Many of the limits of human information processing are ultimately set by the sensory and perceptual systems. As such, a thorough and in-depth understanding of these systems is a basic requirement of doctoral training in Human Factors Psychology. This course aims to provide the participating student with the opportunity to gain such an understanding. The textbook provides introductory coverage of the basic mechanisms of sensory/perceptual phenomena. The articles in the auxiliary reading list were selected to complement the textbook as well as to provide the student with the opportunity to gain first hand experience with many of the "classic" papers in the field. Finally, several of the modules in the syllabus are also accompanied by laboratory experiments designed to demonstrate major research paradigms and/or mechanisms of perception. Because of time constraints, the course focuses primarily upon visual perception. The student interested in other sensory systems is encouraged to read the textbook chapters on these topics and engage the professor in discussion (either inside or outside of the classroom).
| Topic | Readings |
| The Visual System | |
| Light and Basic Photometry |
Photometry Workshop Photometry Handbook |
| Anatomy of the Eye | B&S-2 |
| Physiological Optics and Refraction Notes | Owens, 1984 |
| Retinal Anatomy; Photoreceptors PDF MullerCells Rhodopsin | B&S-3;
Ramachandran, 1992 Kolb, 2003 Webvision-Retina |
| Dark Adaptation; Light adaptation; Scotopic vs. Photopic Vision | Hecht, et al., 1942*** Webvision-Dark Adaptation |
| Retinal Ganglion Cell Receptive Fields PDF | |
| Contrast Coding and Contrast Phenomena Contrast Demos Craik-OBrien Hermann Grid | Ratliff, 1972; Wallach, 1963 |
| Ascending Visual Pathways PDF | B&S-4 |
| Architecture of the Visual Cortex Columnar Organization; Magnocellular vs. Parvocellular Dichotomy; PPT Dorsal-Ventral Streams; Ambient-Focal Dichotomy |
Hubel & Wiesel, 1968 Livingstone & Hubel, 1988; Mishkin, et al. 1983 |
| Spatial Frequency Representation of Form and Form Processing: The Contrast Sensitivity Paradigm sf contrast csf 6x3 2D-CSF 2D-Filtering 2D-Model MultiChannel 2D-FFT Matlab Tutorial |
B&S-5; Campbell & Robson, 1968*** Blakemore & Campbell, 1969*** Fourier Analysis Tutorial |
| Form Perception: Applying spatial-frequency theory (Fourier Modeling) InfantVision | Schieber, 1998; Witus, et al., 2003 |
| Disability vs. Discomfort Glare PDF | TBA |
| Basic Colorimetry PDF PPT | Schanda, 1998 Landa & Fairchild, 2005 Brainard & Stockman (2010) |
| Color vision (incl. special case of fluoresccent
colors) FluorescentColor NW Opponent |
B&S-7; Marks 1965 *** Hurvich & Jameson, 1957; Schieber, 2001a Webvision-Color Mechanisms Webvision-Color Perception |
| Depth Perception PPT | B&S-8; Julesz, 1964 |
| Motion and Temporal Phenomena | B&S-9;
Adelson & Bergen, 1985;*** Adelson & Movshon, 1982; Newsome, et al., 1989 Redelmeier & Tibshirani, 1999; |
| Visual Search and Visual Cognition PPT | Treisman
& Gelade, 1980;*** Rensink, et al., 1997; Schieber, et al., 2001b Schieber, et al. (2006) Change Blindness Experiment (05A) |
| The Auditory System | |
| Structure of the Auditory System dB Organ of Corti PDF PPT | B&S-10 |
| Frequency Coding Basilar Membrane Animation | |
| Perception of Loudness and Space | B&S-11 |
| Speech Perception/Speech Recognition Systems | |
| The Somatosensory System | |
| Touch; Mechanoreceptors; Emerging Trends in Haptics Research
PPT Role of Fingerprints Foot Sensitivity Screening RubberHand 2 OutOfBody Mirror Phantom |
B&S-13 TBA |
Blake, R. & Sekuler, R. (2006). Sensation and Perception (5th edition). New York: McGraw-Hill. [ISBN 0-07-288760-5]
Adelson, E.H. & Bergen, J. (1985). Spatiotemporal energy models for the perception of motion. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 2, 284-299. [1461]
Adelson, E.H. & Movshon, J.A. (1982). Phenomenal coherence of moving visual patterns. Nature, 300, 523-525.
Blakemore, C. & Campbell, F.W. (1969). On the existence of neurons in the human visual system selectively sensitive to the orientation and size of retinal images. Journal of Physiology, 203, 237-260.
Brainard, DH & Stockman, A. (2010). Colorimetry. In M.Bass, et al., Optical Society of America Handbook of Optics, (3rd edition). Vol. III. Vision and optics. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 10:1-10:56.
Campbell, F.W. & Robson, J.G. (1968). Application of Fourier analysis to the visibility of gratings. Journal of Physiology, 197, 551-566.
Finkel, M. (1997). Luminance-to-intensity measurement method. Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society, 26 (Summer), 13-19.
Guttman, S.E., Gilroy, L.A. & Blake, R. (2005). Hearing what the eyes see: Auditory coding of visual temporal sequences. Psychological Science, 16 (3), 228-235.
