Relational invariance and visual space perception: on perceptual vector analysis of the optic flow.

Abstract The outlines of the theory of perceptual vector analysis in visual space and motion perception in its present state of development are presented. This theory is exclusively founded on the outcome of systematic experimental research extended over more than three decades. Some informative experiments and their results are briefly described, starting with some decisive findings reported in Johansson (1950) . A fundamental difference between this approach and the traditional pictorial way of describing the proximal stimulus is that it accepts abstract mathematical relations in spatial change over time in the optic flow hitting the receptor organs as specification of the proximal stimulus rather than the traditional interpretation of cues in static images. In its present form it is able to establish functionally valid mathematical correspondence between the light-reflecting environment, geometrical transformations in the optic flow at the retina and the percept.

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