Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2012

Published In

Visual Experience: Sensation, Cognition And Constancy

Abstract

This chapter argues that whereas perceptual experience is underconstant in one sense, it is virtually constant insofar as it is functionally stable and predictable. The possibility of distinguishing perception and cognition is explored in experiments on the perception of surface orientation. These experiments are related to the study of self-motion perception and space perception. An experiment comparing monocular and binocular perception of hills revealed perceptual differences, between-subjects, that were masked in within-subject comparisons by metacognitive strategies. A second experiment found that participants wearing heavy backpacks gave (cognitively) elevated slope estimates only because of experimental demands not physical ones. Perceptual experience is informative about perceptual processing, but reports of experience are subject to cognitive contamination. True perceptual experience may be virtually constant insofar as the perceptual consequences of actions can be correctly anticipated.

Keywords

perceptual experience, cognition, monocular perception, binocular perception, metacognition, cognitive contamination

Published By

Oxford University Press

Editor(s)

G. Hatfield And S. Allred

Comments

This material was originally published in Visual Experience: Sensation, Cognition, and Constancy edited by Gary Hatfield and Sarah Allred, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. For permission to reuse this material, please visit http://global.oup.com/academic/rights.

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