Perceptual Expertise: Bridging Brain and Behavior

This book presents a comprehensive survey of perceptual expertise in visual object recognition, and introduces a novel collaborative model, codified as the "Perceptual Expertise Network" (PEN). This unique group effort is focused on delineating the domain-general principles of high-level visual learning that can account for how different object categories are processed and come to be associated with spatially localized activity in the primate brain. PEN's approach brings together different traditions and techniques to address questions such as how expertise develops, whether there are different kinds of experts, whether some disorders such as autism or prosopagnosia can be understood as a lack or loss of expertise, and how conceptual and perceptual information interact when experts recognize and categorize objects. The research and results that have been generated by these questions are presented here, along with a variety of other questions, background information, and extant issues that have emerged from recent studies, making this book a complete overview on the topic.

Isabel Gauthier is from Longueuil, Quebec. She received her PhD (advised by Michael Tarr) at Yale University, and is a Professor of Psychology in the department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University where she directs the Object Perception Laboratory. She directs the Perceptual Expertise Network since 2000 (now co-directed with Tom Palmeri).

Michael J. Tarr hails from Pittsburgh, PA and is still a loyal Steelers fan. He received his PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT and was an Assistant Professor at Yale until 1995, when he moved to Brown. At Brown University he is a Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, the Fox Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and the Co-Director of the Brown Center for Vision Research. Daniel Bub was born in Capetown, South Africa. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, New York and was an Associate Professor at McGill University and a member of the Laboratoire Theophile Alajouanine at the University of Montreal until 1994 when he moved to the University of Victoria. He is a Professor of Psychology within the Cognition and Brain Sciences group.