Imaginative Perception Research Articles

The neuroanatomic basis of facial perception and variable facial discrimination ability: Implications for orthodontics

Because of familial, ethnic-racial, cultural, and emotional preferences, achieving common facial understanding among orthodontist, patient, parents, and other health care professionals is a daunting communication challenge. Research into the neuroanatomic basis of human facial perception, including the roles of visual short-term memory and long-term memory, might apply to orthodontic facial learning. In this article, we review findings from functional magnetic resonance imaging and electrophysiology studies of the brain during visual perception and mental imaging of faces, and integrate these findings with facial learning needs in orthodontics. Research distinguishes specialized brain areas for whole face and face feature perception, the spatial relationship of face features, and facial memory stores. The right anterior temporal lobe's fusiform face area helps recognize facial identity, whereas the bilateral superior temporal sulcus assists in perception of facial expression. The amygdala, hippocampus, and bilateral inferior occipital gyrus help process familiar, unfamiliar, and famous faces. Because visual perceptual experience and processing are individually variable, along with visual short-term memory and long-term memory capacities, it is likely that facial discrimination ability is variable. Neuroanatomic research shows that each person's brain is as unique as his or her face. Due to variable neural hard-wiring, what the clinician sees facially might not be what the patient or parent sees, and vice versa. Enhanced facial learning is related to creation of a distinctive mental context associated with a facial stimulus and rich mixing between memory and visual perception. This context can be formed by information from clinical examinations, patient databases, patient-parent facial preference questionnaires, and functional face viewing. The more extensive the long-term memory facial links, the better the person knows the face. Facial discrimination exercises with electronic and hard-copy tools might improve facial learning and should be based on defined facial learning objectives. Tools should use facial prototypes and facial-feature spatial-relationship information, and emphasize categorization of whole faces and facial components. These are proven methods of expert recognition of objects having prototypical spatial configuration.

Depiction and plastic perception. A critique of Husserl’s theory of picture consciousness

In this paper, I will present an argument against Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness. Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness (as it can be found primarily in the recently translated volume Husserliana 23) moves from a theory of depiction in general to a theory of perceptual imagination. Though, I think that Husserl’s thesis that picture consciousness is different from depictive and linguistic consciousness is legitimate, and that Husserl’s phenomenology avoids the errors of linguistic theories, such as Goodman’s, I submit that his overall theory is unacceptable, especially when it is applied to works of art. Regarding art, the main problem of Husserl’s theory is the assumption that pictures are constituted primarily as a conflict between perception/physical picture thing and imagination/picture object. Against this mentalist claim, I maintain, from a hermeneutic point of view, that pictures are the result of perceptual formations [Bildungen]. I then claim that Husserl’s theory fails, since it does not take into account what I call “plastic perception” [Bildliches Sehen], which plays a prominent role not only within the German tradition of art education but also within German art itself. In this connection, “plastic thinking” [Bildliches Denken] was prominent especially in Klee, in Kandinsky, and in Beuys, as well as in the overall doctrine of the Bauhaus. Ultimately, I argue that Husserl’s notion of picture consciousness and general perceptive imaginary consciousness must be replaced with a more dynamic model of the perception of pictures and art work that takes into account (a) the constructive and plastic moment, (b) the social dimension and (c) the genetic dimension of what it means to see something in something (Wollheim).

Comparison of the learnability and retention between Blissymbols and CyberGlyphs

There are a variety of graphic symbol sets/systems (GSSs) currently used in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Various characteristics of these graphic symbol systems affect learnability and should be considered in order to make a meaningful match between the user of AAC and the system. Although a variety of studies on learnability of graphic systems have been conducted in the past, all studies conducted included participants from Western countries. To compare two symbol systems, namely Blissymbolics and CyberGlyphs in terms of learnability. To identify the overall performance between Blissymbolics and CyberGlyphs in terms of the percentage of symbols correctly identified at the various stages. A quasi-experimental crossover design between groups was carried out on two homogeneous groups of typically developing, Northern Sotho-speaking children. Data were obtained by teaching 80 different referents (40 from each symbol system) to 50 Northern Sotho speaking regular students from South Africa, ranging from grade 4 to 6. The participants were tested on symbol recognition at four different stages: after initial training, after a revision period, after a 7-day withdrawal period and after 30 days of withdrawal. The overall results indicated that the ease of learning and memory retention of the CyberGlyphs were higher than that of Blissymbols, irrespective of the group or the sequence of exposure. Possible reasons for the differences are discussed. CyberGlyphs seem to be more accessible as the symbols in general seem to be more detailed and also are meant to be hand drawn rather than computer or stencil produced. Within this context, CyberGlyphs could be easier to access visually than Blissymbolics, especially for children who do not have extensive experience in dealing with geometric shapes, particularly for the children who do not come from rich literacy backgrounds or who do not have rich visual perceptual experiences to draw from. Even though initial learning might be faster for CyberGlyphs than for Blissymbolics in certain populations, there may be other factors to consider when making a choice between the two graphic symbol systems. Within the clinical setting CyberGlyphs can provide the individual who uses AAC with a more user-friendly system as an entrance to the use of other graphic symbol systems. This may be especially important in contexts where issues surrounding poverty and lack of early exposure to literacy exist.

