Perceptual Learning: The Flexibility of

the Senses Kevin Connolly

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/perceptual-learning-the-flexibility-of-the-senses-kevin-
connolly/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Victorian Culture and Experiential Learning: Historical

Encounters in the Classroom Kevin A. Morrison

https://ebookmass.com/product/victorian-culture-and-experiential-
learning-historical-encounters-in-the-classroom-kevin-a-morrison/

Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory 1st

Hardcover Edition Fiona Macpherson

https://ebookmass.com/product/perceptual-imagination-and-
perceptual-memory-1st-hardcover-edition-fiona-macpherson/

Secret Worlds: The extraordinary senses of animals 1st

Edition Martin Stevens

https://ebookmass.com/product/secret-worlds-the-extraordinary-
senses-of-animals-1st-edition-martin-stevens/

Perceptual experience Christopher Hill

https://ebookmass.com/product/perceptual-experience-christopher-
hill/
Le Pacte de l'étrange John Connolly [Connolly

https://ebookmass.com/product/le-pacte-de-letrange-john-connolly-
connolly/

Empires of the Senses: Bodily Encounters in Imperial

India and the Philippines Andrew J. Rotter

https://ebookmass.com/product/empires-of-the-senses-bodily-
encounters-in-imperial-india-and-the-philippines-andrew-j-rotter/

The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice Kevin Trainor

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-buddhist-
practice-kevin-trainor/

Shopping and the Senses, 1800-1970 Serena Dyer

https://ebookmass.com/product/shopping-and-the-
senses-1800-1970-serena-dyer/

A Breath of Mischief Marcykate Connolly

https://ebookmass.com/product/a-breath-of-mischief-marcykate-
connolly/
PERCEP TUAL LE ARNING
PERCEP TUAL LE ARNING

The Flexibility of the Senses

Kevin Connolly

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​066289–​9

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by LSC Communications, United States of America

For Paul Liam, perceptual learner extraordinaire
 CONTENTS

Preface xi

PART I
THE NATURE OF PERCEPTUAL LEARNING

1. How to Understand Perceptual Learning 3

1.1 Introduction 3
1.2 What Is Perceptual Learning? 7
1.3 A Taxonomy of Perceptual Learning Cases 18
1.4 The Offloading View of Perceptual Learning 28
1.5 Looking Ahead 36
2. Is Perceptual Learning Genuinely Perceptual? 38
2.1 Introduction 38
2.2 Skepticism about Perceptual Learning as
Genuinely Perceptual 41
2.3 Introspective Evidence That Perceptual
Learning Is Genuinely Perceptual 45
 Contents

2.4 Neuroscientific Evidence That Perceptual

Learning Is Genuinely Perceptual 48
2.5 Behavioral Evidence That Perceptual Learning
Is Genuinely Perceptual 57
2.6 Conclusion 59

PART II
THE SCOPE OF PERCEPTUAL LEARNING

3. Learned Attention and the Contents of Perception 65

3.1 Introduction 65
3.2 The Phenomenal Contrast Argument 69
3.3 The Attentional Reply to the Phenomenal
Contrast Argument 72
3.4 The Blind Flailing Model of Perceptual Learning 76
3.5 A New Attentional Reply to the Phenomenal
Contrast Argument 88
3.6 Learned Attention and the Offloading View 99
4. Learned Attention II: Sensory Substitution 101
4.1 Introduction 101
4.2 Attentional Weighting in Distal Attribution 103
4.3 Latent Inhibition as a Kind of Learned Attention 109
4.4 Applying Principles of Attentional Training to
Sensory Substitution 116
4.5 Perceptual Learning and Perceptual Hacking 121
4.6 An Empirical Test for Determining the Nature
of SSD Experience 124
4.7 Conclusion 126

viii
 Contents

5. “Chunking” the World through Multisensory

Perception 127
5.1 Introduction 127
5.2 The Kind of Conscious Awareness We Have in
Multisensory Perception 135
5.3 Unitization as a Perceptual Learning Mechanism 139
5.4 Applying Unitization to Multisensory Cases 142
5.5 Objections and Replies 147
5.6 Unitization and the Offloading View 151
5.7 Conclusion 153

