scholarly journals Perception verbs and the conceptualization of the senses: The case of Avatime

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Saskia van Putten
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Perception Verbs ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Detailed Picture ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractLanguages differ in their number of basic verbs that describe perceptual experience. Some languages have only two such verbs: one for visual perception and another for non-visual perception. How do speakers of these languages conceptualize sensory perception? To shed light on this question, this paper investigates the perception verbs mɔ̀ ‘see’ and nu ‘hear/feel/taste/smell’ in Avatime (Kwa, Niger-Congo). These verbs are studied together with the constructions in which they occur, using both translated data and spontaneous discourse. Both perception meanings and meanings outside the domain of perception are taken into account. The detailed picture that emerges shows some previously undocumented patterns of perception encoding and enriches our understanding of the conceptualization of the senses more generally.

Reply to Keith A. Wilson

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
The Senses

In my essay, ‘The Silence of the Senses’ (2004, revised 2013) I argued that perceptual experience has no representational content, or at least none if you exclude the content of a perceiver’s, or experiencer’s responses to his experience, e.g., in a case of perceiving, recognizing...

Seeing beyond the modules toward the subject of perception

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alva Noë ◽  
Evan Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Vision Module

Pylyshyn's model of visual perception leads to problems in understanding the nature of perceptual experience. The cause of the problems is an underlying lack of clarity about the relation between the operation of the subpersonal vision module and visual perception at the level of the subject or person.

Visual Perception of Apparent Motion Abides by Minimization Principles of Geometry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaxin Liu ◽  
Stella F. Lourenco
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Target Detection ◽  
Apparent Motion ◽  
Visual Space ◽  
Detection Task ◽  
Newtonian Physics ◽  
Kinematic Geometry ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Target Detection Task ◽  
Perceptual Phenomenon

Apparent motion is a robust perceptual phenomenon in which observers perceive a stimulus traversing the vacant visual space between two flashed stimuli. Although it is known that the “filling-in” of apparent motion favors the simplest and most economical path, the interpolative computations remain poorly understood. Here, we tested whether the perception of apparent motion is best characterized by Newtonian physics or kinematic geometry. Participants completed a target detection task while Pacmen- shaped objects were presented in succession to create the perception of apparent motion. We found that target detection was impaired when apparent motion, as predicted by kinematic geometry, not Newtonian physics, obstructed the target’s location. Our findings shed light on the computations employed by the visual system, suggesting specifically that the “filling-in” perception of apparent motion may be dominated by kinematic geometry, not Newtonian physics.

Perceptual knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 279-308
Author(s):  
Georges Dicker
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
Sensitive Knowledge ◽  
Rule Out

This chapter critically analyzes Locke’s views on “sensitive knowledge.” Its main theses are: (1) Locke sometimes confuses the legitimate question (Q1), “When we perceive a body, how can we know that we aren’t hallucinating instead?” with the faulty “veil-of-perception” question, (Q2) “How do we know bodies exist, since we can’t perceive them?” (2) When Locke does mention (Q1), he sometimes just dismisses it, because he holds that simple ideas of sensation are by definition produced by bodies. (3) At other times, Locke humors the skeptic, and offers a defense of the senses, in the form of an inference to the best explanation. (4) It’s doubtful that he could successfully rule out other possible explanations of our perceptual experience, like Descartes’s deceiver scenario and its contemporary variants. (5) There are reasons for this weakness, and they carry over to any attempt to defeat skepticism by an inference to the best explanation.

scholarly journals Which words are most iconic?

