Room vision

Knowledge of the world through the organs of sight seems continuous to us. One of the reasons for this is our constant movement. A deeper explanation is that usually our expectations interact smoothly with our visual perception. Suppose you had to leave the room, close the door behind you, then return to open it and find a completely different room. You would be amazed. The meaning of this change would be hardly less striking than the sudden change in your eyes.

The naive theory of phenomenological continuity asserts that the speed of visual perception is so great that our images can change as fast as the scenes we see. Below, I prefer the alternative theory: changes in frame-based representations of a person occur at their own speed; the frame system prefers to make small changes as soon as it becomes possible, and the illusion of continuity arises due to the constancy of the tasks of the terminals common to frames of various kinds. Thus, continuity depends on the confirmation of expectations, which, in turn, depends on the speed of access to the stored knowledge about the world around us.

Before you enter the room, you already know in advance that you will see the room, and not any landscape. You can usually indicate this by the type of door, as well as select in advance the frame corresponding to the appearance of the new room. Often people simply assume the presence of a particular room. In this case, the values ​​of many tasks of the terminals are already defined.

A person must specify the tasks of the terminals with the objects he sees. If the room is familiar to him, then some tasks are already filled with data (indicated). In the case when there are no expectations, in the first place should be the desire to identify the most characteristic geometric features. To complete the tasks of the left wall terminal, you can first try to find the lines a and d, and then the angles ag and dg. Line g is easy to find under normal conditions, since it will intersect at any horizontal (at eye level) inspection of the room, conducted from left to right. Ultimately, the angles ag, gb and Lа must correspond to each other, since all of them are parts of the same physical vertex.

Since, however, the process of perception itself is a direction, there are useful tactical schemes based on knowledge and experience. It is probably easier to find the border e than any other one, because as soon as we enter the usual rectangular room, we can expect the border e to be a horizontal line; it is located below eye level; it divides the floor and the wall.

If the estimated room sizes are known, we can determine the value of e and vice versa. In scenes of open spaces, the e line is the horizon and on the flat terrain we can expect it to appear even at eye level. If we are not able to quickly find this horizon and fill in the corresponding task of the terminal, then we should consider the deviations associated with this terminal: it is possible that the room has some unusual shape or, for example, it has a large object - an obstacle for visual search of the line e.

We will try to discover some other characteristic features. Having found the line e, you should look for its left and right corners, and after that the vertical lines emanating from them. As soon as these basic landmarks are discovered, one can imagine the general shape and size of the room. This may lead to the selection of a new frame, which is better consistent with the shape and size of the object of observation, thanks to markers confirming the choice made and specifying the structure of the object with the help of additional details.

Of course, a perfect system of visual perception should analyze the scene not just as a separate picture, but in accordance with some settings of a frame of a more general form. In order for the process of perception itself to proceed without difficulty, a person must know where in the external and constantly changing world every detail he needs is located. This allows you to compensate for the transformation in the frame system from the movements of the eyes and head, from changes in the position of the body as well as from its more significant movements from one place to another.