A Dialogue of the Senses, Spring 2001

Taught by Sile O' Modhrain sile@media.mit.edu


[Class Assignments] [Class Outline] [Reading List] [Notes]

CLASS ASSIGNMENTS
2/15/01Read A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
            Read sections on spatial processing from Moor "An introduction to the psychology of Hearing",
           Lederman and Loomis article on touch
           Read the chapter on spatial perception from Palmer "Vision science" OR Goldstein's "Sensation and Perception" Chapter 8
           Try to equate the mechanisms for spatial processing in hearing, vision and touch.
2/22/01Moore - Ch. 7 Auditory Pattern and object perception
            Class listening to Shepard tones; experiment with detecting using echo (like bats)
2/29/01Moore - Ch. 6 Space Perception
            Class lecture by Rahul Sharpeskar on the silicon Cochlea
            Read inTouch document, distributed by Hiroshi Ishii.
3/02/01Hand Movements: A Window into Haptic Object Recognition by Lederman and Klatzky (1987)
            Goldstein - Ch. 7 Perceiving Objects
            Goldstein - Ch. 8 Perceiving Visual Space
            Class Lecture by Hiroshi Ishii
           Assignment 1 Due 3/7 : Touch Exploratory Procedures (EPs)
           Anj's Assignment 1
            Class discussion on assessment of touch EPs
3/07/01Class Lecture by Sandy Pentland and Rob Jacob on Vision
            *Assignment 2 Due 3/14: A Comparison of Senses
            Anj's Assignment 2
            Reading- Viking Smells Paper
            In advance of Jo Fish's talk please read the article by Cain on Olfaction from "Steven's Handbook of Perception" that is on the class reading list.  The book is a reference book and can be found t the Humanities Library, with the reference number call number  REF / BF181.H336
3/14/01Class handout on Sensory comparisons, Assignment 2 review
            Class activity on rating the smells of rosewater
            Class Lecture on Smell by Jofish
            *Assignment 3 Due 3/21: MLE
            Anj's Assignment 3
3/21/01 Class will take place in the Roth Room
5/17/01 Final Project Paper on ComTouch
            comtouch.doc (1.67Kb)

[Class Assignments] [Class Outline] [Reading List] [Notes]



CLASS OUTLINE

Thursday February 15th
Things arn't always what they seem:  Sensory Illusions and the Senses of Animals
Sile O'Modhrain and (speaker TBA)

Thursday February 22nd:
Have you ever heard?
Sile O'Modhrain and Rahul Sarpeshkar  MIT AI Lab

Thursday March 1st:
Maybe feeling is believing.
Sile O'Modhrain and Hiroshi Ishii, MIT Media Lab

Thursday March 8th:
And then there's Vision
Sile O'Modhrain and Sandy Pentland, MIT Media Lab

                                         Thursday March 15th:
Taste and Smell and computation?
Sile O'Modhrain and Jo Fish MIT Media Lab

Thursday March 22nd
The senses in dialogue
Sile O'Modhrain and Deb Roy MIT Media Lab

[Class Assignments] [Class Outline] [Reading List] [Notes]



READING LIST

Essential Reading:
Ackerman, Diane; "A natural history of the senses"
New York : Random House, 1990.

Dodsworth, Clarke; "Digital Illusion:  Entertaining the Future with High Technology"
New York: ACM Press; Reading, Mass. Addison-Wesley,  1998.

Goldstein, E. Bruce;  "Sensation and Perception" (5th Ed.)
Pacific Grove : Brooks/Cole Pub., 1999.

Additional Resources:
Hearing:
Cook, Perry (ed)
  "Music, Cognition and Computerized Sound: An introduction to psychoacoustics",
MIT Press, Cambridge MA,  1999

Moore, Brian C. J.
"An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing" (4th Ed.)
Academic Press, San Diego, 1997.

Pickles, James
"An Introduction to the Physiology of Hearing" (2nd Ed.)
Academic Press, 1988

Touch:
  Burdea, Grigore C.
  "Force and Touch Feedback for Virtual Reality",
  John Wiley & Sons; New York, 1996

Lederman, S. J. and Klatzky, R. L.
  "Hand Movements: A Window Into Haptic Object Recognition"
  Cognitive Psychology; VVol. 19 No. 3, pp. 342-368, 1987

Loomis, J. and Lederman, S.J.  Tactual perception.
"Tactual Perception"
In Boff, K. R., Kaufman, L. and Thomas, J. P. (Eds)
"Handbook of Perception and Human Performance"
Vol. 2: Cognitive processes and performance.;
John Wiley & Sons; New York, 1986

  Tan, H. Z., Srinivasan, M. A., Eberman, B., and Cheng, B.
  "Human Factors for the Design of Force-reflecting Haptic Interfaces"
Proceedings of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division, DSC-Vol. 55
PP 353-359;  1994
 

Smell:
Axel, Richard.
"The molecular logic of smell"
 Scientific American; October, 1995, 273 154-159

Engen, Trygg.
"Odor Sensation and Memory"
Praeger Publishers; New York, 1991  is very good mix of technical/non technical.  Best individual

Cain, William.
"Olfaction"
IN Richard C. Atkinson, Richard J. Herrnstein, Gradner Lindzey, and
Duncan Luce (eds.),
"Stevens' Handbook of Experimental Psychology." (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 1: Perception and Motivation.
John Wiley & Sons; New York, 1988

Classen, C., Howes, D. and Synnott, A.,
"Aroma. The cultural history of smell."
Routledge; London, 1994. is an excellent cultural background -- not

Watson, Lyall.
"Jacobson's Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell."
WW Norton & Company; New York, 2000

 Vision:
Palmer, S. E.
"Vision science: photons to phenomenology"
. MIT Press; Cambridge, MA, 1999

[Class Assignments] [Class Outline] [Reading List] [Notes]



NOTES
2/22/01
Moore - Ch. 7 Auditory Pattern and object perception
            - p.246 possible tones that could be determined unique is less than 5-6
            - p.247 time-varying patterns are important
            - p.251 fundamental frequency different by more than 6% is easier to separate
Later notes sent out by Sile:
            14 : Shepard (1981)
            45 :  Shepard (1981)
            294 :  For example, in Shepard (1981)
            567 : Martin (1972)
            46 : The evidence involves the time taken to imagine visual  transformations of different sizes, (Cooper and Shepard,
            1973a, 1973b; Shepard and Metzler, 1971) or the time required to shift one's attention across different distances in
            two-dimensional space (Tsal, 1983; Shulman, Trmington and McLean, 1979) and in three-dimensional space (Downing and Pinker, 1985).
            Evidence for analog tactile representation comes from experiments by Carpenter and Eisenberg (1978) and Marmor and Zaback (1976).

Shepard reference:
Shepard, R.N. (1981). Psychophysical complementarity.  In M. Kubovy and
J.R. Pomerantz (eds.) Perceptual Organization, Hillsdale, N.J.:Erlbaum.
[Class Assignments] [Class Outline] [Reading List] [Notes]