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 prepsychological 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 these is the floor of symbolic, abstract, logical operations and the most complex instances of control exerted by the most complex information- seeking and labor activities. It should be emphasized that in its developed form this hierarchical system operates as a single entity, and the control of complex operations requires agreement between the operations of the psychophysiological mechanisms located at all these levels or floors. Each age level in the child's development erects the next floor of the overall psychophysiological building, and our task is mainly to build it in the best possible way, without senseless haste and taking heed not to erect the next floor before the one below is finished. (4)