x Volume Preface
processes, we focus on three specific senses: vision, audi-
tion, and touch. More research has been conducted on vision
than on any other sense. Hence, the first chapter in this set
provides an overview of the theoretical and methodological
foundations of research on visual perception. Visual percep-
tion is covered from a different perspective in the following
set of chapters on perceptual processes. These include chap-
ters focused on organization and identification processes in
the visual perception of objects, on depth perception and the
perception of events, and on speech production and percep-
tion. For the set of chapters on performance, we progress
through the topics roughly in the order in which they take
place, considering first attention, then action selection, and
finally motor control.
The set of chapters on elementary learning and memory
processes begins with two focused on work with animals,
the first on conditioning and learning and the second on an-
imal memory and cognition, and concludes with one fo-
cused on work with humans, involving sensory and working
memory. For the set of chapters on complex learning and
memory processes, we include chapters on the specific
topics of semantic memory and priming, episodic and auto-
biographical memory, and procedural memory and skill ac-
quisition, with each of these chapters containing coverage of
two different but related themes. The chapters on language
and information processing address first psycholinguistics,
with a focus on language comprehension and production,
then reading, with a focus on word identification and eye
movements, and finally the most complex of these pro-
cesses, those involving text comprehension and discourse
processing. We end with other complex processes, those that
underlie thinking, again considering them in pairs, starting
with concepts and categorization and concluding with rea-
soning and problem solving.
Our final chapter provides a historical and modern
overview of applied experimental psychology, showing how
psychological experimentation addresses practical concerns.
The earlier chapters in the volume also provide some discus-
sion of applications as well as a review of the historical de-
velopment of their topic, but the emphasis on those chapters
is on recent empirical results and theory.
LIMITATIONS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
As should be clear from this outline, the volume is quite com-
prehensive in scope. Nevertheless, notable gaps could not be
avoided. For instance, in considering the sensory processes,
we could only focus on three of the senses, ignoring the
important senses of taste and smell. The length of the volume
did not allow us to include separate chapters on these senses,
and it proved to be unreasonable to expect one chapter to in-
clude a summary of more than one sense. There are also more
subtle omissions from our coverage because chapter authors
often, reasonably, chose to emphasize that aspect of their
topic that was of most interest to them or for which they
had the strongest background and expertise. To give just one
example, the chapter on perceptual organization and identifi-
cation focuses on those processes as they occur in visual per-
ception rather than including the similar processes in audition
and other senses. This is a single volume, but to provide a full,
complete, and detailed coverage of experimental psychology,
more than one volume would be necessary. In fact, John
Wiley & Sons has just published the third edition of the clas-
sicStevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology,which is
now four volumes long. The original version appeared in
1951 in a single volume, and the increase in size since then re-
flects the large growth of research in this area. Readers of the
present volume who wish to delve more deeply into particu-
lar topics in experimental psychology are referred to the new
four-volume set of theStevens’ Handbook.
The present volume makes up for any deficiency in quan-
tity of coverage with its extraordinary quality of coverage.
When we were asked to edit this volume, we developed a
wish list of contributors including the leaders in each of the
specific chapter topics. We constructed a list including two or
three names of potential senior authors for each chapter. With
very few exceptions, the current volume is comprised of au-
thors from that original list. Even though we thus had ex-
tremely high expectations about the chapters in the volume
from the beginning, in many cases the authors went way be-
yond our initial expectations because of the keen insights
they introduced in their chapters. Therefore, these chapters
serve not only as lucid summaries of the current state of the
field but also as roadmaps leading to the most fruitful
avenues of future investigation.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe would like to express our deep appreciation to our team
of chapter authors for their exceptional contributions. In ad-
dition, we are indebted to a number of others who have
helped us in our efforts to put this volume together. First, we
are indebted to Irv Weiner, the editor-in-chief for the Hand-
book. Not only did he oversee the entire project, giving us in-
valuable guidance at each step as we progressed from the
early conception of the volume through the finished product,