Perception Through Anticipation. A Behaviour-Based Approach to Visual Perception

Abstract

The ‘information processing metaphor’ as the traditional approach to visual perception suffers from a number of conceptual problems which result from the existence of purely sensory representations and the separation between perception and the generation of behaviour. Based on this criticism and a discussion of alternative approaches, a contrary theory of perception is presented. This approach of ‘perception through anticipation’ tries to avoid the problems of the information processing metaphor by replacing sensory with sensorimotor representations, and by considering perception to be an active and generative process rather than a pure projection. Perception of space and shape is assumed to be a process of anticipating the sensory consequences of actions; appropriate actions are selected within the same neural process.