Lawrence Marks

My main interest centers on human sensory and perceptual processes. The approach is largely psychophysical, seeking to learn how the senses select, modify, modulate, and in general transform patterns of impinging stimulus energies and information and how implicit knowledge about sensory/perceptual experience is expressed in language. Guiding much of this research is the perspective that I call “the unity of the senses”: Although the senses of vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are specialized to respond to different kinds of stimuli and to provide differential information, nevertheless the senses also reveal profound similarities and interconnections. A main goal of the research is to uncover and elucidate general, “unitary” principles of perceptual processing, and to relate perceptual to higher-level cognitive processing. Current research is examining: mechanisms of attention to sensory stimuli, effects of context on perception, and interactions of perceptual and semantic codes in processing information.