Vicki Bruce

This textbook is for use in tutorials and seminars by psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science undergraduates studying cognition. The book complements standard course texts in cognition by providing a series of articles which emphasize particularly what we do not understand, rather than what we think we do. It considers a selection of problems and phenomena that remain mysterious despite years, decades or centuries of enquiry, and evaluates different approaches to these problems.; The topics discussed range from specific optical illusions to the nature of consciousness. Some of these unsolved problems provide a vehicle for reviewing different paradigms and shifts in the field over the 20th century. Each chapter also poses some of the remaining unanswered questions, suggesting directions for future enquiry.

Tutorial Essays In Cognition

Unsolved Mysteries of The Mind

Glyn W. Humphreys

Vision allows us to do many things. It enables us to perceive a world composed of meaningful objects and events. It enables us to track those events as they take place in front of our eyes. It enables us to read. It provides accurate spatial information for actions such as reaching for or avoiding objects. It provides colour and texture that can help us to separate objects from their background, and so forth. This book is concerned with understanding the processes that allow us to carry out these various visually driven behaviours. In the past ten years our understanding of visual processing has undergone a rapid change, primarily fostered by the convergence of computational, experimental and neuropsychological work on the topic. Visual Cognition provides the first major attempt to cover all aspects of this work within a single text. It provides a summary of research on visual information processing, relevant to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and research workers. It covers: seeing static forms, object recognition, dynamic vision (motion perception and visual masking), visual attention, visual memory, visual aspects of reading. For each topic, the relevant computational, experimental and neuropsychological work is integrated to provide a broader coverage than that of other texts.

Computational, Experimental and Neuropsychological Perspectives

Visual Cognition

Mark A. Georgeson

Patrick R. Green

This comprehensively updated and expanded revision of the successful second edition continues to provide detailed coverage of the ever-growing range of research topics in vision. In Part I, the treatment of visual physiology has been extensively revised with an updated account of retinal processing, a new section explaining the principles of spatial and temporal filtering which underlie discussions in later chapters, and an up-to-date account of the primate visual pathway. Part II contains four largely new chapters which cover recent psychophysical evidence and computational model of early vision: edge detection, perceptual grouping, depth perception, and motion perception. The models discussed are extensively integrated with physiological evidence. All other chapters in Parts II, III, and IV have also been thoroughly updated.

Physiology, Psychology and Ecology

Visual Perception

Physiology, Psychology, and Ecology

Andrew W. Young

Human faces are unique biological structures which convey a complex variety of important social messages. Even strangers can tell things from our faces. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book will be of interest to all students studying face perception and social cognition.

Face Perception

Andy Young

Human faces are unique biological structures that convey a complex variety of important social messages. Even strangers can tell things from our faces – our feelings, our locus of attention, something of what we are saying, our age, sex and ethnic group, whether they find us attractive. In recent years there has been genuine progress in understanding how our brains derive all these different messages from faces and what can happen when one or other of the structures involved is damaged. Face Perception provides an up-to-date, integrative summary by two authors who have helped develop and shape the field over the past 30 years. It encompasses topics as diverse as the visual information our brains can exploit when we look at faces, whether prejudicial attitudes can affect how we see faces, and how people with neurodevelopmental disorders see faces. The material is digested and summarised in a way that is accessible to students, within a structure that focuses on the different things we can do with faces. It offers a compelling synthesis of behavioural, neuropsychological and cognitive neuroscience approaches to develop a distinctive point of view of the area. The book concludes by reviewing what is known about the development of face processing and re-examines the question of what makes faces ‘special’. Written in a clear and accessible style, this is invaluable reading for all students and researchers interested in studying face perception and social cognition.

This edition contains over 460 additional references and the treatment of visual psychology in the early chapters has been extensively revised.

Professor Department of Psychology Vicki Bruce

This textbook is for use by psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science undergraduates studying cognition.

Tutorial Essays in Cognition

Unsolved Mysteries of the Mind

Each of us is able to recognise the faces of many hundreds if not thousands of people known to us. We recognise faces despite seeing them in different views and with changing expressions. From these varying patterns we somehow extract the invariant characteristics of an individual’s face, and usually remember why a face seems familiar, recalling where we know the person from and what they are called. In this book, originally published in 1988, the author describes the progress which has been made by psychologists towards understanding these perceptual and cognitive processes, and points to theoretical directions which may prove important in the future. Though emphasising theory, the book also addresses practical problems of eyewitness testimony, and discusses the relationship between recognising faces, and other aspects of face processing such as perceiving expressions and lipreading. The book was aimed primarily at a research audience, but would also interest advanced undergraduate students in vision and cognition.

Vicki Bruce

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