Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2008 - Volume 31, Issue 02  

Open Peer Commentary

What's in a name change? Visual prediction makes extrapolation real and functional

Beena Khuranaa1

a1 Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom.beenak@sussex.ac.uk http://www.sussex.ac.uk/psychology/profile116416.html

Abstract

Nijhawan redraws our attention to the problem of accurately perceiving an ever-changing visual world via a sensory system that has finite and significant communication times. The quandary is compelling and stark, but the suggestion that the visual system can compensate for these transmission delays by extrapolating the present is not so unequivocal. However, in this current airing of contradictory issues, accounts, and findings, Nijhawan trades spatial extrapolation – a rather specific concept introduced earlier (in Nijhawan 1994) for visual prediction – a far more expansive notion that forces the issue of both the perceived reality and functional significance of compensation.

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    Visual prediction: Psychophysics and neurophysiology of compensation for time delays Romi Nijhawan Department of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom romin@sussex.ac.uk http://www.sussex.ac.uk/psychology/profile116415.html