Intersensory Perception and Sensory Integration PDF
Preview Intersensory Perception and Sensory Integration
Intersensory Perception and Sensory Integration PERCEPTION AND PERCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT A Critical Review Series Series Editors: Herbert L. Pick, Jr. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Richard D. Walk George Washington University, Washington, D.G. Volume 1 Perception and Experience Edited by Richard D. Walk and Herbert L. Pick,Jr. Volume 2 Intersensory Perception and Sensory Integration Edited by Richard D. Walk and Herbert L. Pick, Jr. A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher. Intersensory Perception and Sensory Integration Edited by RICHARD D. WALK George Washington University Washington, D.C. and HERBERT L. PICK, JR. University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Intersensory perception and sensory integration. (Perception and perceptual development; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Perception. 2. Intersensory effects. I. Walk, Richard D. II. Pick, Herbert L. III. Series. [DNLM: 1. Perception. 2. Sensation. WI PE78GM v. 2/WL 705 162) BF311.I59 153.7 80·29204 ISBN 978-1-4615-9199-3 ISBN 978-1-4615-9197-9 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-4615-9197-9 © 1981 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1981 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 Ail rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher Contributors Eugene Abravanel, Department of Psychology, George Washington Uni versity, Washington, D.C. Emily W. Bushnell, Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Med ford, Massachusetts George Butterworth, Department of Psychology, University of South ampton, Southampton, England Malcolm M. Cohen, Naval Air Development Center, Warminster, Penn sylvania Bryant J. Cratty, Department of Kinesiology, University of California, Los Angeles, California James E. Cutting, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York Paul Fraisse, Centre H. Pieron, Universite Rene Descartes, Paris, France B. Hermelin, Medical Research Council (MRC) , Developmental Psy chology Unit, London, England Bill Jones, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada James R. Lackner, Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Susanna Millar, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, England N. O'Connor, Medical Research Center (MRC) , Developmental Psy chology Unit, London, England v vi Contributors Herbert L. Pick, Jr., Center for Research in Human Learning, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota Dennis R. Proffitt, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia Jacqueline M. F. Samuel, Department of Psychology, George Washing ton University, Washington, D.C. Richard D. Walk, Department of Psychology, George Washington Uni versity, Washington, D.C. Preface This volume on intersensory perception and sensory integration is the second volume of the series, Perception and Perceptual Development: A Critical Review Series. The topic of the volume is timely, for in recent years, many investigators have noted that information about any natural event is obtained by a perceiver from a variety of sources. Such an observation immediately leads to the question of how this information is synthesized and organized. Of course, the implication that there are several discrete input channels that must be processed has come under immediate attack by researchers such as the Gibsons. They find it extremely artificial to regard natural information as being cut up and requiring cementing. Nevertheless, the possibility that during ontogene sis, perception involves the integration of separate information has attracted the attention of scholars concerned with both normal and abnormal development. In the case of normal development, a lively controversy has arisen between those who believe perceptual develop ment goes from integration toward differentiation and those who hold the opposite view. In the case of abnormal psychological development such as learning disabilities, many workers have suggested that percep tual integration is at fault. In thinking about the issues raised in this volume, we are particularly indebted to our former teachers and colleagues: Eleanor and James Gibson, T. A. Ryan, Robert B. MacLeod, and Jerome Bruner. We are pleased to acknowledge the secretarial help of Karen Weeks in the preparation of this volume. Preparation of the book was supported in part by a Program Project Grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-05027) to the Institute of Child Development, by the Center for Research in Human Learning of the University of Minnesota, and by a National Institutes of Health Biomed- vii viii Preface ical Research Support Grant (2-S07-RR07019-14) to George Washington University. HERBERT L. PICK, JR. RICHARD D. WALK Introduction This book is concerned with the interrelation of sense modalities. How does stimulation of one modality-vision, for example-interact with that of another-audition, for example? The book's primary focus is on the perceptual aspects of intermodal relations in contrast with sensory aspects. Thus none of the contributions addresses such questions as whether stimulation of one sense modality changes the threshold for detection of stimulation in another. Rather, the chapters address such questions as whether a tactual and visual shape are the same, or whether a visual and auditory spatial locus are perceived as the same place. It seems patently obvious that the way to understand perception is to analyze how sensory stimulation is processed by the different sense modalities. In fact, it sometimes appears that there is no other alternative. This pervasive view is perhaps a tribute to the success of 10hanes MOller's doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies. According to this doctrine the different qualities of our sensory experience were based on the nerve energies which the different nerves carried from receptor organ to brain, or on the particular loci of the brain at which these nerves ended. MOller's doctrine was based on the anatomical and physiological evidence of the time and on a philosophical tradition which argued that we could not know anything of the external world, only the state of our nerves. MOller's doctrine led in turn to the structuralist psychology of Wundt and Titchener, in which our mental experience was analyzed in terms of a set of attributes such as quality, intensity, protensity, attensity, etc. Any given percept could be broken down into sensations of vision, audition, taste, etc., of a particular intensity, duration, clarity and size, or combinations of these attributes. Although the extreme mentalism of this approach is now gone, its heritage is still reflected in our emphasis on the processing of stimulation by the specific sense modalities. Con sider, for example, the typical courses in a psychology department on vision and audition. (There are usually no courses for the other sense ix x Introduction modalities simply because there is not as big a knowledge base for how these work.) And consider the listing in psychological abstracts of the main topics for audition, vision, and the lower senses. Our current commonsense view of how to understand perception has not always been so one-track. Although the concept of separate sense modalities can be traced back to Aristotle, he also had the concept of sensus comunis, which referred to a capacity for awareness of properties which were common to the various sense modalities. These resembled the attributes of the structural psychologists, and included, for example, magnitude, number, form, unity, and motion. (See Marks, 1978 for a review and analysis of this concept.) Focus on this aspect of perception draws our attention away from the separate sense modalities and permits us to consider the common information that we gain about the world. Although the attributes of Aristotle's sensus comunis are fairly abstract, thinking about these common attributes permits one to take seriously an alternative way of understanding perception. This alternative, following Gibson (1966), involves analyzing the way stimu lation provides information about the real world as we believe it exists. The implications of such an approach for intermodal aspects of perception are that instead of an analysis of separate sense modalities perception is analyzed in terms of the information which is acquired about important aspects of the world, or for various specific purposes whether through one or several of the traditional sense modalities. This is a very functional approach to perception and is brought out in this book most explicitly in Cohen's chapter on visual-proprioceptive interactions. Both of these approaches to intermodal perception and sensory integration generate their own problems and questions, many of which are the topics of chapters in this volume. The classic sense-modality approach is both anatomically and phenomenologically based. Each sense modality has its own receptor organ and nerve system and creates particular qualities of experience. But this immediately leads to the question of specifying the sense modalities. This is easy for audition, vision, odor, and taste, which have obvious receptor organs. But what of touch, proprioception, and kinesthesis? What are the receptor organs? For touch, the skin? But what of deep pressure and somatic perception? For proprioception, are joints, muscle spindles, and tendon organs all to be considered part of the receptor organ? These are the anatomical questions. Phenomenologically, there also seem to be problems of spec ification. For kinesthesis we sense ourselves being moved when the vestibular apparatus is stimulated in an appropriate way. But we get the same perception from visual stimulation, and in fact in some conflict situations the visual kinesthesis is stronger (Lee & Lishman, 1975). Butterworth's chapter in the present volume describes some similar experiments with children.
The list of books you might like
