This comprehensive and authoritative text/reference presents a unique, multidisciplinary perspective on Shape Perception in Human and Computer Vision. Rather than focusing purely on the state of the art, the book provides viewpoints from world-class researchers reflecting broadly on the issues that have shaped the field. Drawing upon many years of experience, each contributor discusses the trends followed and the progress made, in addition to identifying the major challenges that still lie ahead. Topics and features: examines each topic from a range of viewpoints, rather than promoting a specific paradigm; discusses topics on contours, shape hierarchies, shape grammars, shape priors, and 3D shape inference; reviews issues relating to surfaces, invariants, parts, multiple views, learning, simplicity, shape constancy and shape illusions; addresses concepts from the historically separate disciplines of computer vision and human vision using the same “language” and methods.

Perceptual organization comprises a wide range of processes such as perceptual grouping, figure-ground organization, filling-in, completion, perceptual switching, etc. Such processes are most notable in the context of shape perception but they also play a role in texture perception, lightness perception, color perception, motion perception, depth perception, etc. Perceptual organization deals with a variety of perceptual phenomena of central interest, studied from many different perspectives, including psychophysics, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, neurophysiology, and computational modeling. Given its central importance in phenomenal experience, perceptual organization has also figured prominently in classic Gestalt writings on the topic, touching upon deep philosophical issues regarding mind-brain relationships and consciousness. In addition, it attracts a great deal of interest from people working in applied areas like visual art, design, architecture, music, and so forth. The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization provides a broad and extensive review of the current literature, written in an accessible form for scholars and students. With chapter written by leading researchers in the field, this is the state-of-the-art reference work on this topic, and will be so for many years to come.

This text explains why and how our visual perceptions can provide us with an accurate representation of the world 'out there.' Along the way, it tells the story of a machine (a computational model) built by the authors that solves the computationally difficult problem of seeing the way humans do.

II. Sensation, Perception & Attention: John Serences (Volume Editor) (Topics covered include taste; visual object recognition; touch; depth perception; motor control; perceptual learning; the interface theory of perception; vestibular, proprioceptive, and haptic contributions to spatial orientation; olfaction; audition; time perception; attention; perception and interactive technology; music perception; multisensory integration; motion perception; vision; perceptual rhythms; perceptual organization; color vision; perception for action; visual search; visual cognition/working memory.)

Can we trust our senses to tell us the truth? Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. From examining why fashion designers create clothes that give the illusion of a more “attractive” body shape to studying how companies use color to elicit specific emotions in consumers, and even dismantling the very notion that spacetime is objective reality, The Case Against Reality dares us to question everything we thought we knew about the world we see.

Visual illusions are compelling phenomena that draw attention to the brain's capacity to construct our perceptual world. The Compendium is a collection of over 100 chapters on visual illusions, written by the illusion creators or by vision scientists who have investigated mechanisms underlying the phenomena. --

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Symmetry in Vision" that was published in Symmetry

A principal challenge for both biological and machine vision systems is to integrate and organize the diversity of cues received from the environment into the coherent global representations we experience and require to make good decisions and take effective actions. Early psychological investigations date back more than 100 years to the seminal work of the Gestalt school. Yet in the last 50 years, neuroscientific and computational approaches to understanding perceptual organization have become equally important, and a full understanding requires integration of all three approaches. This highly interdisciplinary Research Topic welcomes contributions spanning Computer Science, Psychology, and Neuroscience, with the aim of presenting a single, unified collection that will encourage integration and cross-fertilization across disciplines.

This Oxford Handbook offers a comprehensive and authoritative review of important developments in computational and mathematical psychology. With chapters written by leading scientists across a variety of subdisciplines, it examines the field's influence on related research areas such as cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience. The Handbook emphasizes examples and applications of the latest research, and will appeal to readers possessing various levels of modeling experience. The Oxford Handbook of Computational and mathematical Psychology covers the key developments in elementary cognitive mechanisms (signal detection, information processing, reinforcement learning), basic cognitive skills (perceptual judgment, categorization, episodic memory), higher-level cognition (Bayesian cognition, decision making, semantic memory, shape perception), modeling tools (Bayesian estimation and other new model comparison methods), and emerging new directions in computation and mathematical psychology (neurocognitive modeling, applications to clinical psychology, quantum cognition). The Handbook would make an ideal graduate-level textbook for courses in computational and mathematical psychology. Readers ranging from advanced undergraduates to experienced faculty members and researchers in virtually any area of psychology--including cognitive science and related social and behavioral sciences such as consumer behavior and communication--will find the text useful.

The field of computer vision combines techniques from physics, mathematics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and computer science to examine how machines might construct meaningful descriptions of their surrounding environment. The editors of this volume, prominent researchers and leaders of the SRI International AI Center Perception Group, have selected sixty papers, most published since 1980, with the viewpoint that computer vision is concerned with solving seven basic problems: - Reconstructing 3D scenes from 2D images - Decomposing images into their component parts - Recognizing and assigning labels to scene objects - Deducing and describing relations among scene objects - Determining the nature of computer architectures that can support the visual function - Representing abstractions in the world of computer memory - Matching stored descriptions to image representation Each chapter of this volume addresses one of these problems through an introductory discussion, which identifies major ideas and summarizes approaches, and through reprints of key research papers. Two appendices on crucial assumptions in image interpretation and on parallel architectures for vision applications, a glossary of technical terms, and a comprehensive bibliography and index complete the volume.