The book considers the applications of perceptual learning in the development of expertise, in education and gaming, in training during development and aging, and applications to remediation of mental health and vision disorders. Finally, it applies the phenomena and models of perceptual learning to considerations of optimizing training.
The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems—What is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of perceptual experience into a broader account of the nature of the mind and the world?—are at the heart of metaphysics. Rather than try to cover all of the many strands in the philosophy of perception, this book focuses on a particular orthodoxy about the nature of visual perception. The central problem for visual science has been to explain how the brain bridges the gap between what is given to the visual system and what is actually experienced by the perceiver. The orthodox view of perception is that it is a process whereby the brain, or a dedicated subsystem of the brain, builds up representations of relevant figures of the environment on the basis of information encoded by the sensory receptors. Most adherents of the orthodox view also believe that for every conscious perceptual state of the subject, there is a particular set of neurons whose activities are sufficient for the occurrence of that state. Some of the essays in this book defend the orthodoxy; most criticize it; and some propose alternatives to it. Many of the essays are classics. Contributors G.E.M. Anscombe, Dana Ballard, Daniel Dennett, Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, H.P. Grice, David Marr, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Zenon Pylyshyn, Paul Snowdon, and P.F. Strawson
This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do. The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision -- and what this book is about.
If you've ever been tricked by an optical illusion, you'll have some idea about just how clever the relationship between your eyes and your brain is. This book leads one through the intricacies of the subject and demystifying how we see.
