Hans Wallach | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | November 28, 1904 |
| Died | February 5, 1998 (aged 93) |
| Awards | Member of National Academy of Sciences, APA Distinguished Contribution Award, Howard Crosby Warren Medal |
| Academic work | |
| School or tradition | Gestalt psychology |
| Main interests | visual and auditory perception, perceptual adaptation |
| Notable ideas | Precedence effect (audition), Kinetic depth effect (vision) |
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 the adaptability of perceptual systems based on the perceiver's experience, whereas most Gestalt theorists emphasized inherent qualities of stimuli and downplayed the role of experience.[1][2] Wallach's studies of achromatic surface color laid the groundwork for subsequent theories of lightness constancy, and his work on sound localization elucidated the perceptual processing that underlies stereophonic sound. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Howard Crosby Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists.[3]
- ^ Heidbreder, E. (1933). Seven psychologies (pp. 331–340). Appleton Century Crofts.
- ^ Schultz, D.P. & Schultz, S.E. (2000). A history of modern psychology, 7th ed. (pp. 355–357). Harcourt College Publishers.
- ^ Swarthmore College Bulletin, March 1998, p. 5