6. Learning to Differentiate Properties: Speech

Perception 154
6.1 Introduction 154
6.2 The Phenomenal Contrast Argument for
Hearing Meanings 156
6.3 The Argument from Homophones 159
6.4 The Role of Differentiation in Speech Perception 164
6.5 Why Perceptual Learning Does Not Support
the View That We Hear Meanings 170
6.6 The Offloading View and Speech Perception 174
6.7 Conclusion 177
7. Learning to Differentiate Objects: The Case of
Memory Color 179
7.1 Introduction 179
7.2 Memory Color and Cognitive Penetration 181
7.3 A Brief Survey of Memory Color Studies 185
7.4 Why Memory Color Is Not a Mechanism for
Color Constancy 193

ix
 Contents

7.5 Memory Color and Perceptual Learning 196

7.6 Memory Color and the Offloading View 204
7.7 Conclusion 207

Conclusion: Perceptual Learning beyond Philosophy

of Mind 209

Acknowledgments 219
References 223
Index 241

x
 PREFACE

One day, in the middle of writing this book, I found myself waiting
in a medical specialist’s examination room, typing up a section of the
manuscript on my laptop. A couple of months earlier, my doctor had
suggested I visit a specialist about a small area on my right forearm.
My doctor did not seem to think it was a big deal, but he suggested
I visit a specialist just to be safe. So I found myself sitting, waiting
for the specialist, and typing up this manuscript. The specialist, who
looked to be well into his seventies, finally opened the door. I put
away my laptop, and he began to look at my arm slowly and meticu-
lously. As he proceeded, it became clear that he was alarmed, much
more so than the primary-​care doctor had been. He called for a lab
test. What the specialist was worried about turned out to be early
melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer, caught soon enough that
it had not yet spread.
Many times during the course of writing this book I have thought
back to that specialist. Sometimes I find myself wondering what
sorts of prior events had led to his perception at that moment when
I was sitting in that room. I imagine the long lines of patients he
 P r e fa c e

has seen and the textbooks and journal articles he has read. I think
about and I wonder what exactly enabled him to see in an expert
way that day, and so many others.
This book aims to make progress in our theoretical under-
standing of perceptual learning, both in terms of its nature and its
scope. Discussions of perceptual learning can be found throughout
the history of philosophy and psychology. William James (1890),
for instance, writes about how a person can become able to differ-
entiate by taste between the upper half and the lower half of a bottle
for a particular kind of wine (p. 509). This can be understood as a
case of perceptual learning—​a long-​term change in perception that
results from practice or experience.
Psychologists have been studying perceptual learning under
that name since Eleanor Gibson wrote the first review article on
the topic more than a half-century ago. Philosophers do not typi-
cally use the term. Yet cases of perceptual learning can be found in
the literature from Diogenes Laertius’s third-​century discussion of
Stoic philosophy, to the work of the fourteenth-​century Hindu phi-
losopher Vedānta Deśika, and the work of the eighteenth-​century
Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid. Much more recently, cases of
perceptual learning can be found in the work of Susanna Siegel,
Christopher Peacocke, Charles Siewert, Galen Strawson, Berit
Brogaard, Casey O’Callaghan, Tim Bayne, and many others. This
book catalogs cases of perceptual learning in the philosophical liter-
ature for the first time.
Why is perceptual learning philosophically significant? One
reason is that it says something about the very nature of perception—​
that perception is more complex than it may seem from the first-​
person point of view. Specifically, the fact that perceptual learning
occurs means that the causes of perceptual states are not just the
objects in our immediate environment, as it might seem at first

