books:

	Sensation & Perception, Second Edition Jeremy M. Wolfe, Keith R. Kluender, ... Sinauer Associates, 2008 - 450 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

For students for whom this is the beginning and end of their study of sensation and perception, this text is intended to give an accessible, engaging and intellectually satisfying survey of the major topics in the field. For those who are continuing, the text will be a stimulating invitation to more extensive study in this rich field.

This is the first introductory sensation and perception textbook to take advantage of full-color printing through out. A robust website includes activities and demonstrations as well as additional written material for added depth.

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Spectacular

This is the Sensation and Perception textbook that I have fervently hoped for, and dreamed of, for years. Shouldn't a book on S&P bathe, dazzle and seduce the senses? Shouldn't it entertain and mesmerize its audience with illusions, effects, aftereffects, animations, classic experiments, art, music, historical images, brain imaging, and other sensual demos? The book is alive with colorful and informative visuals leaping off nearly every page. When used along with the remarkable student website (no extra charge) and Wyttenbach's forthcoming PsyCog CD-ROM (a few dollars extra), anyone can sense, perceive and *feel* the glorious phenomena that make our field so intriguing.

How easy is it to teach an S&P class using this textbook? Sinauer provides an instructor's resource CD that provides the foundation for a first-rate course. Powerpoint presentations are provided for all 14 chapters, along with lecture notes that incorporate the authors' suggestions for how to present the material (Word and PDF formats). Obviously, instructors will want to modify these materials considerably, but it is nice to have a well-conceived preparation available. Every figure from the text is provided in digital format, and this is especially useful given the quality of the illustrations. If you feel like you need more, there are plenty of sources online and elsewhere. Consider using video clips from Zimbardo's Discovering Psychology series or from Insight Media's film collection, or go to Viperlib.com for plenty of clips and images. Starting with, or switching to, this text should be pretty easy for most instructors.

Will psychology students enjoy this textbook? I think so. I showed Wolfe et al. to students in my most recent Cognitive Psychology class at UCSD, and they were nearly unanimous in preferring Wolfe et al. to other S&P texts. The other texts I showed them included some well-written classics that have been popular with students for years: Coren et al, Goldstein, Sekuler and Blake, Matlin & Foley, Schiffman, Levine. Students preferred the colorful pictures and diagrams in Wolfe et al. I think the publishers of the other texts have failed to fully appreciate that most students are "visual learners" and so they have missed the boat by not going all-out on the visual presentation. (I really hope they keep pace.) The text of Wolfe et al. seems very student-friendly to me, and the students I know who are using it in another class say it is OK. It integrates popular culture and the authors seem aware that many of their readers are in their teens and early twenties. I should note that Wolfe in particular is a master teacher who has won teaching awards at MIT and Harvard.

Will non-psychology students enjoy this textbook? The first 8 chapters (200 pages) provide an extensive introduction to visual processing, so I think vision scientists (and especially grad students) will find plenty of interest. I can imagine portions of this textbook being used in optometry and ophthalmology courses, and in some medical settings. It is not a clinically oriented textbook, but it does cover some clinical topics (e.g., color blindness, cochlear implants, pain), and it does cover methods and topics that clinicians will need to understand. Anyone with an interest in neuroscience or physiology will find plenty of interest. The student with strong interests in computational models, artificial intelligence, physics, and engineering will find an excellent intuitive introduction to S&P here, but will need to look elsewhere to learn about the computational richness of the field.

Does the text provide a balanced introduction to the field? Seven of the fourteen chapters emphasize vision, and three of the remaining chapters cover auditory topics. The bias favoring vision first and audition second over the other senses is fairly standard. Chapters include: 1: Introduction, 2: The First Steps in Vision, 3: Spatial Vision, 4: Perceiving and Recognizing Objects, 5: The Perception of Color, 6: Space Perception and Binocular Vision; 7: Motion Perception, 8; Attention and Scene Perception, 9: Hearing: Physiology and Psychoacoustics, 10: Hearing and the Environment, 11: Music and Speech Perception, 12: Touch, 13: Olfaction, 14: Taste. Each chapter is approximately 20-30 pages long. The chapters provide plenty of psychophysics and neuroscience for an introductory S&P psychology class. There is only a little on sensory development and sensory cognition (other than vision).

Is the text up to scientific standards? It seems to be. One might expect to find some errors in a first edition. There are areas that could be more polished (e.g., the authors equated light scatter and diffraction; they could have more clearly differentiated the Vieth-Muller circle from the horopter). The book seems to be in good shape for a first edition. So far, I haven't found anything to make me regret my decision to use this text.

So... I'm definitely excited about using this book in my S&P classes. I used to go out of my way to hear Wolfe speak at conferences, even though my research interests differ somewhat from his. When I saw that the list of authors included vision scientists Wolfe and Levi, I was already leaning toward using this book. It is a pretty dynamic group of authors, and I imagine that the star quality of some of the authors will appeal to some people.

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Perfect balance

This is an excellent book. It was the course book for a graduate level course in Sensation and Perception that I took. Despite my fears (I have no Biology or Psychology background), this book made all the difference. What makes it so good is the fact that its both comprehensive, in depth and current (It's a fast moving field), yet it's written for people, not for academic material chewing robots. The text is fluent, simple, with explanations of non-trivial terms on the side notes. The writers occasionally use jokes and different tricks to make the material understandable and keep the reader entertained, but they don't overdo it. Perfect balance.

I would actually recommend this book even for non-academics. If you're interested in Cognitive Science in general and Sensation and Perception specifically, make it your first introduction to the field (along with "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"). It's just too good to be left for the small few who happen to study Cognitive Science.

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Excellent book

At last! A book I completely understand about perception. It also has a website which completes the learning effectively.


pretty good

pretty good book for the sensation and perception class i took at UCLA

provides good examples,


1). its very to-the point
2). illustrations are really helpful for understanding stuff
3). very well written, easy to understand
4). pretty short :)

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