Pictorial Systems Research Articles

Pictorial Data-Base Systems

New applications in digital picture processing—notably in handling geographic data and in computer-aided design—have prompted development of a variety of pictorial data-base systems.

Pictorial Information Systems

A pictorial information system is a special type of information system supporting the manipulation, storage, retrieval, and analysis of pictorial data. In the past, pictorial information systems have usually been designed for specific applications. But recent advances in data base technology, computer graphics, and pictorial data structures have led to the development of more general-purpose systems. This special issue is a survey of several design aspects of these systems.

Picture Query Languages for Pictorial Data-Base Systems

Integrated pictorial data-base systems need pictorial query languages to enhance their effectiveness. The tabular structures of QPE, IQ, and others are easy to understand and access.

Cognitive Differentiation and Developmental Learning

In the field of cognitive development, the alternatives to general stage theories, such as those of Werner and Piaget, have been developmental descriptions usually anchored in Gesellian test norms. The basic units for cognitive processing appear to be concepts composed of operating rules defining phenomenal structures and processes. Concepts and rules establish common units for comparing and inter-relating all types of cognitive processes. Universal, culturally specific, and individually unique cognitive processes, varying in both complexity and type, can all be described and discussed in a common framework of concepts and rule systems. Concepts and rules are not totally isolated mental units but are variously interrelated in logical networks, systems, and hierarchies. This separateness but varying interrelatedness of concepts in systems of different types at many levels further establishes a basis for sorting out concepts according to their degree of universality and provides the logic of complexity that determines sequence in developmental cognition. In each basic type of concept category, some concepts at different levels are apparently universal to all cultures because of the problem of adaptation to the physical world common to all social groups. Every culture seems to foster minimal levels and forms of formal Piagetian and informational knowledge concept systems, of sensory-motor, pictorial, and language coding systems, and of cognitive strategies for coping.

On J. J. Gibson's New Perspective

In 'The Information Available in Pictures' [1], James J. Gibson has abandoned the main position I attacked in Languages of Art [2]. No longer does he regard realistic representation as defined by geometrical optics-as measured by how nearly the bundle of light rays delivered from a picture duplicates a bundle delivered from what is represented. Furthermore, we agree in rejecting criteria of realism based on the deceptiveness of pictures or on their similarity to their subjects. And I am more in agreement with him than he seems to realize in insisting upon a significant distinction between paragraphs and pictures-between linguistic and pictorial symbols. Although I wrote that we must read a picture-in other words, interpret rather than merely register it-an appreciable part of my book is devoted to defining the distinctions between linguistic, pictorial, and other symbol systems; and I entirely agree that there is no vocabulary of picturing as there is of saying. Still, our meeting of minds is not complete. In the first place, I do not agree that reverse perspective 'cannot be consistently applied'. A long opaque rectangular box, viewed obliquely, may be drawn in