xii
 P r e fa c e

glance. Rather, there is a long causal history to our perceptions that

involves prior perception. When the expert wine taster tastes the
Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, that glass of wine alone is not the
sole cause of her perceptual state. Rather, the cause of her percep-
tual state includes prior wines and prior perceptions of those wines.
Although there are some recent exceptions (see, for instance,
O’Callaghan, 2011; Bayne, 2009; Brogaard, 2018; Brogaard &
Gatzia, 2018; Chudnoff, 2018),1 philosophers have relied largely on
their intuitions and on introspection to understand cases of percep-
tual learning. Arguably, however, psychology and neuroscience are
now in a position to weigh in on philosophical claims about percep-
tual learning. This book offers an empirically informed account of
perceptual learning for philosophers.
The book also offers a way for philosophers to distinguish be-
tween different kinds of perceptual learning. In some cases, percep-
tual learning involves changes in how one attends; in other cases, it
involves a learned ability to differentiate two properties, or to per-
ceive two properties as unified (see Goldstone, 1998; Goldstone &
Byrge, 2015). This taxonomy can help to classify cases of perceptual
learning in the philosophical literature and to evaluate the philo-
sophical claims drawn from these cases.

1. O’Callaghan (2011) explores the case of hearing speech before and after one learns the rel-
evant language, and understands it as an instance of perceptual learning. He uses empirical
evidence to argue that the phenomenal difference in a person’s perception when one learns
a language is not because they now hear meanings, but because they now hear the linguistic
sounds differently. (For more on this, see c­ hapter 6.) Bayne (2009) uses the case of asso-
ciative agnosia, in which patients perceive the form of objects but not their categories. By
contrasting this case with the perception of a typical perceiver, he argues that perception
comes to represent high-​level categories, such as when we come to perceive a tomato as a
tomato. In much the same way that I do in this book, Brogaard (2018), Brogaard and Gatzia
(2018), and Chudnoff (2018), all draw on the perceptual learning tradition of Eleanor
Gibson, as well as more recent perceptual learning experiments in cognitive psychology, in
order to support a wide array of conclusions in philosophy of mind and epistemology.

xiii
 P r e fa c e

While there is a diverse array of cases of perceptual learning in

the philosophical literature, this book also offers a unifying theory.
The theory, very roughly, is that perceptual learning serves a func-
tion. It embeds into our quick perceptual systems what would be a
slower task were it done in a controlled, cognitive manner. This frees
up our cognitive resources for other tasks. For instance, a novice
wine taster drinking a standard Cabernet Sauvignon might have
to think about its features first and then infer that it is a Cabernet
Sauvignon. An expert, by contrast, would be able to identify the
type of wine immediately. This learned ability frees up cognitive
resources for the expert, which enables her to think about other
things, such as the vineyard or the vintage of the wine. My account
gives us a new way to understand perceptual learning cases in terms
of cognitive resources and cognitive economy.
Part I of the book focuses on the nature of perceptual learning; Part
II focuses on its scope, rethinking several domains in the philosophy
of perception, given perceptual learning. To give just one example
(which I take to involve attentional learning), some philosophers
(most notably, Siegel, 2010) have held that because natural kinds,
such as pine trees or wrens, can come to look different to us through
perceptual learning, it is evidence that perception can represent such
natural kinds (in addition to low-​level properties such as colors,
shapes, and textures). I argue that what actually happens in such cases
is that we come to attend to different low-​level properties (such as the
prototypical pine-​green color of the pine tree or the round shape of
the wren). Such cases involve the training of attention.
The book begins, however, with an introductory chapter on
perceptual learning that answers the following questions: What
is perceptual learning? What are the different kinds of perceptual
learning? And what function does it serve for us? These are the is-
sues we now turn to in ­chapter 1.

xiv
 18

–9

–18
–2 –1 0 1 2
L – M (% cone contrast)

Figure 7.2. Hansen and colleagues (2006) asked participants to make fruit
stimuli neutral gray, using a dial. Participants should have dialed the colors to
point (0, 0) on the axes. Instead, they overshot, making the fruits closer to their
opponent colors. Hansen and colleagues interpreted this result to mean that
participants saw the grayed fruits as having more of their prototypical color than
the fruits actually had. Source: Hansen et al. (2006).
 

Figure 7.3. Witzel and colleagues (2011) found the memory color effect for ten
out of fourteen of these artificial objects (that is, for everything except the fire
extinguisher, heart, Coca-Cola logo, and mouse cartoon figure). Source: Witzel
et al. (2011).
 

