Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter I INTRODUCTION
- Chapter II THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION
- Chapter III THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
- Chapter IV THE DETERMINATION OF FORM
- Chapter V SPATIAL PERCEPTION
- Chapter VI THE CONSTANCIES
- Chapter VII THE FUNCTIONS OF THE FRAMEWORK IN PSYCHO-PHYSICAL EXPERIMENTS
- Chapter VIII THE PERCEPTION OF MOVEMENT
- Chapter IX MICHOTTE'S STUDIES OF SOME INTRINSIC PHENOMENA OF EXPERIENCE
- Chapter X THE INFLUENCE OF INTERNAL AND INDIVIDUAL FACTORS UPON PERCEPTION
- Chapter XI CONCLUSION
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- References
- Index of Authors
- Index of Subjects
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter I INTRODUCTION
- Chapter II THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION
- Chapter III THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS
- Chapter IV THE DETERMINATION OF FORM
- Chapter V SPATIAL PERCEPTION
- Chapter VI THE CONSTANCIES
- Chapter VII THE FUNCTIONS OF THE FRAMEWORK IN PSYCHO-PHYSICAL EXPERIMENTS
- Chapter VIII THE PERCEPTION OF MOVEMENT
- Chapter IX MICHOTTE'S STUDIES OF SOME INTRINSIC PHENOMENA OF EXPERIENCE
- Chapter X THE INFLUENCE OF INTERNAL AND INDIVIDUAL FACTORS UPON PERCEPTION
- Chapter XI CONCLUSION
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- References
- Index of Authors
- Index of Subjects
Summary
As instances of the extreme differences which may exist between individuals in perception of rather complex material exposed only for a short period of time, we may quote the following reports given by five intelligent and educated adults on seeing for about two seconds a reproduction of a picture by Walter Sickert, ‘Brighton Pierrots’.
1. ‘A picture by a late nineteenth-century artist, the sort of thing one sees in the Leicester Galleries. A man standing in a straw hat, with nineteenth-century clothes, on an open space in front of a building, looking down. There were buildings at the back with a kind of portico, as if one were standing on the top of the steps of St Martin's-in-the-Fields. Possibly a picture by Sickert.’
2. ‘A Cézanne, I think. A Spanish piazza with some sort of elevated platform on the left in the foreground. One male figure with a sombrero.’
2. ‘A reproduction of a stage scene. Costume looked Elizabethan —at least, that of the man standing on the front of the stage did. An open-air theatre. An observer to the left of the stage looking across it; the audience on the right and in the background. In the foreground of the stage a figure of a man, and in the central background a girl in a much more modern dress like a country girl's, Victorian, pinkish-white in colour, with a full skirt and bodice. She seemed to be disappearing hurriedly at the back of the stage, looking backwards, as if escaping or trying to avoid notice.’
4. ‘Might have been a platform, with a wooden post in the middle, going up to the top. On the right, a very tall figure in blue, who might have been wearing a blue cocked hat. Behind him there were houses. On the left there was a wall or a platform covered over, and a woman in white sitting. There was a general impression of a crowd of people about. It might have been an execution; possibly some kind of mediaeval picture or a historic scene.’
5. ‘Rather a hazy picture of rather a thin wood on the left, and I think houses on the right. A man in mediaeval clothes or armour standing at the edge of the wood looking towards the buildings. I think there was a lady behind him in the wood.’
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- A Further Study of Visual Perception , pp. 262 - 263Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013