Perception (PSYCH-UA 22): Syllabus

Professor Michael S. Landy

Fall, 2011
Monday & Wednesday, 2:00-3:15
5 Washington Place, Room 101

A copy of this syllabus is available on Blackboard (https://classes.nyu.edu/) or by logging in to NYU Home and clicking on "academics".

Recitation sections

• 002: Tues 9:30-10:45, Tisch Hall, Room LC9 (John Han)
• 003: Thurs 9:30-10:45, Kimball (246 Greene), Room 806W (John Han)
• 004: Tues 2:00-3:15, Kimmel Center, Room 808 (Elyse Norton)
• 005: Thurs 12:30-1:45, Silver, Room 403 (Elyse Norton)
  

Course Objectives

The objective of this course is to help you master the fundamental facts and concepts of perceptual psychology and sensory neuroscience.  This is an interdisciplinary field of science, crossing the boundaries between psychology, biology, and engineering.

My own research is on the perception of texture and depth, and the visual control of movement. I do perceptual psychology experiments and I work on mathematical and computational theories of how people see. I also do experiments measuring brain activity in the human brain, using magnetic resonance imaging methods.

There are many other professors and graduate students on campus who are interested in the problems of perception. For example, more than twenty faculty in Computer Science, Mathematics, Psychology, and Neural Science study biological and computational vision and visual cognition. Together, the four departments offer several core courses in vision every semester. Three active seminar series bring leading researchers from around the world to talk about their research in vision, and a lively journal club reads and critically discusses recent papers. There are also several faculty in Neural Science who study hearing. If you should find yourself interested in some topic that matches my interests, or those of some other scientist on campus, I will be glad to introduce you and perhaps you can become involved in a research program.

I am perfectly well aware, however, that most of you will not end up doing research on perception, psychology, or neuroscience. I make an effort, therefore, to present the main concepts of perception in a way that will introduce you to how scientific research is done and to stimulate your scientific curiosity.  Some of the concepts covered in this course will be useful to you in various professions that you are might pursue. For example, the perceptual problem of eyewitness accounts of crimes is of real interest to the legal community. The physiology of animal sensory systems is of real interest to the medical community.

Grading

Final letter grades will be determined by a curve equal to the distribution of other classes at this level at NYU.

There will be two in-class midterms and a final exam. The first midterm will cover material from the first third of the course, the second midterm will cover material from the second third, and the final will cover material from the final third of the term (perhaps with extra credit problems from earlier). The dates for the midterm exams are listed below. The date of the final exam will be announced when the College determines it. The three exams will each count for 1/3 of the final grade. However, I do adjust grades upward to take into account noticeable improvements across the semester. No extra credit for additional research participation will be granted.

The exams will cover material from the lectures that is not necessarily in the book, as well as material from the book that is not covered in the lectures. The on-line lecture notes and study questions are the best place to start when studying for the midterms and final.

Recitation sections

Your teaching assistants are Elyse Norton and John Han. Their contact information and office hours are posted on Blackboard. Study questions for each chapter are posted on Blackboard. These will form the basis for discussions in recitation sections. Please prepare answers to these questions (not to be handed in) so that you are ready to discuss them during recitation.

Research participation requirement

This course includes a research participation requirement.You are required either to participate in two hours of experiments. Or, alternatively, you can choose to write a critique of some research papers on Perception. Should you choose this alternative, please make an appointment to see me as soon as possible to discuss it and pick a topic area. If you have not completed the requirement by the end of the semester, it is departmental policy that you will be assigned an incomplete until you have completed the requirement. Detailed information is provided on the Psychology Department web site (http://www.psych.nyu.edu/research/required.html) where you will find the following documents:

• Lab Choice for Advanced Students – please complete this form and return it to the TA
• Student Guide for Advanced Students
• Parental Permission Forms – for students under 18 years of age

Readings

Text Book:

Sensation and Perception (8th edition), E. B. Goldstein, Wadsworth, 2007. The textbook is available in the NYU Bookstore. Copies of the textbook are on reserve in Bobst Library. The book comes with a CD that has a number of nice demonstrations but the CD is not required for the course. So it is fine if you want to purchase a used book without the CD.