(a)

(b)

Figure 7.5. This figure illustrates one major challenge for explaining memory
color as a case of color constancy. Starting with the two cube images (a), the
blue tiles on the cube on the far left are actually the same shade as the yellow tiles
on the cube to the right of it. Yet they are perceived as different shades because
of color constancy. Importantly, nearly all humans will experience this effect.
By contrast, the discolored Pink Panther (b) on the right will be experienced
as pinker than it actually is only if someone has seen the Pink Panther before.
Source: (a) Lotto and Purves (2002); (b) The original undiscolored image is
from Witzel et al. (2011).
 

Figure 7.6. This picture shows clusters of bananas in front of a banana plant
background. Several psychology studies have provided evidence that under
some conditions (such as dim lighting), we see objects that have prototyp-
ical colors (such as yellow bananas) as more like their prototypical color. My
claim is that this effect enables us to more easily differentiate objects from their
backgrounds, such as bananas from the banana plant background in this figure.
This is especially relevant in dim lighting situations. Image from http://www.
banana-plants.com/index.html.
 PART I

THE N ATURE
OF PERCEP TUAL
LE ARNING
 Chapter 1

How to Understand
Perceptual Learning

1.1 INTRODUCTION

People sometimes say things like the following: Cabernet Sauvignon

tastes different to an expert wine taster than to a novice; or, Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony sounds different to a seasoned conductor than it
does to someone just hearing it for the first time. Both these examples
are cases of perceptual learning, very roughly (to be elaborated on
in this chapter), cases of long-​term changes in perception that re-
sult from practice or experience (see Gibson, 1963, p. 29). Opening
examples aside, one need not be an expert to have undergone per-
ceptual learning. Practice or experience with Cabernet Sauvignon or
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony might result in long-​term perceptual
changes, even if those changes fall short of full-​blown expertise.
As I mentioned in the preface, philosophers do not typically
use the term “perceptual learning.” Yet, in the philosophical liter-
ature, there are a great many examples that would seem to count
as cases of it.1 Christopher Peacocke (1992), for instance, writes

1. Note that unless otherwise specified, the philosophers that propose the following examples
suggest them as cases of perceptual changes, not just extra-​perceptual changes. I return to
this distinction in section 1.2.

3
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

about what happens perceptually when someone learns to read

a language written in Cyrillic script. He claims there is a differ-
ence “between the experience of a perceiver completely unfa-
miliar with Cyrillic script seeing a sentence in that script and the
experience of one who understands a language written in that
script” (p. 89). Susanna Siegel (2010) describes how pine trees
might look visually salient to someone who has learned to rec-
ognize them. She motivates this by suggesting that if you were
tasked to cut down all and only the pine trees in a particular
grove of trees, and you had never seen pine trees before, pine
trees might begin to look visually salient to you after a while
(p. 100). Similarly, Charles Siewert (1998) writes that after we
learn to recognize a sunflower, certain features “ ‘stand out for
us as significant’ and ‘go together’ ” (p. 256). He says there is “a
difference between the way things look to us when they merely
look somehow shaped, colored, and situated, and how they look
to us when they look recognizable to us as belonging to certain
general types” (p. 256).
In the philosophical literature, cases of perceptual learning are
not just limited to the last few decades. For instance, in his discus-
sion of Stoic philosophy, the 3rd-​century historian of philosophy
Diogenes Laertius (1925) writes that “a statue is viewed in a totally
different way by the trained eye of a sculptor and by an ordinary
man” (p. 161). One way of understanding this claim is that there is
a difference in the perception of an expert versus a layperson, when
they see a statue. In discussing the perceptual expertise of jewelers,
the 14th-​century Hindu philosopher Vedānta Deśika writes, “[T]‌he
difference among colours [of a precious stone], which was first con-
cealed by their similarity, is eventually made apparent as something
sensual” (translated, Freschi, 2011, pp. 12–​13). On Vedānta Deśika’s
view, perceptual learning enables the expert to see two colors of a

4
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

gem as distinct, where as a novice he saw them as the same colors.

