Fifteen months ago I sustained a traumatic brain injury. I had been living with a chronic headache and brain fog for months and had seen a myriad of doctors and physical therapists in search of relief, but it was not until I began working with a visual therapist that I saw improvement. Unlike the other practitioners, the visual therapist was able to identify the source of my headache and brain fog – while I had 20/20 sight, my vision was dysfunctional.
Sight is seeing clearly; 20/20 is just a measurement of sight or visual acuity/clarity, whereas vision is taking in information, organizing it, and then doing something with it, i.e. perceiving, processing and performing. While colloquially we tend to separate visual perception, visual motor, visual auditory integration, visualization, eye movements, etc. from vision to understand vision, these processes are part of the overall process of vision which directly governs our perception.
The article Abstract Shape Representation in Human Visual Perception (Baker & Kellman, 2019) serves as an important step in elucidating how our brain perceptually processes information such that we may make sense of an abstract shape. This study takes this first step by measuring in milliseconds how long it takes one to register (and make sense of) an abstract shape. The study sought to demonstrate both the existence and importance of abstract shape in visual perception, as this perception accounts for one’s recognition of the crucial properties of objects and spatial arrangements. Thus, our sight provides our perceptual processing systems with a sort of representation, and these systems investigate the representation in order to create an internal description of what we are seeing. After reading the article, my first thoughts were of the relationship between vision and sight.
My aforementioned vision dysfunction is a result of my perceptual processing systems failing to create an accurate internal description of what I am seeing. This faulty internal descriptor of mine results in a lack of peripheral sight, and therefore I frequently fail to recognize the contours of objects and their location in space. When considering this with Dr. Baker’s research, is it possible that a facet of my visual dysfunction may be accounted for in a time lapse between registering and making sense of shapes? I am inclined to believe that this hypothesis is true; when working together, my visual therapist prompts me to recognize and describe changes happening in the visible or external world and the internal world as I work through visual training activities. These prompts include questions such as: What do you see; What do you feel; What is happening to your posture, balance, and movement as you do the activity. The inherent nature of these questions value observation of the visible and internal world over logic, reasoning and rationalizing (Getzell, 2019). – does my chronicling of the changes occurring visually and internally restructure my perceptual processing systems, perhaps bridging the time lapse to create an accurate internal description of what I am seeing?
Baker and Kellman (2019) began to elucidate the formation of abstract shape representations in human biological perception. As someone both in visual physical therapy and a future optometrist, these findings have contributed another layer to my critical thinking on the subject.
References:
Baker, N., & Kellman, P. J. (2018). Abstract shape representation in human visual perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(9), 1295–1308. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000409
Getzell , J. (2019). A Process Approach to Treatment of Vision Dysfunctions. Optometry & Visual Performance. https://doi.org/http://ovpjournal.net/issue7-1_webfiles/OVP7-1_article_Getzell_web.pdf
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