Visuospatial Reasoning

It’s our last full week of NaPoWriMo (National /Global Poetry Writing Month) and the A-Z Challenge. I hope you’re enjoying the A to Z of Depth.

Did you ever take a test with images like the ones above? If so, you were asked to look at the image on the left and imagine it as a 3-D object, then turn it in your mind and choose what it would look like from the images on the right. This was a test of your Visuospatial reasoning.

There are several interesting videos in this Visuospatial reasoning section of this KBAI (Knowledge-based Artificial Intelligence) series from Georgia Tech and Udacity that was produced ten years ago, if you are interested in exploring further.

I found some really interesting information in “Human Pattern and Object Perception by P. C. Dodwell, Chapter 15 of Handbook of Sensory Physiology Volume VIII: Perception_{(amazon assoc. link)}, a book given to me by my professor in grad school.

Our visuospatial knowledge begins with stereoscopic depth perception. Each point on the retina has an intrinsic visual direction and we map the visual field into retinal coordinates. When seeing with both eyes, inter-ocular distance and convergence angle allow us to map the three-dimensional physical world onto our retinas which are a pair of two-dimensional surfaces. But this is not all of our visuospatial knowledge, we also experience “perceptual space” which is inferred from judgements we make about sizes, distances, and orientations. These judgements are made due to the context of what we see (monocular cues as well as stereoscopic). “Since the properties of perceptual space are inferred from such judgements, there can be no one perceptual space that is pure and immutable. No unitary comprehensive theory of perceptual space is thus possible.”

This made me think about Parmenides’s mistrust of sensual input from yesterday. If we believe there is one true underlying substance, then we can’t trust our visuospatial perception.

“The philosophical problem of spatial perception . . . has another important facet, and this has to do with the relationship between touch and vision. In Berkeley’s view touch was the modality to reveal the stable three-dimensional nature of space, to which the less reliable visual information has to be subordinated.” Reading this, in relation to spacial reasoning, really got me excited this morning. We focus so much on visual input, and here, in relation to visuospatial reasoning, I’m reading that there is research on whether touch educates vision, or vision educates touch. This research revealed an important connection between tactile exploration and visual-spatial development. I believe I’ve found another aspect of depth I will be exploring more deeply this year.

I’m pretty sure it was a Visuospatial reasoning test I took when I was a child that started a script in my head that says I’m not good at spatial reasoning. And yet, I’ve successfully designed, patterned, and made fitted clothing which requires visual-spatial ability. So can we improve our visuospatial reasoning? This next video seems to think we can. At least it posits that we can improve our performance on the assessments.

I still find that final test difficult. How about you?

Today’s Poem

Nine French Horns

Not a common choice
this call evolved from
those that spurred horses
to gallop and dogs to run
that warned the fox death
would soon come

yet French horn was his
love language and here
it’s so clear with nine
on stage in a line
their coils of brass
shine and surprise
with one arrangement after
another and we feel the awe
of this rare event

Nine french horns, a pack
of family and friends
he guided and encouraged
through pursed and vibrating lips
breath circling round and around
always a hand inside the sound
now in divine purpose

nine cors de chasse
hunt glimmers of him
as they play as one
his spirit embodied
in the rich-mellow tones
and we hear him.

This poem was inspired by today’s prompts at NaPoWriMo and Writer’s Digest’s April Poem a Day (PAD) Challenge.

Thank you so much for coming by and reading my post. Any thoughts or questions about visuospatial reasoning? Come back tomorrow for more depth exploration and poetry.