Traditional theories of associative learning have found no place for the possibility that the way in which events are perceived might change as a result of experience. Evidence for the reality of perceptual learning has come from those studied by learning theorists.

The work reviewed in this book shows that learned changes in perceptual organization can in fact be demonstrated, even in experiments using procedures (such as conditioning and simple discrimination learning) of the type on which associative theories have been based. These results come from procedures that have been the focus of detailed theoretical and empirical analysis; and from this analysis emerges an outline of the mechanisms responsible. Some of these are themselves associative; others require the addition of nonassociative mechanisms to the traditional theory. The result is an extended version of associative theory which, it is argued, will be relevant not only to the experimental procedures discussed in this book but to the entire range of instances of perceptual learning.