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bodo Winter ◽  
Marcus Perlman ◽  
Lynn K. Perry ◽  
Gary Lupyan
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Statistical Regularity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Spoken Words ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Taste And Smell ◽  
Shed Light

Some spoken words are iconic, exhibiting a resemblance between form and meaning. We used native speaker ratings to assess the iconicity of 3001 English words, analyzing their iconicity in relation to part-of-speech differences and differences between the sensory domain they relate to (sight, sound, touch, taste and smell). First, we replicated previous findings showing that onomatopoeia and interjections were highest in iconicity, followed by verbs and adjectives, and then nouns and grammatical words. We further show that words with meanings related to the senses are more iconic than words with abstract meanings. Moreover, iconicity is not distributed equally across sensory modalities: Auditory and tactile words tend to be more iconic than words denoting concepts related to taste, smell and sight. Last, we examined the relationship between iconicity (resemblance between form and meaning) and systematicity (statistical regularity between form and meaning). We find that iconicity in English words is more strongly related to sensory meanings than systematicity. Altogether, our results shed light on the extent and distribution of iconicity in modern English.

Observation of perception, considered through drawing

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-259
Author(s):  
Michael Croft
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Peripheral Vision ◽  
Drawing Process ◽  
Biological Features ◽  
Shed Light

The article presents and discusses an observational approach to drawing, where the objective is to articulate some features of visual perception implicated in and by the drawing process. Besides drawing, the author recorded such investigation through an action camera placed in front of his eyes and simultaneously recorded his spoken comment on the activity. The camera became the principle motif of the drawing, along with observation of certain operative biological features of perception, especially binocularity and peripheral vision. The article reflects on a first drawing involving three layers that simultaneously generated three videos and monologues. A second drawing was then developed from a more knowing stance, based on the considerations raised by the first drawing. Of such considerations, these were principally the question of timeframe, framing of experience, procrastination and doubt and, as it were, disengaged focus. The theoretical bases of the latter were founded in part on the author’s existing knowledge brought to the first drawing, and in part explored in the second drawing through what reflection on the article’s question had raised during its development. While the spoken monologues were intended to shed light on the objective of the drawings, consideration is given to how they also shaped the drawings. Sections of the monologues as transcripts are shown in relation to video screenshots and discussed for their contribution to the drawings.

scholarly journals Kafkaesque worlds in real time

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Troscianko
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Real World ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Just In Time ◽  
The Real ◽  
Linear Fashion ◽  
The World ◽  
Fictional Worlds

We read in a linear fashion, page by page, and we seem also to experience the world around us thus, moment by moment. But research on visual perception shows that perceptual experience is not pictorially representational: it does not consist in a linear, cumulative, totalizing process of building up a stream of internal picture-like representations. Current enactive, or sensorimotor, theories describe vision and imagination as operating through interactive potentiality. Kafka’s texts, which evoke perception as non-pictorial, provide scope for investigating the close links between vision and imagination in the context of the reading of fiction. Kafka taps into the fundamental perceptual processes by which we experience external and imagined worlds, by evoking fictional worlds through the characters’ perceptual enaction of them. The temporality of Kafka’s narratives draws us in by making concessions to how we habitually create ‘proper’, linear narratives out of experience, as reflected in traditional Realist narratives. However, Kafka also unsettles these processes of narrativization, showing their inadequacies and superfluities. Kafka’s works engage the reader’s imagination so powerfully because they correspond to the truth of perceptual experience, rather than merely to the fictions we conventionally make of it. Yet these texts also unsettle because we are unused to thinking of the real world as being just how these truly realistic, Kafkaesque worlds are: inadmissible of a complete, linear narrative, because always emerging when looked for, just in time.

scholarly journals NON-VISUAL PERCEPTION OF LANDSCAPE – USE OF HEARING AND OTHER SENSES IN THE PERCEPTION OF SELECTED SPACES IN THE CITY OF POZNAŃ

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-79
Author(s):  
Magdalena Szczepańska ◽  
Agnieszka Wilkaniec ◽  
Daria Łabędzka ◽  
Joanna Micińska
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Landscape Use ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Questionnaire Method ◽  
The City

Perception of landscape is associated with the perception of space first of all by the sense of sight. Visual perception is supplemented by sensations collected by the other senses. The aim of the conducted investigations was to identify landscapes in the city of Poznań perceived both positively and negatively, using the senses of hearing, smell and touch. The questionnaire method was applied in this study. It was determined that for most respondents a decisive role in the perception of landscape, apart from sight, was played by the sense of smell and hearing.

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