Professor A. Y. Mshelia
Depth Pictorial Perception, Culture and Psychological Differentiation $12.95
The impetus for writing this book comes in part from my doctoral research project and part from my desire to share my experiences with a wider audience. It has taken me this long to finally get it published because of so many mundane “stuff” that people go through. Foremost amongst these is the raising of a family
CHAPTER ONE
Culture and Pictorial Perception
The problem of distinguishing perception from conception as a model of "KNOWING" is a long-standing issue in psychology (Hochberg, 1962). The study of perception, especially as it relates to picture perception, invariably entails a conception of space or what Gibson (1950) called "Visual world/field". Space to Gibson can theoretically be divided into two visual subcategories of "visual world" and "visual field". He conceived of visual world to be that which extends in distance and modeled in depth. It is that which is "… without boundaries… and most important of all it is filled with things which have meaning" (Gibson, 1950, p.3). Visual field on the other hand, according to Gibson, has a "pictorial
quality" and depicts scenes in "perspectives".
According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, space means "distance extending without limit in all directions, that which is thought of as a boundless, continuous expanse extending in all directions or in three-dimensions, within which all material things are contained". Corso (1967) also sees objective- space as that which extends "in all directions". These definitions undoubtedly present problems to a psychologist attempting to understand how children and adults for that matter acquire the skills or abilities of comprehending their "visual world", especially as these relate to spatial picture perception.