Seeing the World Differently: An Analysis of Descriptions of Visual Experiences Provided by Visual Artists and Nonartists

ABSTRACT: This project examined nonartists', hobby artists', student artists', and professional artists' responses to questions about the visual games and visual analyses they engaged in as adults and their recollections of these experiences from childhood. Findings indicate that in comparison to nonartists, (a) more artists reported these visual perceptual experiences, (b) artists reported having these experiences more often (particularly as adults), and (c) artists provided better examples of these perceptual experiences that were also more vivid and detailed (particularly as adults). These findings suggest an important connection between artists' reports of past and current visual experiences and actual performance on attention and object perception tasks. Our long-term goal is to understand the importance of visual perceptual abilities to the development of artistic talent.

How patterns of bleached rods and cones become visual perceptual experiences: a proposal.

In an attempt to increase information about how mammalian visual systems create a perceptual experience out of a retinal photochemical bleach pattern, this article brings together recent rat physiological data acquired with large electrodes, an old cat behavioral experiment, and two complex human behaviors: reading and the reversible blindness people experience when the scene being viewed is stabilized on the retinal surface. The outcome suggests this juxtaposition of disparate data sets has been logical, reasonable, and informative. The link between rats and reading is the fact that both rat and human retinas convert bleach patterns into ganglion cell volleys 3 times a second. The probable trigger for these episodic retinal volleys is a more or less abrupt change in the pattern of bleached rods and cones, and we claim the absence of this trigger when the image is stabilized is responsible for the blindness. The cat behavioral experiment correlates performance on visual discrimination tasks with the number of nerve fibers remaining after lesions of the optic tract. The analysis of the result, which shows that as few as 2% of the normal number of nerve fibers supports perfect performance of such tasks, prompts the concept of a second dynamic visual system, operating in parallel with the anatomical nervous system pictured in the textbooks. The dynamic visual system model, which brings into the foreground important old facts that have been neglected and integrates them with new data, offers a synthesis that may be useful in interpreting classical visual behavioral phenomena.

Temporal distribution of the ganglion cell volleys in the normal rat optic nerve.

We describe experiments on behaving rats with electrodes implanted on the cornea, in the optic chiasm, and on the visual cortex; in addition, two red light-emitting diodes (LED) are permanently attached to the skull over the left eye. Recordings timelocked to the LED flashes reveal both the local events at each electrode site and the orderly transfer of visual information from retina to cortex. The major finding is that every stimulus, regardless of its luminance, duration, or the state of retinal light adaptation, elicits an optic nerve volley with a latency of about 10 ms and a duration of about 300 ms. This phenomenon has not been reported previously, so far as we are aware. We conclude that the retina, which originates from the forebrain of the developing embryo, behaves like a typical brain structure: it translates, within a few hundred milliseconds, the chemical information in each pattern of bleached photoreceptors into a corresponding pattern of ganglion cell neuronal information that leaves via the optic nerve. The attributes of each rat ganglion cell appear to include whether the retinal neuropile calls on it to leave after a stimulus and, if so when, within a 300-ms poststimulus epoch. The resulting retinal analysis of the scene, on arrival at the cortical level, is presumed to participate importantly in the creation of visual perceptual experiences.

An Ecological and Phenomenological Perspective on Consciousness and Perception: Contact with the World at the Very Heart of the Being of Consciousness

Owing to the intentional nature of consciousness, people possess a special kind of contact with the real world. They apprehend part of it in a qualitative and cognitive manner at the ontological level suitably described as corresponding to the psychological. At the core of the visual system's molar activities, a stream of visual awareness flows and is the very form wherein direct visual reference to the world is accomplished. Also a function of the visual system, when it is operating in the mode called “viewing” or “reflective seeing,” is one's immediate apprehension of visual perceptual experience per se. Using an approach that draws on both ecological and phenomenological thought, the author seeks to make progress toward a conceptual structure for consciousness.

"Amazing new discovery: Piaget was wrong": Response.

