Upgrade for and Information about
Program to accompany
Fundamentals of Sensation
& Perception
3rd Edition
General Comments about SensPerc and the Upgrade
SensPerc is a program of demonstrations and simulations that is intended to accompany the Third Edition of "Levine & Shefner's Fundamentals of Sensation and Perception", published by Oxford University Press. It is covered by copyright, and may not be distributed or copied without express permission of the author and publisher. It is supplied on a CD packaged with the book.
It is a 32 bit Windows program. It operates under Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT. It has not yet been tested under Windows 2000, but should work in that version also.
The upgrade available from this site is a slightly revised version of the .EXE file that should have been installed from the CD in the book. It corrects several errors in the way responses were computed in the simulations of cell responses for chapters 5, 7, and 14. You must first install the program from the CD before downloading this upgrade.
To install the program, insert the CD in its drive and double click on SETUP.EXE (the icon is a PC with a blue screen). The program will ask where you want to install "SensPerc". You may wish to create a special directory to install into before starting, or the setup program will create one under "programs". It is recommended that all open applications be closed before installation is begun. You will need at about 8.5 MB of free disk space to install the program.
To upgrade the installation, simply download the file SensPerc.exe from this site, and replace the file of the same name on your computer. (The file SensPerc.exe will be in the directory created when you did the initial installation, as described in the previous paragraph). You can download directly into that directory to replace the original SensPerc.exe file.
To download the upgrade:
Type http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/psych350/SensPerc.exe
(or
click on it)
in the "GoTo" window of your browser and press ENTER. (The window should currently display http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/psych350/SensPerc.html
so you just need type exe in place of the html. Alternatively,
highlight the address in blue in this paragraph, and copy it to the window).
A "Save As" window should appear asking where you wish to have the
file placed in your computer. Search for the correct directory in the
"Save In:" pane at the top.
General comments about running SensPerc
Operating Environment
System: SensPerc operates under Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT. It has not yet been tested under Windows 2000, but should work in that version also.A sound card is necesary for the auditory effects.
Resolution: SensPerc was planned for a 640 X 480 pixel desktop on a 14 or 15 inch monitor. Larger monitors (and some laptops) work well with an 800 X 600 desktop. Higher resolutions than these are likely to make the displays too small for some of the effects to be clear. To change desktop resolution, go to SETUP - CONTROL PANEL - DISPLAY PROPERTIES (or right-click on the desktop and select PROPERTIES). Choose the SETTINGS tab at the top. Display resolution is on the right; sliding the indicator leftward will decrease resolution. In Windows 95 the computer must be restarted after changing resolution.
Colors: SensPerc works best with TRUE COLOR (24 bit) colors. The next lower setting (HIGH color, 16 bit) is equally satisfactory for everything except the "See your MTF" demonstration, which works better with HIGH color. Ordinary 256 colors (8 bit) will wok for much of the program, but will limit options for several of the demonstrations. To change color resolution, again go to the CONTROL PANEL - DISPLAY PROPERTIES. The color resolution is selected to the left of screen resolution. You should restart your computer after changing resolution (mandatory in Windows 95).
Fonts: SensPerc also requires that the standard font
size be selected. This is always correct in Windows 95, but Windows 98 and
Windows NT allow larger fonts to be selected. If a larger font is used, some
text will not fit in its windows, some button labels will be lost, and pictures
will not fit properly in their frames. For some of the demonstrations, this
will misalign parts of the image such that they are not useable. To change font
size (Windows 98 and NT), again go to CONTROL PANEL - DISPLAY PROPERTIES; click
the ADVANCED button below screen resolution. The window in the panel that
appears should read "Small fonts", with a notation below it "
Possible problems
Installation error: In some installations, the installation program produces the error message "An access violation occurred while copying this file". Click "IGNORE" and the installation should proceed successfully.
Some choices "grayed out" (not enabled) at startup: This is normal. The simulations of neural firing for chapters 4, 5, 7, and 14 require a clock timer to be optimized for your particular operating system and computer clock speed. A test of the timing is done when you first start SensPerc; until it is completed, those chapters are not enabled. The test takes a few seconds, after which all of SensPerc is enabled.
Access bar obscuring part of the program: If you have the MS Office instant access bar at the top of your screen, it may obscure the top part of the demonstration programs (which load in the upper left corner of the screen). You may want to close that access bar while running SensPerc.
Please send suggestions for improvements and other comments to:
Dr. Michael Levine
Department of Psychology M/C 285
Phone: (312) 996-6133
Fax: (312) 413-4122
Email: MikeL@uic.edu