This book provides an up-to-date, in-depth treatment of the major issues, theories and findings in perception and representation. It introduces a cross-section of different research methods and the reader is encouraged, by means of activities and self-assessment questions, to become an active participant in cognitive psychology. In particular, the student is introduced to conceptual categorization, object recognition and face recognition by working through actual problems and so is able to test and develop theoretical frameworks by 'hands-on' experience. The first edition of this book established itself as an accessible, contemporary introduction to this area. This second edition has been extensively rewritten to take account of the latest research, including developments in neuropsychology and computer modelling.

Perception and Representation, Part I, discusses the nature of the conceptual categories which serve to organize our knowledge of the world into manageable chunks. Part II moves on to consider how we actually see and recognize objects. The third and final part examines the specific issues surrounding the perception and recognition of faces.

Reviews of the first edition:

'Perception and Representation is extremely well-designed. The sections of each main part are clearly and logically related, the book contains many helpful summaries, 'self-assessment questions' and a final 'Overview' section. The writing is lively and clear, requiring no specialist background in Psychology.'
Arts Education Review of Books

'... the interlacing of computational and psychological research provided is refreshing and up-to-date.' British Journal of Psychology