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Visual Perception in Cognitive Processes

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Discuss the importance of visual perception in cognitive processes

Preferably using the text below in order to reference and cite the information, as well as other credible sources.
Cognition: The Thinking Animal, 3e
ISBN: 0131736884 Author: Daniel Willingham
copyright ?2007 Prentice Hall, Inc. A Pearson Education Company

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Discusses the importance of visual perception in cognitive processes. Supplemented with a related article visual perception.

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RESPONSE:

1. Discuss the importance of visual perception in cognitive processes.

Cognitive Processes in Visual Perception

Visual perception is the ability to interpret information from visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight or vision. The various physiological components involved in vision are referred to collectively as the visual system, which includes the eye, the brain and cognitive processes.

Visual perception is important to cognitive process because:

* The visual system allows individuals to assimilate information from the environment.
* The act of seeing starts when the lens of the eye focuses an image of its surroundings onto a light-sensitive membrane in the back of the eye, called the retina.
* The retina is actually part of the brain that is isolated to serve as a transducer for the conversion of patterns of light into neuronal signals.
* The lens of the eye focuses light on the photoreceptive cells of the retina, which detect the photons of light and respond by producing neural impulses.
* These signals are processed in a hierarchical fashion by different parts of the brain, from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus, to the primary and secondary visual cortex of the brain. (http://brain.phgy.queensu.ca/pare/assets/Central%20Pathways%20handout.pdf< attached for convenience)

Visual Perception is important to Cognitive processes, and there is a co-relation between the two. Visual perception:

?concerns the acquisition of knowledge
?distinct from purely optical processes like photography
?knowledge concerns objects and events in the environment
?it is not merely about subjective visual experiences (from http://www.cosy.informatik.uni-bremen.de/teaching/cognitive-systems1_ss06/Cognitive_Systems_4-06.pdf)
?The cognitive processes process the infromation form the visual system.

VISUAL PERCEPTION:

* Visual perception starts with a raw visual material received by the eye,
* transferred to and analyzed by the visual brain
it greatly depends on the range of imagery available through memory and organised by a total lifetime's experience into a system of visual concepts.
* The mind manipulates these concepts merging sensual perception and stored experience.
* Visual perception does not objectively accord with the world as-it-is, as the world as-it-is is more than pure objective fact, it includes consciousness.
* The three examples of the children's early, elementary drawings bring out the imaginative, inventive and admirable process of visual perception. Each child's way of seeing is reconstructed by the marks he or she makes on the paper. The drawing represents his experience of the visible; the data of his visual experience are transformed into an abstract and independent visual representation, revealing an inner process through which each mechanical recording of sensory elements undergoes.

* A long list of empirical observation, experiments and theories has taken place around the interrelation of the visual brain and the higher cognitive operations that produce our understanding of what we see, but no consensus has yet been given on the ways these two interact.

* Many scientists, psychologists, theorists and artists have addressed the issue from different perspectives, but are still lacking in agreement. Although most of this ...

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