Problems of Visual Culture in the Light of Modern Investigations of Visual Perception and Visual Thinking

Abstract

The problem of visual and esthetic training has many facets, among which the psychological are obviously not the least important. The results of long years of studying the psychology of the child (2) lead to the conclusion that: Human consciousness and the mechanisms of conscious control of human actions represe it a hierarchical system, like a building constructed of many superimposed psychophysiological levels, of many floors rising above one another. Somewhere in the basement are the prepsycho-logical instinctive processes of receiving and using unconditioned reflex signals; the lower floors form the elementary sensations and implement the elementary types of individually discovered sensorimotor coordinations; the next floor is where the synthetic perceptions of space and time are formed along with the mechanisms for controlling locomotion and object manipulation; above them is the floor housing visual thinking and the processes for regulating play and productive activities; and, finally, above all the...