Chapter 6 - Visual Objects, Words and Meaning

Abstract

This chapter examines the brain processes involved in object and scene perception and considers the links between visual and nonvisual, especially verbal information. In order to recognize objects and scenes, the brain must solve a number of very difficult problems. Recognizing an object can cause both physical and cognitive action patterns to be primed, facilitating future neural activation sequences. The name psychologists give to the temporary activation of visual objects is visual working memory, and visual working memory has a capacity of between one and three objects depending on their complexity. This means that one can hold one to three nexii of meaning simultaneously, and this is one of the main bottlenecks in the visual thinking process. A similar number can be held in verbal working memory, and often the two kinds of objects are bound together. Some objects are constructed and held only for the duration of a single fixation. A few objects are held from fixation to fixation but retaining objects reduces what can be picked up in the next fixation. Visual working memory capacity is something that critically influences how well a design works.