Later on, in the 18th-​century, Thomas Reid ([1764]1997) famously
wrote of how people “acquire by habit many perceptions which they
had not originally” (p. 171). In just one of the many examples he
gives, Reid writes about how a farmer acquires the ability to see the
rough amount of hay in a haystack or corn in a heap (p. 172).2 One
way of understanding Reid’s claim is that the farmer has undergone
long-​term changes in his perception, following experience with
things he has encountered in his farm life.
Cases of perceptual learning also occur in senses besides vi-
sion. Ned Block (1995), for instance, claims, “[T]‌here is a differ-
ence in what it is like to hear sounds in French before and after
you have learned the language” (p. 234). As Casey O’Callaghan
(2011, pp. 786–​787) points out, Galen Strawson (2010, pp. 5–​6),
Michael Tye (2000, p. 61), Susanna Siegel (2006, p. 490), Jesse
Prinz (2006, p. 452), and Tim Bayne (2009, p. 390) each make es-
sentially the same claim as Block about what happens perceptually
when we learn to hear a language. This auditory case and the visual
cases given by Peacocke, Siegel, Siewert, Reid, Vedānta Deśika,
and Diogenes Laertius, can all be understood as cases of percep-
tual learning: cases of long-​term perceptual changes that result from
practice or experience.
This book develops an account of perceptual learning and its
philosophical significance. In the next section, I give a more precise
statement about what perceptual learning is, in order to differen-
tiate cases of perceptual learning from cases that are not percep-
tual learning. In section 1.3, I distinguish three different kinds of

2. There is a recent debate about whether acquired perception for Reid is genuine perception.
Copenhaver (2010, 2016) argues that it is; Van Cleve (2004, 2015, 2016) argues that it
is not.

5
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

perceptual learning, and I use these distinctions to offer the first

taxonomy of cases in the philosophical literature. This taxonomy is
important both in this chapter and throughout the book, as it helps
to clarify the roles that perceptual learning can legitimately play in
the arguments that philosophers have made. In section 1.4, I offer
a theory of the function of perceptual learning, which I call the
“Offloading View,” a view that I continue to argue for throughout
the book. The view is that perceptual learning serves to offload onto
our quick perceptual systems what would be a slower and more
cognitively taxing task were it to be done in a controlled, deliberate
manner. The upshot is that this frees up cognitive resources for
other tasks.
At the outset, one might wonder why we should think perceptual
learning really occurs (and is genuinely perceptual). In c­ hapter 2,
I give an abductive argument that perceptual learning does occur
and is perceptual. I draw on three converging bodies of evidence
for this, evidence from three different levels of analysis. First, there
are the introspective reports just mentioned of long-​term changes
in perceptual phenomenology due to learning, which philosophers
and others have been raising independently from one another for
many centuries now. Secondly, there is evidence from neuroscience.
In particular, a battery of studies provide evidence that perceptual
learning creates neural changes specifically in the primary sensory
areas (both visual and non-​visual; see Furmanski, Schluppeck, &
Engel, 2004; De Weerd et al., 2012; Braun et al., 2000). Thirdly, in
line with both the phenomenological and neuroscientific evidence,
there is a body of behavioral evidence from psychology, much of
which I will introduce in this chapter.
The book also offers a further argument that perceptual learning
occurs (in the perceptual sense in which I am understanding it). In
­chapters 3 through 7 I offer independent arguments that perceptual

6
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

learning occurs in each of five different perceptual domains: in nat-

ural kind recognition, sensory substitution, multisensory percep-
tion, speech perception, and color perception. If I am right about
those cases, then this is a further argument that perceptual learning
really occurs (and is genuinely perceptual).

1.2 WHAT IS PERCEPTUAL LEARNING?

What are the common characteristics of Peacocke’s Cyrillic case,

Siegel’s pine tree case, Siewert’s sunflower case, Diogenes Laertius’s
statue case, Vedānta Deśika’s gemstone case, Reid’s haystack case,
and Block’s case of hearing French? Loosely following E. J. Gibson
(1963, p. 29), I understand these and other cases of perceptual
learning to be cases of long-​term changes in perception that are the
result of practice or experience. Let me say something about each
part of this description, and by doing so, demarcate cases of per-
ceptual learning from cases in the philosophical literature that are
similar but do not count as perceptual learning.

