Sensation and Perception

E. Bruce Goldstein is associate professor emeritus of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Arizona. He has received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Pittsburgh for his classroom teaching and textbook writing. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University and his PhD in Experimental Psychology from Brown University. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the biology department at Harvard University before joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. Bruce published papers on a wide variety of topics, including retinal and cortical physiology, visual attention and the perception of pictures before focusing exclusively on teaching (Sensation and Perception, Cognitive Psychology, Psychology of Art and Introductory Psychology) and writing textbooks. He is the co-author of SENSATION AND PERCEPTION, 11th Edition (Cengage, 2021), and editor of the BLACKWELL HANDBOOK OF PERCEPTION (Blackwell, 2001) as well as the two-volume SAGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PERCEPTION (Sage, 2010). In 2016, he won “The Flame Challenge” competition, sponsored by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, for his essay written for 11-year-olds on What Is Sound?

• 1. Introduction to Perception.2. The Beginnings of the Perceptual Process.3. Neural Processing 4. Cortical Organization.5. Perceiving Objects and Scenes.6. Visual Attention.7. Taking Action.8. Perceiving Motion.9. Perceiving Color.10. Perceiving Depth and Size.11. Hearing I: Basic Processes and Pitch Perception.12. Hearing II: Localization and Organization.13. Speech Perception.14. The Cutaneous Senses.15. The Chemical Senses.Appendix A: Methods of Adjustment and Constant Stimuli. Appendix B: The Difference Threshold. Appendix C: Magnitude Estimation and The Power Function. Appendix D: The Signal Detection Approach.