In the cause of clarity we first list a number of our positions that the two critics either accept or at least do not speak against (taking their silence for consent). Throughout, unless we indicate otherwise, we will confine our remarks to the principles relating to the conservation of amount of matter, mass and volume in solid bodies under transformation of shape. Owing to a number of misunders - tandings, to which we turn in the next section, Henry Markovits may be surprised at some of the points of agreement that we list. Linda Siegel much less so since she accepts the substance of our paper.Extent of Agreement1. There are grave problems about the validity of Piaget's methods in the conservation studies. We agree with Siegel that we might have emphasized more the extent of the dissatisfaction with those methods, but the issue was somewhat tangential to our purposes.2. The true laws relating to the conservation of quantities cannot be deduced logically from any humanly possible set of empirical observations that we can imagine.3. The ability to reverse the operation of transforming shape, either in perceptual imagination or in logic does not lead logically to the conclusion that any quantity is conserved under the transformation. Henry Markovits agrees, but surprisingly, in view of our citation of Piaget's own words, denies that Piaget thought such reversibility important in this connection.4. Compensation of increased length by diminished breadth does not lead logically to the conclusion that the quantities in question are conserved. 5. The matter of which properties are conserved under transformation is one of the deepest in science and in mathematics and the theoretical justification of conservation laws is highly problematic. Perhaps one has to apply for an explanation to insight -- a notion that is poorly understood.6. The relevant conservation laws are not innately given to the child or to anyone else. How otherwise explain the fact that Piaget and most of his followers were mistaken about the conservation of volume of solids under transformation of shape?7. Neither is an appreciation of those principles learned in the sense of being accepted from a teacher.8. Children progress best in such matter when they are actively engaged in the task of exploring the physical properties of bodies by manipulating them.It is also in the interest of clarity that we set the record straight about certain statements that are inputed to us.Misapprehensions1. Most important, we do not propose any of how children learn physics or principles relating to the conservation of quantities. This defuses a great part of Henry Markovits's criticism, which is aimed at an illusory alternative theory of physics learning. We do speak of a program of studies, but that is a quite different matter, and we do have a few common sense suggestions to make about some of children's sources of beliefs about the properties of physical objects. Nothing so ponderous as a theory!2. We did not say, nor do we believe, that the grasping of true conservation principles is simply an accumulation of knowledge (Markovits's words), if by that is meant either rote learning or the recording of observable facts.3. We did not say, nor do we believe, that between the child and the adult nothing of any conceptual importance occurs (Markovits). We take the learning of calculus to be an enormous endeavour that greatly alters one's ability to solve problems in physics. We appreciate that it is an enormous struggle to grasp the interrelations among mass, weight, volume, area, acceleration and the like. We believe, however, that the psychological dimensions of these developments are scarcely even glimpsed, let alone understood.4. Like Saul Kripke (1972) we believe that at least some necessary truths, certain conservation laws among them, are empirical discoveries. …

Perspectival appearing and Gilbson's theory of visual perception

Although Gibson (1979) did not explicitly discuss the perspectival appearing of the ecological environment, his important ecological approach to visual perception can accommodate both (a) the stream of visual-perceptual experience that flows at the heart of the visual system's total activity of ordinary visual preceiving (ordinary seeing), and (b) the dimension of the visual experiential stream that is the ecological environment's perspectival appearing to the visual perceiver. In the present article, perspectival appearing is located at the level of brain centers of the visual system, where processes are determined by the spatiotemporally structured visual stimulus flux. And the stream of visual experience is interpreted as itself possessing a kind of perspective structure (as does the visual stimulus flux), including variant and invariant features that the visual system isolates and extracts from experience, producing the perceiver's cognitive visual "awareness-of" (Gibson, 1979) the environment and self in the environment.

Young Children's Ability to Differentiate Appearance-Reality and Level 2 Perspectives in the Tactile Modality

A key acquisition in the child's developing knowledge of the mind is the subjective-objective distinction, which includes a clear understanding that things may appear to be other than the way they really are (appearance-reality distinction) and may present different appearances to self and others (Level 2 perspective-taking). Previous studies using tasks involving visual appearances have found that most children do not show such understanding until 4 or 5 years of age. However, a conceptual analysis of tactile as compared to visual and other perceptual experiences suggested the hypothesis that this understanding might appear earlier if the appearances the child must identify are tactile rather than visual. This hypothesis was supported by the results of 3 studies. In Studies 1 and 2, 3-year-old subjects could correctly indicate, for example, that an ice cube they were feeling with a heavily gloved finger did not feel cold to that finger (tactile appearance for the self), did feel cold to the experimenter's ungloved or thinly gloved finger (tactile appearance for another person), and was a cold ice cube, really and truly (reality). In contrast, and consistent with previous research findings, they were much poorer at distinguishing between real and visually apparent object identity, number, and color. Similarly, in Study 3 they tended to perform better on tactile appearance-reality tasks involving the properties of number, wetness, and intactness than on visual appearance-reality tasks that involved these same properties.

