Visual Intelligence
Created | Updated Jun 27, 2005
Book Review: (part of the A4166336)
Visual Intelligence - Donald D Hoffman
With numerous illustrations and an excellent text, this book gives a great introduction to the fascinating field of human visual perception, and is accessible to an interested reader without any need for prior knowledge.
Though an infinite number of possible physical world layouts could be responsible for any given set of input to our eyes, a few simplifying rules help our subconscious brain us to easily limit the possibilities to a handful, with one most-probable explanation almost always emerging.
A list of such simple 'rules' is gradually built up through the book, with explanations of *why* they generally work for a visual brain trying to make sense of the huge flow of raw data from the eyes.
Understanding these rules makes it easy to understand many deliberate optical illusions or occasional failings of the visual system, such as happen when a particular rule (or the order of precedence in which the various rules are applied) fails to produce the correct conclusion.
Whilst it is clear there is construction of a model of both space and time going on inside our heads, it is also clear that the construction is based on pretty much the same common-sense perceptual rules in most of us, and that these rules, or the capacity to rapidly and automatically acquire them given visual input, is built into our brains. Sometimes our conscious speculations may help us to see things that aren't there, but it's amazing how good a job our brains do using a set of generally simple rules-of-thumb, and some amount of higher-level knowledge about the world.
Some web applets illustrating the chapter on movement processing are visible here
Anyone intereseted in vision or the more general workings of the human brain should add this book to their must-buy or must-read list.
