Perceptual Psychology (Required)

Web site

This course is designed for junior undergraduates who major in psychology. Students from other departments who are interested in human sensation and perception are also welcome. The content includes the anatomical and neurophysiologic bases of, the perceptual processes of, and the development of vision, audition, olfaction, taste, and cutaneous senses. Three-hour lecture will be given in class. Students are required to read each chapter and hand in 5-10 homework assignments. The grade will be based on points from homework assignments, 2 midterms, and 1 final exam.

Textbook:

Sensation and Perception (7th edition, Goldstein, E.B., 2007)

Supplementary Readings (optional for homework):

• Diane Ackerman. A Natural History of the Senses.

• Semir Zeki. Inner vision: an exploration of art and the brain.

• Francis Crick. The astonishing hypothesis.

• Michael Gazzaniga. The mind’s past.

• V. S. Ramachandran. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind.

• Oliver Sacks. The Island of the Colorblind.

• Oliver Sacks. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

• Oliver Sacks. Anthropologist on Mars.

• Santiago Ramony Cajal. Advice for a young investigator.

• Robert Gilmore. Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics.

• Mark H. Johnson. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience: An Introduction.

• Daphne Maurer & Charles Maurer. The world of the newborn.

• Joseph Ledoux. The emotional brain: the mysterious underpinnings of emotional life

• Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene.

• Steven Pinker. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language.

• George A. Miller. The Science of Words.

• Noam Chomsky. On Nature and Language.

Examples of Supplementary Websites:
(click the second topic “導讀” in Web site to find the list of supplementary websites for each chapter)

• The Joy of Visual Perception: A Web Book (Peter Kaiser)

• Webvision (Kolb)

• Motion perception (George Mather)

• art investigation (Christopher Typer)

• IllusionWorks (Shin Shimojo)

• Escher

• senses web: hearing

• vision 101

• eye diseases