Ways of seeing: the scope and limits of visual cognition, Pierre Jacob and Marc Jeannerod - Essay Example

Although humans can have other sensory experiences like touch, smell and hearing, and from which knowledge about the world is also procured, the human visual system offers a unique experience. Seeing allows for an awareness not only of basic visual attributes such as size, shape, color and texture, but also of orientation and location relative to other objects and to the perceiver. Studies show that primates also have the ability to perceive objects in photographs, but unlike human beings, they are unable to distinguish an object appearing in a photograph from that appearing right in front of them.

The human visual system is highly evolved as it takes on vital functions for the survival of the human race. One’s initial judgment of pleasant or unpleasant entities in the surrounding, more often than not, begins as a visual experience. Furthermore, how the human visual system operates to aid in the efficiency of human actions or reactions is impressive. For instance, one may be dimly aware of the cars on the road when driving, but still is able to maneuver one’s car in traffic. In simple terms, the question that the book answers is: How do human beings see things?

Visual cognition has been linked to two consequential phenomena, thinking and acting, two processes which although occurring simultaneously are presented in the book as happening in separate locations of the brain. Authors Jacob and Jeannerod assess the dual model of the human visual processing stating that a visual stimulus will lead to two responses: a perceptual visual representation (visual percept) and a visuomotor representation. The visual percepts are the basic information about the object such as color, shape and texture.

The visuomotor representations are the aspects of an object relevant to eliciting an action upon it. Although it is has been observed that these two representations can occur if perfect synchronicity, research reveals that these two types of processing happen in