Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Visual perception is a seemingly effortless process for most people. However, it is not the case that the human brain receives information just as it exists in the environment. Vision is an active process , and while information from the outside world becomes transformed into information sent to the visual cortex, there are a number of decisions the visual system makes in order to solve inherent ambiguities (→  Information Processing ). For example, objects in the physical world are three-dimensional, while images stored on the retina are represented in only two dimensions. Consequently, it is almost impossible to resolve the information about size and distance with complete accuracy. Consider the case of a scuba diver with limited visual cues – the shark in her visual field could be seen as a very large fish 10 meters away, or as a very small fish just 1 meter away. Much research in psychology has focused on how people resolve ambiguous information using various visual cues including object size, motion, color, segregation (i.e., determining when one object begins and another one ends), and the distance of the object from the perceiver. A separate line of research seeks to understand how people form and process mental images internally . Evidence suggests that the manner in which people store and utilize visual memories is different than that for verbal memories (→  Dual Coding ... log in or subscribe to read full text