Is vision continuous with cognition? The case for cognitive impenetrability of visual perception.

By Zenon W. Pylyshyn. 1999

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

1. Gary Lupyan
2. Fiona Macpherson
3. D. Dunning
4. David Sander
5. Andy Clark
6. Bence Nanay
7. S. Siegel
8. Tobias Brosch

Citations in the corpus

• See what you want to see: motivational influences on visual perception. (2006, background): “3 Pylyshyn (1999) also allowed for the possibility that higher order processes might guide attentional mechanisms that guide early vision.”
• Perception as Abduction: Turning Sensor Data Into Meaningful Representation (2005, background): “6. The precise nature of the interplay between cognition and perception is controversial ( Pylyshyn, 1999 ).”
• Interpreting ambiguous stimuli: Separating perceptual and judgmental biases. (2008, background): “For example, some theorists have argued that perceptual processes are impenetrable to top-down influences (Pylyshyn, 1999) which would restrict motivational biases to the level of judgment and decision making.”
• Wishful Seeing (2013, background): “In other words, some aspects of early visual perception are impenetrable to higher-order influences, such as the construction of accurate representations of objects in the environment (Pylyshyn, 1999).”
• Recognition of natural scenes from global properties: Seeing the forest without representing the trees (2008, unknown): “…models of high-level visual recognition are object-centered, treating objects and parts as the atoms of scene analysis ([Biederman, 1987], [Biederman et al., 1988], [Bülthoff et al., 1995], [Fergus et al., 2003], [Marr, 1982], [Pylyshyn, 1999], [Riesenhuber and Poggio, 1999] and [Ullman, 1999]).”
• The Theory-Ladenness of Observation and the Theory-Ladenness of the Rest of the Scientific Process (2001, unknown): “Pylyshyn (1999) has recently written a provocative piece arguing that the early stages of the perceptual process are encapsulated from cognition.”
• Perception and imagination: amodal perception as mental imagery (2010, background): “123 Pylyshyn 1999; Li et al. 2004). But even those who argue for the strongest top-down influence point out that while the response properties of the neurons in the primary visual cortex can be modified in a top-down manner, token activation cannot be a result of top-down influence (Karni and Sagi”
• The perception and categorisation of emotional stimuli: A review (2010, background): “…to the view that perception is an encapsulated process that is not influenced by top-down influences such as expectations or prior knowledge (Pylyshyn, 1999), the evidence suggests that perception is a highly dynamic, proactive process, which influences and is reciprocally influenced by…”
• Cognitive Penetration of Colour Experience: Rethinking the Issue in Light of an Indirect Mechanism (2012, background): “One form of the claim has been recently advocated at length by Pylyshyn (1999). He argues that the content of the early visual system cannot be altered by the higher-level, cognitive system of the brain.”