Hecht, S., Shlaer, S. & Pirenne, M.H. (1942). Energy, quanta and vision. Journal of General Physiology, 25, 819-840. [1471]
Horowitz, T.S. & Wolfe, J.M. (1998). Visual search has no memory. Nature, 357, 575-577. [1472]
Hubel, D.H. & Weisel, T.N. (1968). Receptive fields and functional architecture of monkey striate cortex. Journal of Physiology, 195, 215-243.
Hudspeth, A.J. (1985). The cellular basis of hearing: The biophysics of hair cells. Science, 230 (4727), 745-752.
Hurvich, L.M. & Jameson, D. (1957). An opponent-process theory of color vision. Psychological Review, 64, 384-404.
Johansson, G. (1973). Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis. Perception and Psychophysics, 14, 201-211. [1473]
Julesz, B. (1964). Binocular depth perception without familiarity cues. Science, 145, 356-362. [1474]
Kolb, H. (2003). How the retina works. American Scientist, 91(1), 28-35.
Kruger, H.P. (1989). Speech chronemics-A hidden dimension of speech: Theoretical background, measurement and clinical validity. Pharmacopsychaitry, 22, 5-12 (Supplement).
Landa, E.R. & Fairchild, M.D. (2005). Charting color from the eye of the beholder. American Scientist, 93, 436-443.
Lettvin, J.Y., Maturana, H.R., McColloch, W.S. & Pitts, W.H. (1959). What the frog’s eye tells the frog’s brain. Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 47, 1940-1951. [1475]
Livingstone, M. & Hubel, D.H. (1988). Segregation of form, color, movement and depth: Anatomy, physiology and perception. Science, 240, 740-749. [1477]
Marks, W.B. (1965). Visual pigments of single goldfish cones. Journal of Physiology, 178(1), 14-32.
McCarley, J.S., Kramer, A.F., Wickens, C.D., Vidoni, E.D. & Boot, W.R. (2004). Visual skills in airport-security screening. Psychological Science, 15, 302-306.
McGurk, H. & MacDonald, J. (1976). Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature, 264, 746-748.
Mishkin, M., Ungerleider, L.G. & Macko, K.A. (1983). Object vision and spatial vision: Two cortical pathways. Trends in Neurosciences, 6, 414-417. [1478]
Newsome, W.T., Britten, K.H. & Movshon, J.A. (1989). Neuronal correlates of a perceptual decision. Nature, 341, 52-54.
Newton, I. (1672). New theory about light and colors. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 80, 3075-3087. [Reprinted in MacAdam, D.L. (Ed.), Sources of color science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970. pp. 12-15] [1479]
Owens, D.A. (1984). The resting state of the eyes. American Scientist, 72(4), 378-387.
Ramachandran, V.S. (1992). Blind spots. Scientific American, 266, 86-91.
Rashbass, C. (1970). The visibility of transient changes of luminance. Journal of Physiology, 210, 165-186. [1480]
Ratliff, F. (1972). Contour and contrast. Scientific American, 226, 90-101. [1481]
Reledmeier, D.A. & Tibshirani, R.J. (1999). Why cars in the next lane seem to go faster. Nature, 401, 35.
Rensink, R.A., O’Regan, J.K. & Clark, J.J. (1997). To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in scenes. Psychological Science, 8, 368-373. [1482]
Robson, J.G. (1966) Spatial and temporal contrast sensitivity function of the visual system. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 56, 1141-1142. [1483]
Schanda, J.D. (1998). Colorimetry. In C. DeCusatis (Ed.), Handbook of applied
photometry. New York: Springer. pp. 327-422. [1484]
Schieber, F. (1998).
Schieber, F., Willan, N. & Schlorholtz, B. (2006). Fluorescent colored stimuli automatically attract visual attention: An eye movement study. Proceedings of the Human Favtors and Ergonomics Society, 50, 1634-1637.
Stevens, S.S. (1962). The surprising simplicity of sensory metrics. American
Psychologist, 17, 29-39. [1486]
Tanner, W.P. Jr. & Swets, J.A. (1954). A decision-making theory of visual
detection. Psychological Review, 61, 401-409.
Treisman, A.M. & Gelade, A. (1980). Feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136.
Wallach, H. (1963). The perception of neutral colors. Scientific American, 208, 107-116.
Witus, G. & Ellis, R.D. (2003). Computational modeling of foveal target detection. Human Factors, 45, 47-60.
Witus, G., Heckmann, T.R., Meitzler, T., Gerhart, G. & Sohn, E. (1995). Evaluating
an army camouflaged vehicle visual signature model for measuring civilian vehicle
conspicuity. [Report R&D-8350]. Warren, MI: General Motors Development Center.
[1491]
Wolfe, J.M. (1998). What 1 million
trials tells us about visual search. Psychological Science, 9(1), 33-39.
Two categories of performance will be used to determine a student's final grade in this course: (1) midterm and final exams and (2) in-class paper presentations.
Essay examinations will be conducted at the midterm and during the final exams week. These exams represent 80% of the course grade (i.e., 40% each).
Students will be required to make class presentations summarizing the auxiliary reading assignments. A maximum time of 25 min will be reserved for each presentation. Students will present an equal number of times in cyclic serial order. Paper assignments will (usually) be made at least 2 weeks prior to the expected presentation date to allow adequate time for preparation. Quality of these presentations will be scored by the professor and contribute 20% toward the final grade.
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