This textbook goes beyond introductory sensory perception by incorporating supplementary electronic materials to demonstrate the parallels between both hearing and seeing. Each chapter intermixes seeing and hearing processes so that students can easily understand that perceptual organization is the same across different kinds of sensations and modalities. Figures illustrating visual organization are paired with sound files demonstrating the analogous auditory organization. While most books on sensation and/or perception treat the senses individually there is growing awareness of just how important multisensory integration is to understanding the connection between sensory perception and cognition.

There are auditory books and visual books, but neither type of book uses the other sense to illustrate the common issues in perception. This volume's comparison of hearing and seeing, or "listening to" and "looking at" provides the means to isolate what is common to perception and what is specific to each sensory system. There are only 3 or 4 types of visual receptors, each with overlapping but different wavelength sensitivity, but there are about 2,000 auditory receptors, again with overlapping wavelength sensitivity. Through comparisons such as this one, Handel illustrates how the number and sensitivity of the receptors match the properties of the stimuli. "Far from being a dry recitation of the facts of seeing and hearing, Handel's book is a unique attempt to dig out the similarities and interactions between these two modes of perception. While providing a detailed account of many aspects of our perceptual systems, at both a functional and a physiological level, the author always bears in mind what the incoming sensory information is about (a single world containing objects, events, and various sources of light and of acoustic energy). He explains how this fact of a single world shaped the heuristic methods used by these systems - some described by the Gestalt psychologists - to build a coherent perceived world. The focus is always on this coherence and how it emerges from specialised processes at many levels. Full of interesting analogies, the book is very provocative and contains enough challenging ideas for individual readers to be able to find specific ones to puzzle over, whether they be students or professional researchers, and regardless of their theoretical views of perception." - Albert Bregman, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, McGill University "Stephen Handel's book "Perceptual Coherence: Seeing and Hearing" reframes object and event perception in a coherent theoretical scheme based on the dynamic perceiving of "things" in space and time. The subject of "thing-based" perceptual coherence is timely and of crucial importance with the increasing interest in multisensory integration in the realms of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The text is written with Handel's habitual crystal clarity, depth of thought and pedagogical talent. It will certainly be a treasure trove of facts, concepts and new directions for researchers and students alike. - Stephen McAdams, PhD, Director, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media & Technology.

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Listening combines broad coverage of acoustics, speech and music perception psychophysics, and auditory physiology with a coherent theoretical orientation in a lively and accessible introduction to the perception of music and speech events.Handel treats the production and perception of music and speech in parallel throughout the text, arguing that their production and perception follows identical principles; music and speech share the same formal properties, involve the same cognitive mechanisms, and cannot exist in separate "modules." The way that a sound is produced determines the physical properties of the acoustic wave. These properties in turn lead to the perception of the event.The initial chapters take up physical processes, including a section on characterization of sound and discussion of the way instruments and speech produce musical sound. Handel explains how the environment affects perceived sounds, including reflection, reverberation, diffraction, and the Doppler effect. Subsequent chapters take up psychological processes: partitioning smeared sounds into discrete events, identifying sound sources, the units and phrases of speech and music, and speech and music rhythms. The final chapter provides a detailed treatment of the physiology and neurophysiology of the auditory system.All of the author's explanations are coherent and clear, and this strategy includes discussing particular pieces of research in detail rather than covering many things superficially Handel analyzes causes as well as describing phenomena and sets out for the reader the difficulties inherent in the research methods he discusses. He defines the physical, musical, and psychological terms used, even the most basic ones, and covers all of the experimental methods and statistical procedures in the text.Stephen Handel is Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee. A Bradford Book.