Dr. John Pittenger

Education

University of Pennsylvania – BA (mathematics)

University of Minnesota – MA (experimental psychology)

                                     - PhD (experimental psychology)

Cornell University – Post-doctoral fellow (James J. Gibson, supervisor)

University of Minnesota – Post-doctoral research fellow (James J. Jenkins, supervisor)

Research interests

Perception of higher-order, meaningful aspects of the environment using the information in patterns of light and sound. Perception of events: such as perception of growth on the basis of changes in facial shape and body proportions and use of sound to fill a vessel with water. Perception of properties of objects: such as perception a pendulum’s length from its period of motion and perception of the size, number, and identity of objects in a container on the basis of the sounds produced when the container is shaken. Part of this work is using mathematics to discovery what information in light or sound specifies the aspect of the environment that is perceived. (For example, the rate of increase of the pitch of the sound made as a vessel fills with water allows us to know long it will take for the vessel to become full to the brim.)

This work uses James Gibson’s ecological approach to perception. Information about this approach is available at the International Society for Ecological Psychology’s web site:

www.trincoll.edu/depts/ecopsyc/isep.html.

2440 – Statistics and methods I

2341 – Statistics and methods II

3305 – Sensation and perception

Pittenger, J. B. (2005). The early years of Robert Shaw's craniofacial growth project. Ecological Psychology, 17, 147-159.

Pittenger, J. B. (2001). Three consequences of believing that information lies in global array and that perceptual systems use that information. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 2360-237.

Cabe, P. A. & Pittenger, J. B. (2000). Human sensitivity to acoustic information from vessel filling. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 313-324.

Pittenger, J. B., Reed, E., Kim, M.., & Best, L. (Eds.). The purple perils: A selection of James J. Gibson’s unpublished essays on the psychology of perception. Available on the website of the International Society for Ecological Psychology: www.tricncol.edu/~psych/perils.

Pittenger, J. B., Jordan, J., Belden, A., Goodspeed, P., &Brown, F. (1997). Auditory and haptic information support perception of size. In M. Schmuckler and J. Kennedy (Eds.), Studies in perception and action - IV, (pp.103-105). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Pittenger, J. B. (1995). Some assembly required: Biased speculations on the future of human factors design. In R. Solso and D. Massaro, (Eds.). The Science of the Mind: 2001 and Beyond, (pp.286-301). New York: Oxford University Press.

Reed, E., Montgomery, M., Palmer, C. & Pittenger, J. B. (1995). Method for studying the invariant knowledge structure of action: Conceptual organization of an everyday action. American Journal of Psychology, 108, 37-65.

Graduate Students

I am glad to help graduate students with statistics and/or perception. I am also willing to serve as advisor - formal or informal - on master's projects or thesis committees.

For Email: search Pittenger here: http://derrida.ualr.edu/tools/azindex/

University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Department of Psychology
2801 S. University
Little Rock, AR 72204-1099
501-569-3171

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