Christine Massey

Perceptual Learning, Cognition, and Expertise

Recent research indicates that perceptual learning (PL)—experience-induced changes in the way perceivers extract information—plays a larger role in complex cognitive tasks, including abstract and symbolic domains, than has been understood in theory or implemented in instruction. Here, we describe the involvement of PL in complex cognitive tasks and why these connections, along with contemporary experimental and neuroscientific research in perception, challenge widely held accounts of the relation ships among perception, cognition, and learning. We outline three revisions to common assumptions about these relations: 1) Perceptual mechanisms provide complex and abstract descriptions of reality; 2) Perceptual representations are often Contents