Perceptual Learning as Long-​Term Perceptual Changes

Perceptual learning involves long-​term changes in perception. This
rules out short-​term adaptive effects such as the waterfall illusion
(see Gibson, 1963, p. 29; Gold & Watanabe, 2010, p. R46). For in-
stance, if one looks at the trees on a riverbank, and then at an ad-
jacent waterfall for a long time, and then back at the trees, one’s
perception of the trees may have changed. In particular, they may
appear as if they are moving upward (in the opposite direction of
the waterfall’s downward motion). This is a perceptual change, and
it is also the result of experience (in particular, the experience of

7
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

looking at the waterfall). However, it is not a long-​term perceptual

change. The waterfall illusion and other short-​term adaptive effects3
fade away after a short period of time, so they are not cases of per-
ceptual learning.
Cases like the waterfall illusion are the strongest reason to
hold the long-​term criterion when it comes to perceptual learning,
but in my view, the criterion also captures an important fact about
learning. If I just so happen to hit a single backhand in tennis but
am unable to hit a backhand ever again, I have not actually learned
a tennis backhand. Likewise, in a perceptual case, to be an authentic
case of perceptual learning, the perceptual change cannot simply be
temporary. It has to be long-​term (although cf. Henke, unpublished
manuscript). For example, if two very similar gemstones look dif-
ferent for a moment to a budding jeweler, but then appear the same
as ever for the rest of her life, then this is not a case of perceptual
learning. This is because while there was a short-​term perceptual
change, the change did not stick, and so it is not a case of learning
at all.
There are bound to be some difficult cases where it is unclear
whether a putative case of perceptual learning counts as a long-​term
perceptual change or not. It may be that in difficult cases we need to
look at the mechanism involved. If the mechanism is a clear percep-
tual learning mechanism, and meets the other criteria for percep-
tual learning, then we should count the case as a case of perceptual
learning. However, if the mechanism is clearly not a perceptual
learning mechanism, we should not count the case as an instance of
perceptual learning. In short, the long-​term criterion is a good heu-
ristic for adjudicating between a large number of candidate cases

3. Another ordinary case of perceptual adaptation is the case of coming indoors from the snow
and needing a short period of time for your eyes to adjust to the new environment.

8
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

of perceptual learning, but in some borderline cases, we may need

to look at the mechanisms involved to determine whether the case
counts as perceptual learning.
Perceptual learning is not the same as cognitive penetration, and
one reason why is because perceptual learning involves long-​term
perceptual changes, while cognitive penetration need not. Cases of
cognitive penetration are cases in which “the phenomenal character
of perceptual experience [are] altered by the states of one’s cogni-
tive system, for example, one’s thoughts or beliefs” (Macpherson,
2012, p. 24).4 To take an example from Siegel (2012), suppose “Jill
believes that Jack is angry at her, and this makes her experience his
face as expressing anger” (p. 202). This would be a case of cognitive
penetration. Yet, it need not be a case of perceptual learning. Cases
of perceptual learning are cases of long-​term perceptual changes.
But the change in the look of Jack’s face need not persist beyond
the moments that Jill sees it (assuming, reasonably, that Jill does
not always believe that Jack is angry with her). If Jill updates her
belief soon after and no longer believes that Jack is angry at her, the
cognitive penetration goes away. So at least some cases of cognitive
penetration are not cases of perceptual learning, since they are not
long-​term.
Arguably, some cases of perceptual learning, on the other
hand, are also not cases of cognitive penetration. Chicken sexers,

4. Following Pylyshyn (1999), Macpherson also often adds a “semantic criterion” to this de-
scription of cognitive penetration (see Macpherson, 2012, p. 26; 2017, pp. 9–​10). For in-
stance, in her 2017 paper, she considers a case in which “[y]‌ou believe that aliens might land
on Earth. The belief causes you to be stressed. The stress causes a migraine which causes you
to experience flashing lights in the sky” (p. 9). Many philosophers will have the intuition
that such a case does not count as cognitive penetration. Because of this, Macpherson thinks
that the definition of cognitive penetration requires “that there be a causal, semantic link
between each of the steps in the chain that lead from the belief to the subsequent perceptual
experience” (2017, p. 10).

