Surely the 3x3 letter grid example above shows that conscious perception can be a useful skill.
You don’t have to consciously “see” an image to know what’s in it. Weird, yes, but true. (Or possibly a quirk of subjective language.)
do you have any evidence for it?
Only that I’ve had students who say they “can’t really visualize”, and on further investigating, it turns out that they do see images, but insist that “they’re not really there, even though I can see them”.
This seems to be a separate phenomenon from those who claim that they don’t see pictures, even though they’re really there! (My wife, for example, can physically point out lots of things about these pictures she can’t “see”, and always knows precisely where in space they are, how large, and other things about them, despite “not really seeing” them.)
I have no idea what any of that really means, except that it seems to me that everybody has the ability to process visual images in some way, regardless of whether they describe it as seeing things that aren’t there, not seeing things that are there, or seeing things that are also there!
However, I have not yet encountered someone who only did not see things that were also not there. ;-)
(I have encountered people who claim this, of course, but with a little bit of questioning, it’s relatively easy to show that they can remember colors, spatial relationships, and other things that require some sort of visual processing, even if they don’t consciously “see” anything, or don’t call the experience “seeing”.)
(I have encountered people who claim this, of course, but with a little bit of questioning, it’s relatively easy to show that they can remember colors, spatial relationships, and other things that require some sort of visual processing, even if they don’t consciously “see” anything, or don’t call the experience “seeing”.)
Remembering is not visualizing. I happen to have a very visual memory to the degree that when I do math in my head I do it visually. I visualize the numbers and add them like I did in grade school. If the math is simple enough I can skip the visual process and just “remember” it. Remembering colors, spatial relationships, and other things that required visual processing the first time may not require imaginative processing when recalling the information.
I can remember the layout of a building by thinking about it in my head and “looking” at the floor plan as I “walk” through the “building”. When I toy around with a Rubik’s Cube I “see” the other sides while working on one side. Someone incapable of imagining the Rubik’s Cube or a floor plan would not be able to recall the information in the same way.
I do not see why someone like this could not recall the information about a picture without activating any visual processing.
I do not see why someone like this could not recall the information about a picture without activating any visual processing.
It seems to me you could test this by giving someone IQ-test questions that require visual processing steps. A lot of IQ tests do in fact require such abilities.
You don’t have to consciously “see” an image to know what’s in it. Weird, yes, but true. (Or possibly a quirk of subjective language.)
Only that I’ve had students who say they “can’t really visualize”, and on further investigating, it turns out that they do see images, but insist that “they’re not really there, even though I can see them”.
This seems to be a separate phenomenon from those who claim that they don’t see pictures, even though they’re really there! (My wife, for example, can physically point out lots of things about these pictures she can’t “see”, and always knows precisely where in space they are, how large, and other things about them, despite “not really seeing” them.)
I have no idea what any of that really means, except that it seems to me that everybody has the ability to process visual images in some way, regardless of whether they describe it as seeing things that aren’t there, not seeing things that are there, or seeing things that are also there!
However, I have not yet encountered someone who only did not see things that were also not there. ;-)
(I have encountered people who claim this, of course, but with a little bit of questioning, it’s relatively easy to show that they can remember colors, spatial relationships, and other things that require some sort of visual processing, even if they don’t consciously “see” anything, or don’t call the experience “seeing”.)
Remembering is not visualizing. I happen to have a very visual memory to the degree that when I do math in my head I do it visually. I visualize the numbers and add them like I did in grade school. If the math is simple enough I can skip the visual process and just “remember” it. Remembering colors, spatial relationships, and other things that required visual processing the first time may not require imaginative processing when recalling the information.
I can remember the layout of a building by thinking about it in my head and “looking” at the floor plan as I “walk” through the “building”. When I toy around with a Rubik’s Cube I “see” the other sides while working on one side. Someone incapable of imagining the Rubik’s Cube or a floor plan would not be able to recall the information in the same way.
I do not see why someone like this could not recall the information about a picture without activating any visual processing.
It seems to me you could test this by giving someone IQ-test questions that require visual processing steps. A lot of IQ tests do in fact require such abilities.