Encyclopedia of Perception
- E. Bruce Goldstein - University of Pittsburgh, USA, University of Arizona, USA
The field of perception is devoted to explaining the operation of the senses and the experiences and behaviors resulting from stimulation of the senses. Perceptual processes such as recognizing faces, seeing color, hearing music, and feeling pain represent the actions of complex mechanisms, yet we usually do them easily. The Encyclopedia of Perception presents a comprehensive overview of the field of perception through authoritative essays written by leading researchers and theoreticians in psychology, the cognitive sciences, neuroscience, and medical disciplines. It presents two parallel and interacting approaches: the psychophysical, or determining the relationship between stimuli in the environment and perception, and the physiological, or locating the biological systems responsible for perception. Are there any processes not associated with perception? Surely there are, but the pervasiveness of perception is truly impressive, and the phenomena of perception and its mechanisms are what this encyclopedia is about.
Key Features
- Contains 16 pages of color illustration and photography to accompany the entries
- Offers a varied and broad list of topics, including basic research as well as methodologies, theoretical approaches, and real-world applications of perceptual research
- Emphasizes human perception but includes ample research because of its importance in its own right and because of what this research tells us about human perception
- Written by recognized experts from many disciplines but for an audience with no previous background in perception—students and members of the general public alike
Key Themes
- Action
- Attention
- Audition
- Chemical Senses
- Cognition and Perception
- Computers and Perception
- Consciousness
- Disorders of Perception
- Illusory Perceptions
- Individual Differences (Human) and Comparative (Across Species; Not Including Ageing, Disorders, and Perceptual Development)
- Methods
- Perceptual Development/Experience
- Philosophical Approaches
- Physiological Processes
- Sense Interaction
- Skin and Body Senses
- Theoretical Approaches
- Visual Perception
"....Written by experts in the field-academics, physicians, and researchers-and edited by Goldstein (psychology, Univ. of Pittsburgh), the approximately 375 articles in this two-volume set present exhaustive information and research about perception and the senses through which we perceive: visual, auditory, olfactory, taste, and touch.... BOTTOM LINE: Previous reference titles such as Irving B. Weiner’s Handbook of Psychology or the Encyclopedia of Human Emotions give comparatively brief coverage of perception and limit the information to biological/sensory perception or physiology and perception. A valuable addition to reference collections and a necessity for psychology collections."
