Table Of ContentVISUAL
COGNITION
edited by Steven Pinker
A CDGniTIDn
Special Issue
Visual Cognition
a c D E n m o n Special Issue
First Published as a Special Issue of Cognition, Jacques Mehler,
Editor
Visual Cognition, Steven Pinker, Guest Editor
Visual Cognition
edited by
Steven Pinker
A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Third printing, 1988
First MIT Press edition, 1985
Copyright © 1984 by Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright
owner.
Reprinted from Cognition: International Journal of Cognitive Psychology, volume 18
(ISSN: 0010-0277). The MIT Press has exclusive license to sell this English-language
book edition throughout the world.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Visual cognition.
(Computational models of cognition and perception)
“A Bradford book.”
“Reprinted from Cognition international journal of cognitive psychology, volume
18”—T.p. verso.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Visual perception. 2. Cognition. I. Pinker, Steven, 1954- . II. Series.
BF241.V564 1985 153.7 85-24155
ISBN 0-262-16103-6
Contents
Preface vii
Visual Cognition: An Introduction I
Steven Pinker
Parts of Recognition 65
Donald D. Hoffman and Whitman A. Richards
Visual Routines 97
Shimon Ullman
Upward Direction, Mental Rotation, and Discrimination of Left and 161
Right Turns in Maps
Roger N. Shepard and Shelley Hurwitz
Individual Differences in Mental Imagery Ability: A Computational 195
Analysis
Stephen M. Kosslyn, Jennifer Brunn, Kyle R. Cave, and Roger W.
Wallach
The Neurological Basis of Mental Imagery: A Componential Analysis 245
Martha J. Farah
Index 273
v
Preface
This collection of original research papers on visual cognition first appeared as a
special issue of Cognition: International Journal of Cognitive Science. The study
of visual cognition has seen enormous progress in the past decade, bringing impor
tant advances in our understanding of shape perception, visual imagery, and
mental maps. Many of these discoveries are the result of converging investiga
tions in different areas, such as cognitive and perceptual psychology, artificial
intelligence, and neuropsychology. This volume is intended to highlight a sample
of work at the cutting edge of this research area for the benefit of students and
researchers in a variety of disciplines. The tutorial introduction that begins the
volume is designed to help the nonspecialist reader bridge the gap between the
contemporary research reported here and earlier textbook introductions or litera
ture reviews.
Many people deserve thanks for their roles in putting together this volume:
Jacques Mehler, Editor of Cognition; Susana Franck, Editorial Associate of Cog
nition', Henry Stanton and Elizabeth Stanton, Editors of Bradford Books; Kath
leen Murphy, Administrative Secretary, Department of Psychology, MIT; Loren
Ann Frost, who compiled the index; and the ad hoc Cognition referees who
reviewed manuscripts for the special issue. I am also grateful to Nancy Etcoff,
Stephen Kosslyn, and Laurence Parsons for their advice and encouragement.
Preparation of this volume was supported by NSF grants BNS 82-16546 and
BNS 82-19450, by NIH grant 1R01 HD 18381, and by the MIT Center for Cogni
tive Science under a grant from the A. P. Sloan Foundation.
Visual Cognition
1
Visual cognition: An introduction*
STEVEN PINKER
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This article is a tutorial overview of a sample of central issues in visual cogni
tion, focusing on the recognition of shapes and the representation of objects
and spatial relations in perception and imagery. Brief reviews of the state of
the art are presented, followed by more extensive presentations of contemporary
theories, findings, and open issues. I discuss various theories of shape recogni
tion, such as template, feature, Fourier, structural description, Marr-Nishi-
hara, and massively parallel models, and issues such as the reference frames,
primitives, top-down processing, and computational architectures used in spa
tial cognition. This is followed by a discussion of mental imagery, including
conceptual issues in imagery research, theories of imagery, imagery and per
ception, image transformations, computational complexities of image pro
cessing, neuropsychological issues, and possible functions of imagery. Connec
tions between theories of recognition and of imagery, and the relevance of the
papers contained in this issue to the topics discussed, are emphasized through
out.
Recognizing and reasoning about the visual environment is something that
people do extraordinarily well; it is often said that in these abilities an average
three-year old makes the most sophisticated computer vision system look
embarrassingly inept. Our hominid ancestors fabricated and used tools for
millions of years before our species emerged, and the selection pressures
brought about by tool use may have resulted in the development of sophisti
cated faculties allowing us to recognize objects and their physical properties,
to bring complex knowledge to bear on familiar objects and scenes, to
^Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF grants BNS 82-16546 and 82-09540, by NIH grant
1R01HD18381-01, and by a grant from the Sloan Foundation awarded to the MIT Center for Cognitive Sci
ence. I thank Donald Hoffman, Stephen Kosslyn, Jacques Mehler, Larry Parsons, Whitman Richards, and Ed
Smith for their detailed comments on an earlier draft, and Kathleen Murphy and Rosemary Krawcz\k for as
sistance in preparing the manuscript. Reprint requests should be sent to Steven Pinker, Psychologv Depart
ment, M.I.T., E10-018, Cambridge, MA 02139, U.S.A.
2 S. Pinker
negotiate environments skillfully, and to reason about the possible physical
interactions among objects present and absent. Thus visual cognition, no less
than language or logic, may be a talent that is central to our understanding
of human intelligence (Jackendoff, 1983; Johnson-Laird, 1983; Shepard and
Cooper, 1982).
Within the last 10 years there has been a great increase in our understand
ing of visual cognitive abilities. We have seen not only new empirical de
monstrations, but also genuinely new theoretical proposals and a new degree
of explicitness and sophistication brought about by the use of computational
modeling of visual and memory processes. Visual cognition, however, oc
cupies a curious place within cognitive psychology and within the cognitive
psychology curriculum. Virtually without exception, the material on shape
recognition found in introductory textbooks in cognitive psychology would
be entirely familiar to a researcher or graduate student of 20 or 25 years ago.
Moreover, the theoretical discussions of visual imagery are cast in the same
loose metaphorical vocabulary that had earned the concept a bad name in
psychology and philosophy for much of this century. I also have the impres
sion that much of the writing pertaining to visual cognition among researchers
who are not directly in this area, for example, in neuropsychology, individual
differences research, developmental psychology, psychophysics, and informa
tion processing psychology, is informed by the somewhat antiquated and
imprecise discussions of visual cognition found in the textbooks.
The purpose of this special issue of Cognition is to highlight a sample of
theoretical and empirical work that is on the cutting edge of research on
visual cognition. The papers in this issue, though by no means a representa
tive sample, illustrate some of the questions, techniques, and types of theory
that characterize the modern study of visual cognition. The purpose of this
introductory paper is to introduce students and researchers in neighboring
disciplines to a selection of issues and theories in the study of visual cognition
that provide a backdrop to the particular papers contained herein. It is meant
to bridge the gap between the discussions of visual cognition found in
textbooks and the level of discussion found in contemporary work.
Visual cognition can be conveniently divided into two subtopics. The first
is the representation of information concerning the visual world currently
before a person. When we behave in certain ways or change our knowledge
about the world in response to visual input, what guides our behavior or
thought is rarely some simple physical property of the input such as overall
brightness or contrast. Rather, vision guides us because it lets us know that
we are in the presence of a particular configuration of three-dimensional
shapes and particular objects and scenes that we know to have predictable
properties. ‘Visual recognition’ is the process that allows us to determine on