The role of vision in "visual imagery" experiments: evidence from the congenitally blind.

SUMMARY Responses of congenitally blind subjects were compared with those of sighted subjects to test whether performance on three tasks is dependent on specifically visual processing. In Experiment 1, subjects memorized the locations of several figures on a board and then were asked to form an image of the board and mentally to scan from one figure to another. There was a strong relationship between distance and scanning time both for blind and for sighted subjects, although the response times were significantly longer for blind than for sighted subjects. Thus the images of congenitally blind subjects, like those of sighted subjects, preserve metric spatial information. Experiment 2 varied the subjective size of imaged objects by requiring subjects to form images of a object, such as a radio, alongside a object that was either very large (a car) or very small (a paper clip). Subjects then were asked to verify whether a named physical attribute such as drawer or dial was a part of the imaged target object (radio). For both blind and sighted subjects, the time taken to verify whether a physical feature of a target object was included in the image was greater when the context item was large so that the target object was subjectively small. Thus for blind as well as for sighted subjects the features of a subjectively large image are noticed or accessed faster than those of a subjectively small image. Experiment 3 tested the mnemonic consequences of forming images of objects with differing spatial relationships to each other. Subjects heard descriptions and were instructed to form images of scenes in which a target object was described in one of three relationships to the rest of the scene: spatially separated, contiguous but visually hidden or concealed, or contiguous and clearly visible. The pattern of results on an incidental cued-recall test was similar for blind and sighted subjects, with objects imaged as spatially contiguous recalled better than those that were spatially separated. Visual picturability did not affect recall. Overall recall scores did not differ for blind and sighted subjects, but sighted subjects reported forming the images significantly faster than did the blind. Thus the images formed by blind subjects were as mnemonically effective as those created by sighted subjects and the memorability of imaged scenes was equivalently affected by the spatial relationships of their components. Taken together, the three experiments demonstrate that congenitally blind adults are capable of preserving and processing spatial images in a manner very similar to that used by sighted subjects, although such processing may require slightly less time with visually mediated than with nonvisually mediated imagery. The research raises questions about definitions of imagery that are tied specifically to the visual processing system and suggests that spatial imagery processing ability need not depend on visual perceptual experience or, in fact, on any specific sensory processing modality.

The Structure of Laboratory Dream Reports in Blind and Sighted Subjects

Ten college-educated young adults (four sighted, four congenitally blind, and two adventitiously blind) were studied in a sleep laboratory one night a week for 8 weeks. Dream reports were collected from electroencephalogram-defined sleep onset, rapid eye movement sleep, and non-rapid eye movement sleep, following a standard awakening schedule and interview format. Dream reports were analyzed in terms of subjects' responses to interview questions, which focused on formal organization and sensory contents in the dream. Subjects also were administered a number of tests of waking cognitive abilities, which suggested no general cognitive differences between sighted and blind subjects other than the greater clarity/incidence of auditory than visual imagery for blind subjects. Likewise, despite differences in the role which visual vs. other sensory imagery played in subjects' dreams, the dreams of congenitally blind and sighted subjects otherwise generally were comparable in composition and organization, and could be comparably discriminated in terms of the sleep stages from which they were elicited. Two congenitally blind subjects without any history of form vision were able to represent spatial relationships in dream experience without either visual imagery or compensatory imagery in other modalities. Two congenitally blind subjects with minimal form vision saw in their dreams only to the extent that they had been able to visualize in wakefulness with, once again, no adverse effect on either the momentary richness or the narrative continuity of dreaming. Two blind subjects who became legally blind as teenagers universally reported that their dream visualization was as their waking visual experience had been before they became blind. Moreover, their visual imagery included well defined imaginal representations of people and places known only since the acquisition of blindness. Overall, the results are consistent with the view that the dream is a constructive cognitive process, rather than a reproductive perceptual one, and with the view that the integrative cognitive systems responsible for both the momentary and the sequential organization of the dream do not depend on the presence either of contemporaneous visual-perceptual experience or of well developed visual cognitive codes.

Time and Eternity—The Vedantic Viewpoint

ception of relativity. Let us analyze various experiences. First, there are some experiences which are regarded as hallucinations. Nevertheless, they function in relationship with time. Recently we had a report from a chaplain in the National Conference of Chaplains that when he went to the hospital a man asked him who he was. The moment he said he was a minister, that man asked him to lie down and prostrate himself before him because he was Jesus. It was indeed pathological; yet the man was having an hallucination in time. Some time ago he did not think that he was Jesus. This very imaginative perception was relative and tem orary. Similarly, there was a woman in New York who was thoroughly convinced that she was the Madonna. When she was