For chapter 14, “The Perception Psychologists”, I’m going to
focus on the concept of seeing movement. In the book it argues that vision
without perception of movement is “valueless”, almost as if saying you may as
well be blind. Perception of our own movement guides us in making our way
through our environment—perception of objects coming towards us enables us to
escape harm. Along with the perception of our hands and our bodies in general
gives us information to control with whether its balancing or reaching out for
an object to grab.
A case example in the book was a patient who experienced
this loss of movement vision—her brain scans along with other tests showed that
she suffered damage to a part of the cerebral cortex outside the primary visual
receiving area that is known to be essential to awareness of movement.
When she would pour liquid into a cup it would appear
frozen, as well as not knowing when to stop pouring since she could not see the
rising of the liquid in the cup. People would also appear in rooms suddenly as
she could not see them move or come in, and she couldn’t cross the street due
to not being able to properly sense the speed of a car and if one was even
coming towards her or not. This does show the value of movement perception and
our ability to use it for different things—where something as simple as pouring
water into a cup or crossing the street would be nearly impossible since
movement cannot be detected. You would not know when to stop pouring, or when
to cross the street safely.
The author even goes on to say that even without evidence,
it is obvious how there is much importance to movement perception—and that we
can judge from our own experiences. A lot of the research on movement
perception deals with external variables and objective data, but not much about
our internal processes. With how people experience things internally is just
as, if not even more important than the external elements, due to it being
called perception—it’s how we interpret and understand the information
we receive through the senses; so it’s more than just the external factors.
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