Lecture Notes:

Detailed lecture notes and study questions are available on-line.

Other Reading:

For those of you interested in additional general reading, the following books are all very good:

• Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Macmillan.
• Dubin & Somparrac, How the Brain Works, Blackwell.
• Hoffman, Visual Intelligence, Norton.
• Gregory, Eye and Brain, McGraw-Hill.
• Hubel, Eye, Brain, and Vision, Freeman.
• Churchland and Sejnowski, The Computational Brain, MIT Press.
• Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, MIT Press.
• Bruce, Green, and Georgeson, Visual Perception, Erlbaum.
• Wandell, Foundations of Vision, Sinauer.
• Kuffler, Nicholls, and Martin, From Neuron to Brain, Sinauer.
• Nalwa, A Guided Tour of Computer Vision, Addison-Wesley.
• Gulick, et al., Hearing, Oxford U. Press.
• Roederer, The Physics and Psychophysics of Music, Springer-Verlag.
• Melzack, The Puzzle of Pain, Harper.
• Levine, Fundamentals of Sensation and Perception, Oxford.
• Cornsweet, Visual Perception, Academic Press.
• Howard & Rogers, Seeing in Depth, I Porteous.
• Kaufman, Sight and Mind, Oxford.

If you have a special interest, come see me.

Rules of the Class

Exams:

• There will be no make-up exams and no early exams. If you have to miss one of the midterms, and you work it out with me in advance, then I will reweight the other two exams 50/50. Check the schedule for the final exam and make your travel plans accordingly.
• If you think your exam has been graded incorrectly, submit a written explanation along with your exam to the teaching assistant. We will double check the grading and get back to you. Beyond that, please don't argue about your grades. It isn't that I am so hard-nosed, it's rather that I have a very strong sense of fairness and that means not caving in to the pushiest people while the people who play by the rules suffer.

Office Hours:

• The TA has set up a schedule of office hours for the entire semester, every week. Please come see them regularly throughout the semester. Additionally, I will make appointments whenever you request them. We will also have a review session before each exam during a recitation. If you must cram before an exam, please don't expect us to cram with you. In the days before an exam, we will be available at our usual office hours but not for extra time to help you get caught up if you've fallen far behind. It would not be fair to your fellow students if you were to monopolize us for a long period of time right before an exam.
• I am available by appointment. Either send me email, listing several possible days/times, to set up an appointment, or talk to me after class. I check my email regularly (several times a day).
• Please respect the teaching assistants' office hours. They will be there 100% for you during scheduled office hours, but have numerous other responsibilities. Please do not call or send email to the TAs except to schedule an appointment. Please do not submit grade requests by email or by phone (see above for how to submit a re-grade request).

Class and Classwork:

• Please read the book and come to the lectures! It is a very good textbook, and I try to make the lectures fun as well as informative. You are responsible for material covered in the lectures even if it is not in the textbook, and you are responsible for the material in the textbook even if it has not been covered in the lectures. The on-line lecture notes are the best place to start when studying for the exams.
• Come to class on time, and don't leave before it's over. If you have another class that begins before this one is over, that means that you have to choose between one or the other. Besides being rude, it's disruptive to have people coming and going.
• Please PLEASE ask questions during class. I will try to stop every once in a while to make sure that everyone is with me, but I have a tendency to move too quickly. It is your responsibility to ask a question, if only to slow me down. Please don't worry about asking a "stupid" question. Chances are that other students in the class are also confused. Even if it isn't the sharpest question, I for one will not hold it against you. Just the opposite. Asking a question shows that you're thinking. Believe me, I've asked plenty of bone-headed questions over the years and I'm sure that there will be plenty more where those came from.

Announcements:

• Check the course web pages on Blackboard (https://classes.nyu.edu/) regularly for announcements, information about exams and review sessions, grades, and changes to the schedule. You are responsible for finding out about this information.

Course Schedule

The readings listed in the schedule below refer to the book chapters that are most relevant to the material that will be covered in the corresponding lectures.  The exams will also cover additional material from the lectures that is not in the book, as well as material from the book that is not covered in the lectures.