A new edition of a famous and classic monograph in experimental psychology,
substantially rewritten and brought up to date
75% of the book is new material - the 21 years since publication of the 1st
edition have seen enormous developments in the brain sciences
Our visual system can process information at both conscious and unconscious levels.
Understanding the factors that control whether a stimulus reaches our awareness, and the
fate of those stimuli that remain at an unconscious level, are the major challenges of
brain science in the new millennium. Since its publication in 1984, Visual Masking
has established itself as a classic text in the field of cognitive psychology. In the
years since, there have been considerable advances in the cognitive neurosciences, and a
growth of interest in the topic of consciousness, and the time is ripe for a new edition
of this text.
Where most current approaches to the study of visual consciousness adopt a
'steady-state' view, the approach presented in this book explores its dynamic properties.
This new edition uses the technique of visual masking to explore temporal aspects of
conscious and unconscious processes down to a resolution in the millisecond range. The
"time slices" through conscious and unconscious vision revealed by the visual
masking technique can shed light on both normal and abnormal operations in the brain. The
main focus of this book is on the microgenesis of visual form and pattern perception -
microgenesis referring to the processes occurring in the visual system from the time of
stimulus presentation on the retinae to the time, a few hundred milliseconds later, of its
registration at conscious or unconscious perceptual and behavioural levels. The book takes
a highly integrative approach by presenting microgenesis within a broad context
encompassing visuo-temporal phenomena, attention, and consciousness.
Readership: Cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, computational scientists,
neuropsychologists, philosophers.
Bruno Breitmeyer
, Department of Psychology and Center for Neuro-Engineering and
Cognitive Science, University of Houston, Texas, USA.
Haluk Ogmen, Professor and Chair, Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, Texas, USA.
Table of Contents
1. A history of visual masking
2. Methods, applications, and findings in visual pattern masking
3. Neurobiological correlates of visual pattern masking
4. Models and
mechanisms of visual masking: a selective review and comparison
5. The
sustained-transient approach to visual masking: an updated model
6. Metacontrast
and motion perception
7. Figural
context and attention in visual masking
8. Unconscious
processing revealed by visual masking
9. Visual
masking in select subject populations
10. Epilogue
Hardback, 382 pages, 70 illustrations, 234x156 mm