Sensation and Perception

Helping students sharpen their critical thinking skills, chapter-ending "Think About It" questions go beyond the chapter material and ask readers to apply what they have learned in a real-world context.

"Demonstrations" provide perceptual experiences that illustrate principles discussed in the text. The demonstrations are simple enough so that students can easily comprehend them. They also are integrated into the flow of the narrative so that they become part of the ongoing story. Topics include attentional capture, perceiving size at a distance and "tasting" with and without the nose.

Integrated into the ongoing discussion, "Methods" sections emphasize the importance of methods and illustrate how some of the facts presented in the book were obtained. Topics include preferential looking, neural mind reading, habituation and color matching, among many others.

In the last section of every chapter, "Something to Consider" features discuss new findings, wrap up an intriguing topic or highlight a practical application of a chapter concept. Topics include focusing attention by meditating (Chapter 6), prediction is everywhere (Chapter 7), motion, motion and more motion (Chapter 8), the changing moon (Chapter 10), auditory perception, explaining sound to an 11-year old (Chapter 11), hearing in the environment (Chapter 12), cochlear implants (Chapter 14), plasticity in the brain (Chapter 15) and multimodal aspects of olfaction (Chapter 16).