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PSY280 Perception

Resources in this guide are designed to assist in finding scholarly information on the psychological study of human perception, including neurological aspects of visual and auditory perception.

Why use a scholarly book to start your research?

A scholarly book is written by researchers and scholars for an academic audience, and it is a great starting point to learn more about an aspect of perception not covered in class. Here are some features of scholarly books you should be looking for when researching (1):

  1. focusing on a well-defined or specialized subject (psychoacoustics but not all of perception, for example);
  2. usually published by a university press, research publisher or a scholarly society;
  3. having an index (alphabetical listing of topics, places, people and events mentioned) and a bibliography or list of references for further reading at the end.

1. Joan M. Reitz, "Scholarly book," in Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science, (ABC - Clio, 2013), accessed November 4, 2013, http://www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/searchODLIS.aspx .

Here is an example of a catalogue record for a scholarly book.  If you scroll down the record for this book, you will see that the book "describes in a detailed way how humans perceive sound":

record for a book on hearing "Acourstics and psychoacoustics"

This book is available at the UTM library. You can find similar books by looking in the catalogue on our home page for search phrases from your course outline. Try phrases like visual perception, auditory perception, visual brain, and keywords like psychoacoustics, vision or hearing:

catalogue search for "auditory perception"

When you get your set of results, select U of T at Mississauga from the left-hand menu under Library (you may have to click on +More):

library selection menu in the catalogue

You can reorder your results from newest to oldest, or by title:

record sorting options in the catalogue

 

Scholarly Reference Online

Here are some online encyclopedias you may find useful as you start out.  The Gale Encyclopedia is easier to use than the Corsini. Make sure that when you search either one, you search within that title and not other resources on the page.

Sample books you may use to get ideas for your essay

Before you start searching for journal articles, it may be a good idea to find a scholarly book on a topic you are interested in. The book will give you some perspective, and a solid foundation on which to start your research.

Below are some suggestes resources you can find in the UTM Library (not on reserves - these are just good examples for you to consider!):