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Adaptation and Training — Changes during Lifetime. 
Up to this stage, we did not consider how knowledge comes into the 
memory and how training can improve pointing, nor did we point out the 
long way from the primitive reaction on a moving object to the 
experienced and skillful photo-reading. 
Many of us, I am afraid, would have thought of & stable structure, 
when reading the title of this paper, with the introduction of the 
coloured symmetrical scheme with its cardboard bricks enhancing this 
idea. However, human visual perception is a continuously changing 
mechanism; time always coming into the process. Perception changes in a 
short-term manner by quick adaptation, and in a long-term fashion by 
using experience acquired gradually during lifetime, 
This TIME FACTOR is represented by a green arrow: Learning, 
Training, Education, and Studying lead to knowledge and 
experience, which forms a solid base for a skillful 
"ADAPTATION" to "FACE the TASK". With this we mean the 
simple perceptual tasks at hand, or in a wider sense 
"survival". At the right-hand side some factors are 
mentioned which influence the adaptation processes; 
they will be considered in the following short 
discussion of the learning processes. (Fig. 4). 
  
[LEARNING to see, to react on visual stimuli, to read, is to a certain 
extent an unconsious adaptation process, starting at infancy, 
Visual perception of movement, for instance, is for infants very 
essential and has to be ¥arnt early. How early, is shown by Boynton, 
who states under "Recent Discoveries in Visual Science" ".....Sixth, 
during its development phase, especially during the first two months of 
life, the visual system must be exercised by being stimulated by and 
responding to light; if this is prevented, the system atrophies from 
disuse and function cannot be recovered." (Boynton, 1961). 
This statement is for vsome reasons interesting: firstly, it appears 
strange that this is a recent, unexpected, discovery (but it is so, 
indeed), and secondly, it stresses the essential value of learning for 
the development of the eye's faculties — the perception machinery is 
not ready at delivery. 
[Animal learning can be speeded up by giving reward for succes or 
by applying stress for failure. A term, which covers the whole 
variety of rewards and stresses is reinforcement. Research in 
learning proves it necessary to differentiate between Partial 
Reinforcement and Secondary Reinforcement (Braun 19635 p.131-174 
by D.J. Lewis, respectively p. 175-202 by Jolie Myers). |