The systematic scientific investigation of human perception began over 130 years ago, yet relatively little is known about how we identify complex patterns. A major reason for this is that historically, most perceptual research focused on the more basic processes involved in the detection and discrimination of simple stimuli. This work progressed in a connectionist fashion, attempting to clarify fundamental mechanisms in depth before addressing the more complex problems of pattern recognition and classification. This extensive and impressive research effort built a firm basis from which to speculate about these issues. What seemed lacking, however, was an overall characterization of the recognition problem – a broad theoretical structure to direct future research in this area. Consequently, our primary objective in this volume, originally published in 1981, was not only to review existing contributions to our understanding of classification and recognition, but to project fruitful areas and directions for future research as well. The book covers four areas: complex visual patterns; complex auditory patterns; multi-dimensional perceptual spaces; theoretical pattern recognition.

Pattern Recognition by Humans and Machines, Volume 1: Speech Perception covers perception from the perspectives of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and brain theory. The book discusses on the research, theory, and the principal issues of speech perception; the auditory and phonetic coding of speech; and the role of the lexicon in speech perception. The text also describes the role of attention and active processing in speech perception; the suprasegmental in very large vocabulary word recognition; and the adaptive self-organization of serial order in behavior. The cognitive science and the study of cognition and language are also considered. Psychologists will find the book invaluable.

Pattern Recognitions by Humans and Machines, Volume 2: Visual Perceptions covers aspects of research on visual perception. The book discusses visual form perception, figure-ground organization, and the spatial and temporal responses of the visual system; eye movements; and visual pattern perception. The text also describes a computer vision model based on psychophysical experiments; perspectives from brain theory and artificial intelligence; and the capacity to extract shape properties and spatial relations among objects and objects' parts. Knowledge-mediated perception is also considered. Psychologists and people involved in the study of visual perceptions will find the book useful.

Psychological Processes in Pattern Recognition describes information-processing models of pattern recognition. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 11 chapters that particularly focus on visual pattern recognition and the many issues relevant to a more general theory of pattern recognition. The first three parts cover the representation, temporal effects, and memory codes of pattern recognition. These parts include the features, templates, schemata, and structural descriptions of information processing models. The principles of parallel matching, iconic storage, and the components and networks of memory codes are also considered. The remaining two parts look into the perceptual classification and response selection of pattern recognition. These parts specifically tackle the development of probability, distance, and recognition models. This book is intended primarily for psychologists, graduate students, and researchers who are interested in the problems of pattern recognition and human information processing.