Irvin Rock (1922–1995) was an American experimental psychologist who studied visual perception at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

. He wrote a book, titled ''The Logic of Perception'', and was regarded as an excellent

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the pre ...

. Rock is notable in the field of psychology for his 1957 experiment where he tilted a square to make it look like a diamond and then tilted his test subjects and asked them what shape they saw. The experiment tested Rock's hypothesis that perceptual phenomena could be explained by higher-level mental processes instead of merely by automatic processes. When his test subjects continued to perceive the shape as a diamond after being tilted to view the shape as a square, Rock concluded that perception is an intelligent, higher-level mental process. This differed from previous conclusions by Gestalt psychologists that perception was not a higher-level process. Rock later wrote another important book on the field of

inattentional blindness Inattentional blindness or perceptual blindness (rarely called ''inattentive blindness'') occurs when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects o ...

Life

Education and career

Irvin Rock grew up in New York City where he received his bachelor's degree in psychology in 1947 and his master's degree in psychology in 1948, both at the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

. He earned his Ph.D. while a student under

Hans Wallach Hans Wallach (November 28, 1904 – February 5, 1998) was a German-American experimental psychologist whose research focused on perception and learning. Although he was trained in the Gestalt psychology tradition, much of his later work explored t ...

in 1952 from the New School for Social Research, now known as

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

. He became a professor there, and afterward at

Yeshiva University Yeshiva University is a private Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City."About YU
on the Yeshiva Universi ...

. In 1967, he moved to the Rutgers-Newark campus and later to the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

, where he continued to teach psychology until he retired from the university in 1987. Shortly after retiring from Rutgers, he moved to the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, where he worked as an Adjunct Professor of Psychology until his death in June 1995. In the 1990s at Berkeley, he conducted much research in the field of

, a term he coined with his co-researcher, Arien Mack. They published a seminal book called ''Inattentional Blindness'' in 1998.

Death

On July 18, 1995, Rock died from pancreatic cancer in his home, survived by his wife Sylvia, and five children: Peter, Alice, Lisa, and David Rock, and Rayna Shilling-McCallum.

References

External links

Obituary
20th-century American psychologists 1922 births 1995 deaths American textbook writers University of California, Berkeley alumni {{US-psychologist-stub