Sinha P, Poggio T
E25-201, Center for Biological and Computational Learning, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02142, USA.
Nature. 1996 Dec 5;384(6608):460-3. doi: 10.1038/384460a0.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the human visual system is its ability to perceive specific three-dimensional forms in single two-dimensional contour images. This has often been attributed to a few general purpose and possibly innately specified shape biases, such as those favouring symmetry and other structural regularities (Fig. 1). An alternative approach proposed by the early empiricists and since tested suggests that this ability may also be acquired from visual experience, with the three-dimensional percept being the manifestation of a learned association between specific two-dimensional projections and the correlated three-dimensional structures. These studies of shape learning have been considered inconclusive, however, because their results can potentially be accounted for as cognitive decisions that might have little to do with shape perception per se. Here we present an experimental system that enables objective verification of the role of learning in shape perception by rendering the learning to be perceptually manifest. We show that the human visual system can learn associations between arbitrarily paired two-dimensional pictures and (projectionally consistent) three-dimensional structures. These results implicate high-level recognition processes in the task of shape perception.
人类视觉系统最显著的特征之一，是其能够在单一二维轮廓图像中感知特定的三维形状。这一点通常归因于一些通用的、可能是天生设定的形状偏好，比如那些有利于对称和其他结构规律的偏好（图1）。早期经验主义者提出并经后续验证的另一种方法表明，这种能力也可能从视觉经验中习得，三维感知是特定二维投影与相关三维结构之间习得关联的体现。然而，这些形状学习研究被认为缺乏定论，因为其结果可能被解释为认知决策，而这些决策可能与形状感知本身关系不大。在此，我们展示了一个实验系统，通过使学习在感知上得以体现，能够客观验证学习在形状感知中的作用。我们表明，人类视觉系统能够学习任意配对的二维图片与（投影一致的）三维结构之间的关联。这些结果表明高级识别过程在形状感知任务中发挥作用。
