Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception PDF
Preview Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception
CONCEPTS AND MECHANISMS OF PERCEPTION R. L. Gregory Professor of Neuropsychology and Director of the Brain and Perception Laboratory, University of Bristol Charles Scribner’s Sons New York Copyright © 1974 R. L. Gregory Copyright under the Berne Convention All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons. 13579111315 1719 1/C 20 18 161412108642 Printed in Great Britain Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-7511 ISBN 0-684-14074-8 Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception Contents PREFACE 1X PRETEXT X11 PART ONE EXPERIMENTS I Sensory processes Human perception 50 N Recovery from early blindness: a case study 65 W n Blinking during visual tracking 130 & Variations in blink rate during non-visual tasks 144 A Colour anomaly, the Rayleigh equation and selective ISI adaptation Nl A statistical information theory of visual thresholds 154 0 Increase in ‘neurological noise’ as a factor in sensory 167 0 impairment associated with ageing A theory of nerve deafness 216 IO A note on summation time of the eye indicated by 222 signal/noise discrimination Il Is the Weber fraction a function of physical or 228 perceived input? 12 Arm weight, adaptation and weight discrimination 236 13 Weight, illusions and weight discrimination — a 240 revised hypothesis 14 Eye-movements and the stability of the visual world 253 15 A blue filter technique for detecting eye-movements 260 during the autokinetic effect 16 The origin of the autokinetic effect 263 17 The after-effect of seen motion: the role of retinal 276 stimulation and of eye-movements 18 Influence of stroboscopic illumination on the after- 280 effect of seen movement 19 The effect of touch on a visually ambiguous three- 282 dimensional figure 20 An auditory analogue of the visual reversible figure 290 2I Stereoscopic shadow-images 292 22 Changes in the size and shape of visual after-images 295 observed in complete darkness during changes of position in space 23 Measuring visual constancy for stationary or moving 299 objects 24 Visual constancy during movement: Effects of S’s 303 forward and backward movement on size constancy 25 Visual constancy during movement: Size constancy, 311 using one or both eyes or proprioceptive information 26 Visual perception in simulated space conditions 316 27 Seeing in depth 333 28 Distortion of visual space as inappropriate constancy 342 scaling 29 Comments on the inappropriate constancy scaling 350 theory of distortion illusions and its implications 30 Perceptual illusions and brain models 357 31 Illusion and depth measurements in right-angular 380 and parallel line figures 32 The curious eye of Copilia 390 PART Two INSTRUMENTS 33 A multi-channel printing chronograph 397 34 A printing chronograph for recording data 406 35 Master patent specification for printing chronograph 409 36 Patent specification for ‘Little Brother’ 435 37 A device for giving a histogram of time-intervals 446 38 An optical micro-stimulator for the human retina 450 39 A single-flash rotary disk optical shutter 454 40 The solid image microscope 458 4I The solid image microscope: a more technical 470 description 42 Patent specification for a heterochromatic photometer 475 43 Patent specification for apparatus for visual researches 482 44 Patent specification for 3-D drawing machine 492 45 A technique for minimizing the effects of atmospheric 501 disturbance on photographic telescopes PART THREE PHILOSOPHY 46 A speculative account of brain function in terms of 521 probability and induction 47 On physical model explanations in psychology $37 48 The two psychologies 543 49 The brain as an engineering problem $47 50 Models and localization of function in the central 566 nervous system Kohler’s perception 584 SI On how so little information controls so much 589 52 behaviour 53 The evolution of eyes and brains — a hen-and-egg 602 problem 54 The speaking eye 614 55 The grammar of vision 622 56 Social implications of intelligent machines 630 Bibliography 643 Name Index 659 664 General Index The author, and his disturbance- rejecting camera, are revealed by increasing data. Data points are given by a new video sampling technique, developed in the Brain and Perception Laboratory. Preface This book contains the papers written, some with colleagues, over the last twenty years that still seem to me to be of interest. Most of them have appeared widely scattered, in scientific and philosophical journals, but some have been written specially for this book. They fall into three categories: first, experiments, mainly on visual percep- tion; secondly, the design of various instruments, including data recorders, a device for improving photographs taken with astro- nomical telescopes through the atmosphere, and a machine for drawing pictures in three dimensions. The third category is philo- sophy, dealing mainly with difficulties of interpreting experimental data to discover processes of perception and aspects of brain function. All the published papers are given here in full. The diagrams and graphs have been redrawn, mainly by Mr Vincent Joyce. In the text occasional improvements in grammar and expression have been made; but I thought it best to make no essential changes in the content. Included here also in full is the case study — now, I am told, difficult to obtain — of the recovery of vision in a man effectively blind since early infancy, who received corneal grafts to his eyes when he was over fifty years of age. The study of his recovery of vision, following the operations, was carried out with Miss Jean Wallace, who was my first research assistant and to whom I owe special thanks as a colleague. Thanks are due also to Professor Violet Cane, for her mathematical skill and generous expenditure of time, energy and ideas, especially on problems of neural ‘noise’ limiting sensory discrimination, and associating this with ageing; and to Mr Stephen Salter for his most expert work on designing and building many of the instruments and devices — especially the image-improving camera. His skill as an engineer shows up my failings as a ‘gadgeteer’. Technicians are vital to any laboratory. I was unusually fortunate in my first technician, 1X x Preface M r William Matthews, now Chief Technician of the Cambridge Psychology Department. Life was never quite the same after he left my laboratory. Thanks are also due to Mr Philip Clark, my photo- graphic assistant over the last ten years, who started working with me at the age of fifteen. He is responsible for many of the photographs in this book. The papers are linked with extensive newly written passages, which give the background to each project, and in many cases introduce fresh arguments or additional data. There is a full index and bibliography; and when I have had co-authors they are ack- nowledged. Much that is in this book would have been impossible without their work — for which I express great thanks. I am grateful also to the various Research Foundations which have supported our work. We have not always managed to produce what was required, or expected: so additional thanks are due for their unfailing tolerance. I would not have started without the encouragement and support of the late Sir Frederic Bartlett, F.R.S., and Dr Norman H. Mackworth, then Director of the Medical Research Council’s Applied Psychology Unit, at Cambridge. This Support was continued by Professor Oliver Zangwill, Head of the Department of Psychology in the University of Cambridge, under whom I was a Demonstrator and later a Lecturer. He allowed me the facilities to accept grants to organize a group for developing instruments, in addition to the more usual running of experiments, and teaching of undergraduates and research students, in his Department. In 1967 I left Cambridge, to help to found the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception, in the University of Edinburgh. Christopher Longuet-Higgins, F.R.S., a distinguished Fellow of Corpus Christi College, of which I was also a Fellow, gave up the Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge, while a leader in his field, to become a ‘new boy’ in a new subject. We joined Donald Michie, who a few years before had started the Experimental Pro- gramming Unit at Edinburgh. Donald Michie had also changed subjects, being at one time Reader in Experimental Surgery at Oxford. All three of us, in our mid-forties, switched our allegiances to the computer and the dream of building Robots. So we found ourselves out on an artificial limb, partly of our own creation. Most of the people in my Cambridge Laboratory moved to Edinburgh. Jim Howe became a major force in the administration of the new Department. The Bionics Unit, which I ran, was launched by a generous grant from the Nuffield Foundation. The Department was financed mainly by the Science Research Council.
The list of books you might like
