Effects Of Visual Receptor Characteristics And Stimuli Features On Visual And Imagery Processing

Over 80 percent of the information people gained in daily life is visual information, which makes the visual information processing system the most important information processing system and the ability to processing visual information a very important component of the human intelligent structure. Thus researches on structural analysis of visual information processing system are very meaningful to understand human spatial cognitive behavior theoretically and practically. Present research was designed to inspect the effects of both the visual receptor characteristics and the visual stimuli features on visual information processing through a battery of experiments on visual reception, mental rotation and mental scanning, based upon theories of cognitive neuroscience and by using methods of information processing.The present research consists of two parts: firstly, the effects of visual receptor characteristics and visual stimuli feature on visual perception. Secondly, the effects of different locations of the retina on visual imagery processing.Totally five experiments were employed in present study:1. Effects of the locations in the retina and visual stimuli features on visual perception.2. Effects of the retina locations and visual stimuli feature on the priority in visual stimuli global and local processing.3. Effects of the retina locations on the local process of visual stimuli.4. Mental rotation.5. Mental scanning.The present research supports the conclusion as follows:1. The structural characteristics of the visual receptor effect visual perception. Studies on stimulus complexity and visual perception show that characteristics of retina, combine with features of visual stimulus, effect visual perception. However, the effects exist only at the stage of visual input and primary process, that is, visual perception processing and the visual information encoding by the subsystems of both the spatial and object features after it. During the process of object identifying, the size of the stimulus represented by spatial and objective information, which encoded by sub-systems of both spatial and objective features, is "standardized"2. Structural characteristics of the visual receptor affect the local and global dominance of visual perception. To identify a simple stimulus, the requirement for the perceptual clarity is lower and does necessarily get the cone cells involved, this makes the stimulus can be identified quickly with bigger visual angels, which means the range of the visual angels for global process of a stimulus is bigger. While to identify a structurally complicated stimulus, the requirement for the perceptual clarity is much higher and perception sensation can only be finished at the location with many cone cells, this makes the stimulus can only be identified quickly with smaller visual angels, which limits the range of the visual angels for global process of a stimulus. So it is clear that the structure of the visual receptor and the complexity of the stimulus affect the range of the visual angels for global process, the range goes smaller with the increase of the complexity. Meanwhile, the special structure of the retina limits the visual angel of a global process to 1.33(?), which is exactly in the range of the visual angel of the fovea.3. Structural characteristics of the visual receptor do not affect visual imagery process. As the size of the stimulus represented by spatial and objective information, which encoded by sub-systems of both spatial and objective characteristics, is "standardized" and consequently, the size of the image represented by the brain is not absolute but relative.4. When processing imagery, the brain automatically chooses the stimulus globally or locally. To identify a rotated stimulus, the brain process features of the visual stimulus in different ways: subjects rotate the whole stimulus when it can only be identified globally, and subjects only visually search for the dominant features of a stimulus to identify it locally.5. Mental scanning follows directions. Results of the mental scanning experiments show that subjects can only mentally scan stimulus horizontally and vertically. While the mental scanning of a tilt is exerted with the combination of horizontal and vertical process.