Perceptual Expertise

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, Québec. 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 Théophile Alajouanine at the University of Montréal until 1994 when he moved to the University of Victoria. He is a Professor of Psychology within the Cognition and Brain Sciences group.

Table of Contents
Foreword by Robert Goldstone
Preface: Lessons from PEN - Scientific Collaboration and the Search for Synergy, by Susan Fitzpatrick
Introduction: Daniel Bub
Chapter One: How Faces Become Special, by Cindy Bukach and Jessie Peissig
Chapter Two: Objects of Expertise, by David Sheinberg and Michael J. Tarr
Chapter Three: Development of Expertise in Face Recognition, by Catherine Mondloch, Richard Legrand, and Daphne Maurer
Chapter Four: Degrees of Expertise, by Lisa Scott, Jim Tanaka, and Tim Curran
Chapter Five: Face Processing in Autism: Insights from the Perceptual Expertise Framework, by Kim Curby, Verena Willenbockel, James Tanaka, and Robert Schultz
Chapter Six: Congenital and Acquired Prosopagnosia: Flip Sides of the Same Coin? By Marlene Behrmann, Galia Avidan, Cibu Thomas, and Kate Humphreys
Chapter Seven: Modeling Perceptual Expertise, by Thomas Palmeri and Garrison Cottrell
Chapter Eight: Competition Between Face and Non-Face Domains of Expertise, by Kim Curby and Bruno Rossion
Chapter Nine: The Locus of Holistic Processing, by Olivia Cheung and Isabel Gauthier
Chapter Ten: The Case for Letter Expertise, by Karin H. James, Alan C-N Wong, and Gael Jobard
Chapter Eleven: Perceptual and Conceptual Interactions in Object Recognition and Expertise, by Thomas James and George Cree
Chapter Twelve: Lessons from Neuropsychology, by Daniel Bub
End Piece, by Isabel Gauthier