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Indirect Nature of Perception

Our everyday experiences attest to the immediacy of our perceptions. We need only open our eyes to see what is before us, much as the simplest of cameras needs only to be activated to capture a picture of what is visible through its lens. All that seems to be necessary in either case appears to be a lens that focuses the incident light rays and a light-sensitive surface upon which the rays can be focused, thereby creating an image of the object(s) reflecting the light. In the case of a camera, the film, or film equivalent, is the light-sensitive surface, but in the eye, the retina serves this function. Despite the appearance of immediacy, however, our perceptions are not immediate nor are they simply pictures in our heads.

Two main theory types, direct and indirect, have been proposed to account for what goes on between the registration of the light rays on our retinas and our perceptions. In general, these two types of explanations differ primarily in their reliance on what is referred to as extra-retinal information—information not contained in the retinal image. This entry discusses indirect theories of perception, in contrast with direct theories, and provides additional characteristics common to all indirect theories.

Direct and Indirect Theories of Perception

First, let us consider a typical example of a perception that illustrates the claim that perceptions are not pictures in our heads, a claim shared by both direct and indirect types of perceptual explanations, and that reveals the sharp difference between how these two theory types account for what we see. Consider, for example, that stationary objects in our line of sight continue to appear stationary to us even though their retinal images move constantly because they move every time our eyes or heads move, and our eyes, at least, move constantly. This is a phenomenon known as position constancy or the perception of stability. Given this, if perceptions were pictures in our heads derived directly and solely from the images on our retinas, it would follow that we would never perceive objects in the world as stationary. These retinal image movements produced by our own movements generally do not lead us to see stationary objects move, so there must be more here than meets the eye. That “more” is the difference between indirect and direct accounts of perception. Before turning to how these two theory types account for position constancy that will more concretely illustrate the differences between them, this entry presents a brief summary of how these theories, which have been around in one or another version for more than 100 years, differ generally.

Direct Theory

The defining difference between these two theories is centered on the nature of the information deemed necessary for perception to occur. In general, direct theories of perception, the first version of which is attributed to Ewald Herring (1834–1918) and the most recent attributed to J. J. Gibson, claim that our perceptions can be fully explained by the information available in the optic (retinal) array—that is, the patterns of light reaching the eye that, according to this theory, provide unambiguous information about the layout of objects in space. According to Gibson, our perceptual system is designed to pick up invariant information, that is, aspects of the environment that do not change over time despite our movements or the movements of objects. For example, as we move forward in our environments, the objects that are straight ahead of us remain centered and stable on our retinas, but all the other objects in our environment move outward in a sunburst-like pattern invariably indicating what we are moving toward. This does not mean, however, that theories of this sort deny that considerable internal processing occurs before the act of perception—if so, they would be proposing a version of the picture in the head theory of perception. Rather, what these theorists propose is that whatever these internal processes are—which on one view involve an internal resonating, or tuning fork-like process that detects invariant aspects of the optic array—they do not rely on other nonretinal information. For example, a direct theory of perception denies that these internal processes are in any way cognitive-like or dependent on our past experiences.

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