Demonstrations of Perceptual Phenomena for Introductory Psychology

This article describes audio-visual demonstrations produced for effective instructions in introductory psychology, especially in the basic area of perception. These demonstrations are important because many students have stereotyped views on psychology and do not understand the significance of the basic problems of psychology as a science. In recent days, it has been quite easy to produce and display the demonstrations by using a computer and various software developed for making and displaying visual and auditory materials. In this paper, selected examples of demonstrations in visual and auditory perception are introduced, including visual demonstrations such as various optical illusions, phenomena of size constancy, subjective contours, and apparent motions, and auditory demonstrations such as pitch paradoxes, auditory stream segregation, and melodic illusions. Technical details and software used for producing these demonstrations are al so described