Cardiff: Psychology:

MSc Psychiatry / Diploma in Psychological Medicine
Additional Links and Information for Vaughan's 2004 Perception and Perceptual Distortions Lecture

Royal College of Psychiatrists criteria for this topic The candidate should be able to: demonstrate a working knowledge of figure / ground differentiation, object constancy, set and other aspects of perceptual organisation discuss the relevance of visual perceptual theories to illusions, hallucination and other psychopathology discuss how visual and auditory phenomena can occur in culturally sanctioned distress states without necessarily being pathognomic of mental disorder

Recommended reading Chapter 7 of: Parkin, A.J. (2000) Essential Cognitive Psychology. Hove: Psychology Press - for a good but brief summary of visual perception. For a very complete book on visual perception try: Bruce, V., Green, P.R & Georgeson, M. (1996) Visual Perception Physiology, Psychology and Ecology (3rd ed). Taylor and Francis Ltd. Sections for: James Gibson and Richard Gregory in Sheehy, N. (2004) Fifty Key Thinkers in Psychology. London: Routledge. For some reason there is no entry for Marr, although there is a brief summary in Gregory, R. (2004) The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Earlier editions are fine too.

Web resources Please note: These are not required reading, but you may find the following useful if you wish to expand on topics you have found particularly interesting. Archive of Radio 4's "All in the Mind" with section on the 'White Christmas' experiment. Click link by 'Listen again'. Someone else's lecture notes on auditory perception How Vision Works from BrainConnection.com. The Significance of Face Recognition from BrainConnection.com. Link to Bressloff et al's (2002) paper 'What geometric visual hallucinations tell us about the visual cortex'. Link to previous lecture series - see lecture on Visual Perception.