Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Psychology, Experimental
For every individual observer, the position of the disc on the screen
has been affected by each change in the direction of these visible
lines. In every case, also, its location when these boundaries lay in
a horizontal plane was intermediate between the other two. The
importance of such relations in the objects of the visual field as
factors in our ordinary determination of the subjective horizon is
made evident by these experimental results. They become construction
lines having assumed permanence in the world of visual-motor
experience. The conception of unchanging spatial relations in the
fundamental lines of perspective vision receives constant
reinforcement from the facts of daily experience. The influence of the
above-described changes in experimental conditions is mediated through
their effect upon the location of the focus of the limiting and
perspective lines of vision. As the plane of the upper boundaries of
the enclosing walls was elevated and depressed the intersection of the
two systems of lines was correspondingly raised and lowered, and in
dependence upon the location of this imaginary point the determination
of the position of the white disc was made, and the plane of
perspective positively or negatively rotated.
Why such perspective lines should enter into the process of judgment
it is not difficult to infer. The plane of perspective for human
beings is characteristically horizontal, in consequence of the
distribution of important objects within the field of visual
perception. Roughly, the belt of the earth's horizon contains the loci
of all human perspective planes. Both natural and artificial
arrangements of lines converge there. The systems of visual objects on
the earth and in the sky are there broken sharply off in virtue of
their practically vast differences in quality and significance for the
observer. The latter perspective probably never extends downward
illusorily to points on the earth's surface; and the former system of
objects is carried continuously upward to skyey points only on
relatively rare occasions, as when one mistakes clouds for mountains
or the upper edge of a fog-belt on the horizon for the rim of sea and
sky. The point of convergence of the fundamental lines of perspective
thus becomes assimilated with the idea of the visual horizon, as that
concept has fused with the notion of a subjective horizon. There can
be little doubt that the disposition of such lines enters constantly
into our bodily orientation in space along with sensations arising
from the general body position and from those organs more specially
concerned with the static sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account