Staff profile

Professor Ross H Day

Honorary

Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering

School of Psychological Science
Department of Psychology

George Singer Building, room 409, Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Qualifications

BSc Hons WA, PhD Bristol, Hon D.Univ, Hon DSc.

Membership of professional associations

Hon FAPS, FASSA, FAA, Member Psychonomic Society, Member American Psychological Society, Member Australian Foundation for Science.

Area of study

Psychology

Brief profile

Professor Day’s first appointment was that of Graduate Assistant in Psychology in the University of Western Australia in 1948, an appointment which today would be called Associate Lecturer. In 1950 he was invited to an assistant lectureship in psychology in the University of Bristol from which he transferred a year or so later to a research fellowship sponsored by the British Air Ministry. Professor Day undertook and completed his PhD on perceptual aspects of human skill while in that position. In 1955 he was appointed to a lectureship in the University of Sydney and over the next ten years was promoted first to a senior lectureship and then to a readership in psychology.

When Monash University was established he was invited in 1965 to the Foundation Chair of Psychology with the responsibility of establishing the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Science. He “retired” from Monash University in 1992 after 28 years as Professor and Head of Department. Thereafter both La Trobe and Deakin Universities invited Professor Day to serve as an Adjunct Professor in Psychology, in both of which he has since continued researching and teaching. he has also spent significant periods of time working with research colleagues in Brown University in the USA and the Universities of Exeter and Dundee in the UK.   His main research interests are in human and infrahuman sensory processes and perception from both empirical and theoretical standpoints. These interests derive in large part from my view that perception offers an entrée into the development and nature of human consciousness which he considers to be the central concern of contemporary psychology. His interests encompass perception in a variety of “applied” situations, for example, in aircraft control and driving and in pedestrian locomotion, he has also worked on and published widely on perception in very early infancy and in individuals with intellectual disabilities. In recent years a good deal of his research time has been concerned with perceptual illusions on the assumption that an explanation of illusory phenomena will lead to a closer understanding of “normal” veridical perception.

Recent publications

Sparrow, W.A. & Day, R.H. (in press). Perception and action in mental retardation. The Annual Review of Research on Mental Retardation 2001.

Best, C.J. , Crassini, B. & Day, R.H. (in press). The roles of static depth and object-image relative motion in the perception of heading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

Day, R.H. (2001). Laurel and Hardy and Me: A commentary on three theories of perception. In Parks, T.E. (Ed). Looking at Looking: An Introduction to the Intelligence of Vision, Pp. 83-93. Thousand Oaks (California): Sage Publications.

Day, R.H. (2001). The nature and history of contemporary psychology. In Rawlings, M., Skouteris, H, Barry, C., & Rawlings, D. Psychology One Pp. 5-9. Sydney: Heinemann.

Best, C., Crassini, B. & Day, R.H. (2000). The role of static depth in the visual perception of heading. In Bennett, K. M. B. & Gregory, S.J.(Eds). Perception and Cognition for Action Melbourne: Cleverland Printing.

Day, R.H. (2000). Visual anisotropy: The basis of apparent misalignment in parallel-line and right-angle figures. Australian Journal of Psychology (Suppl). 52, p32.