After a Master's degree in Experimental Psychology (Rutgers University, 1975), she studied visual sensation and perception in the departments of Psychology and Ophthalmology at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1981, with a dissertation on human color vision. She completed her training with a postdoctoral year at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. and three years as a research scientist at the University of Washington.