Comments on Derȩgowski’s Analysis of Seeing a Picture for the First Time

Leoirurdo, Vol. 9, pp. 219-221. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain COMMENTS ON DEREGOWSKI’S ANALYSIS OF SEEING A PICTURE FOR THE FIRST TIME John M. Kennedy* J. B. Deregowski [l] has considered the question: What happens when persons see a picture for the first time and it is their first time to see that kind of picture? He presents three possible answers: (1) A kind of gradual increase in clarity precedes recognition, the time taken depending on the viewer’s familiarity with pictures in general. (2) The process requires integrating widely scattered but clearly perceived items into a coherent whole. (3) The answer he prefers is the hypothesis that the viewer makes a hypothesis on the basis of a sample of the picture, tests it against another sample, revises if necessary, samples again, and continues this process till no further modification is necessary. Why does he reject answers (I) and (2)? The reason is that both postulate units, either the entire picture (1) or individual items (2). He claims that one does not perceive all the units with equal clarity (an objection to (I)), and the individual items answer (2) leads to an infinite regress, for the larger items must depend on smaller items, those on still smaller items, etc. His analysis comes at a time when a good deal of research on picture perception has been gathered together from a wide variety of disciplines-crosscultural studies, animal learning, child development and psychophysics, to name but the main ones [2]. His article deserves a careful reading, because it addresses one of the issues on which research has begun to focus. Instead of asking do untrained viewers understand pictures? the question is being posed in the form how do they begin to cope with the diflerent elements [3] of pictures? The first point, one should note, is that while Deregowski quotes many reports on people in low-technology societies, none of the reports unequivocally supports any of the answers that he offers to his basic question. He says that some of the things said by these informants are noteworthy and striking and their similarity from one tribe to another, at times, is startling. But it is also evident that the various hypotheses offered can garner some support from the available evidence. Consider his work with the Me’en Ethiopians. One of them mentioned the overall shape before the parts: ‘It looks like a cow. [These are] its horns, legs, tail, ear. It is a cow’. Another seems to see the parts before the whole: ‘That is a tail. This is a foot. That is a leg joint. Those are horns. ... Let * Psychology Dept., Scarborough College, University of Toronto, West Hill, Ontario M1C lA4, Canada. (Received 8 Mar. 1976.) ne look and I will tell you. In my country this is a water buck’. Another one clearly engages in checking md modifying, changing his original identifications of he whole. ‘It looks like an aeroplane . . . . These the legs] look like aeroplane wings . . . . This looks ike a man’s head. Those look like his legs. It’s a man’. Surely it is only sensible, and common experience, ;hat the process of recognition is quite variable. Consider, for example, that occasionally an entire silhouette of an object is readily understandable, no other detail being necessary. At other times, the internal detail is necessary, for the global silhouette is ambiguous or indefinite. At still other times, particularly with cleverly designed pictures, one may find oneself beginning by picking the wrong meaning for an ambiguous detail and then, when one notices another feature, one realizes that the initial impression has to be revised. These are common experiences and it is easy for an accomplished picture-maker to arrange displays that invoke these experiences. Consequently, there is no reason, in practice, to select one process as the only true, real one. Now I turn from empirical matters to logic and recall that Deregowski rejected answer (2) on the grounds that it led to an infinite regress. He implies that any process that appeals to the parts in a whole leads to an infinite regress. Of course, some do, but it is a mistake to suppose...