The Perception of Illusory Contours is a complete and comprehensive volume on one of the most important phenomena in modern perception research. An illusory contour is a demonstration in which people perceive edges, surfaces, objects and colors that have no physical reality. The international group of distinguished researchers which comprise the contributors to the volume present new theoretical interpretations and data in addition to reviewing the extensive literature on this topic. The volume begins with an introduction to the research on and theories behind illusory contours and their applications to other areas of perception, cognitive science and art. The collection also features English language translations of the seminal papers by Schumann, Ehrenstein, and Kanizsa, the scientists who originally discovered and investigated the phenomenon. The Perception of Illusory Contours contains the most comprehensive set of illusory contour figures ever assembled. The volume is a most significant reference work in an area of research at the critical intersection of perception, cognitive science, visual neurophysiology, and artificial intelligence.

Computer vision has been successful in several important applications recently. Vision techniques can now be used to build very good models of buildings from pictures quickly and easily, to overlay operation planning data on a neuros- geon’s view of a patient, and to recognise some of the gestures a user makes to a computer. Object recognition remains a very di cult problem, however. The key questions to understand in recognition seem to be: (1) how objects should be represented and (2) how to manage the line of reasoning that stretches from image data to object identity. An important part of the process of recognition { perhaps, almost all of it { involves assembling bits of image information into helpful groups. There is a wide variety of possible criteria by which these groups could be established { a set of edge points that has a symmetry could be one useful group; others might be a collection of pixels shaded in a particular way, or a set of pixels with coherent colour or texture. Discussing this process of grouping requires a detailed understanding of the relationship between what is seen in the image and what is actually out there in the world.

Infant Perception: From Sensation to Cognition, Volume I: Basic Visual Processes focuses on the study and programmatic investigations of infant perception, examining early sensory, perceptual, and cognitive systems. This book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 analyzes the major physiological and behavioral techniques used to measure infant vision. Each technique is critically evaluated in terms of the method employed, type of data that can be obtained, and anatomy of the visual system. The neuronal model to explain developmental changes and techniques used to assess infant visual preferences for patterns varying in amount of contour are discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 demonstrates the value of the corneal reflection technique for the study of infant attention and visual scanning patterns, while Chapter 4 examines the developmental changes and individual differences in early pattern perception. The last chapter concentrates on the evidence of infant visual preferences for novelty and on the implications of such evidence for models of early recognition memory. This publication is a good reference for pediatricians and clinicians concerned with infant perception.

From a barrage of photons, we readily and effortlessly recognize the faces of our friends, and the familiar objects and scenes around us. However, these tasks cannot be simple for our visual systems--faces are all extremely similar as visual patterns, and objects look quite different when viewed from different viewpoints. How do our visual systems solve these problems? The contributors to this volume seek to answer this question by exploring how analytic and holistic processes contribute to our perception of faces, objects, and scenes. The role of parts and wholes in perception has been studied for a century, beginning with the debate between Structuralists, who championed the role of elements, and Gestalt psychologists, who argued that the whole was different from the sum of its parts. This is the first volume to focus on the current state of the debate on parts versus wholes as it exists in the field of visual perception by bringing together the views of the leading researchers. Too frequently, researchers work in only one domain, so they are unaware of the ways in which holistic and analytic processing are defined in different areas. The contributors to this volume ask what analytic and holistic processes are like; whether they contribute differently to the perception of faces, objects, and scenes; whether different cognitive and neural mechanisms code holistic and analytic information; whether a single, universal system can be sufficient for visual-information processing, and whether our subjective experience of holistic perception might be nothing more than a compelling illusion. The result is a snapshot of the current thinking on how the processing of wholes and parts contributes to our remarkable ability to recognize faces, objects, and scenes, and an illustration of the diverse conceptions of analytic and holistic processing that currently coexist, and the variety of approaches that have been brought to bear on the issues.

Colour and appearance perceptions are very complex psychological phenomena. Written by one of the foremost authorities in the field, Principles of Colour and Appearance Measurement is a major two-volume work addressing the key topics required to understand the issues and manage colour effectively. The book addresses how objects appear to viewers, how viewers perceive colour, and the major types of instrumentation used to measure colour. Chapters detail the characteristics of light sources and object colour and appearance attributes. They encompass the complexities of human visual perception, including the various causes and types of colour blindness, and other unusual visual phenomena. The book also covers colour measurement instruments and methods, as well as fluorescence and whiteness. Principles of Colour Appearance and Measurement is a comprehensive resource for designers, colour technologists, colour quality inspectors, product developers, and anyone who uses colour in their work. - Addresses the key topics required to understand the issues of colour measure and management - Examines how viewers perceive colour and how objects appear to them - Reviews the major types of instrumentation used to measure colour

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Bringing together the knowledge of world experts on different aspects of primate auditory function, this book bridges the epistemological gap between primate ethologists and auditory neurobiologists. Leading ethologists, comparative psychologists, and neuroscientists who have developed new experimental approaches apply their methods to a variety of issues dealing with primate vocal behavior and the neurobiology of the primate auditory system. The synthesis of ethological and neurobiological approaches to primate vocal behavior presented in this book will yield a rich understanding of the acoustic and neural bases of primate audition and shed light on the evolutionary precursors to speech.