9
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

for instance, undergo long-​lasting attentional shifts as the result of

practice sexing chicks (see Biederman & Shiffrar, 1987, as cited in
Pylyshyn, 1999, p. 359). As I will argue, this is a case of perceptual
learning. It is a long-​lasting perceptual change as the result of prac-
tice or experience (more on this in section 1.3). In the literature on
cognitive penetration, however, attentional shifts are very often not
considered to be cases of cognitive penetration (see Macpherson,
2012, p. 28; Deroy, 2013, p. 95; Raftopoulos, 2005, p. 81; and
Pylyshyn, 1999, pp. 359, 364; although cf. Stokes, 2014, pp. 28–​30;
2018; Cecchi, 2014; Mole, 2015; and Wu, 2017). So the long-​term
attentional shifts that happen in chicken sexing are taken to count
as perceptual learning, but often not as cognitive penetration (see
Raftopoulos, 2001, sec. 2.3.2; and Raftopoulos & Zeimbekis, 2015,
for more on the relationship between perceptual learning and cog-
nitive penetration).

Perceptual Learning as Perceptual

Perceptual learning involves long-​term changes in perception. This
distinguishes perceptual learning from changes in beliefs and
emotions, among other non-​perceptual changes that can occur.
To see one reason why it is helpful to distinguish long-​term
perceptual changes from non-​perceptual ones, consider a famous
thought experiment from Daniel Dennett (1988) involving Mr.
Chase and Mr. Sanborn, two coffee tasters at Maxwell House. Their
duty is to make sure the coffee stays consistent over time. After six
years on the job, Mr. Chase turns to Mr. Sanborn and says, “I hate to
admit it, but I’m not enjoying this work anymore. . . . [T]‌he coffee
tastes just the same today as it tasted when I arrived. But, you know,
I no longer like it! My tastes have changed. I’ve become a more so-
phisticated coffee drinker. I no longer like that taste at all” (Dennett,

10
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

1988, p. 52). Mr. Chase has not undergone perceptual learning, and
the reason is that although he has undergone a long-​term change in
his experience and that change is the result of practice or experience,
it is not a change in perception. His aesthetic tastes have changed,
but his perception has not. When it comes to his perception, as he
puts it, “[T]he coffee tastes just the same today as it tasted when
I arrived” (p. 52).
Another reason it is important to understand perceptual
learning in terms of long-​term changes in perception is that doing
this demarcates perceptual learning from changes in behavioral
reactions that are based on perception. As Fred Dretske (2015)
points out, we could allow a notion of perceptual learning to include
improvements in our ability to perform perceptual tasks such as
learning to distinguish between triangles and squares (p. 166, n. 6).
However, such an account of perceptual learning would be prob-
lematic because it would allow in cases that do not involve percep-
tual changes at all (p. 166).5 In my account, perceptual learning is
perceptual, not just behavioral. More generally, there is a difference
between perceptual learning itself, and learning that is simply based
on perception (such as perceptually based behavioral learning).6

Perceptual Learning as Resulting from Practice

or Experience
Perceptual learning involves long-​term changes in perception that
result from practice or experience. This distinguishes perceptual
learning from other long-​term perceptual changes. One might, for

5. Importantly, this view comes from Dretske’s later work. In c­ hapter 2, I discuss how Dretske
(1995) is skeptical that there are widespread, genuinely perceptual changes due to learning.
6. Cf. Law and Gold (2008); and Chudnoff (2018, sec. 2), who do count mere perception-​
based learning as perceptual learning, in some cases.

11
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

instance, undergo a long-​term change in perception as the result of

a sudden eye injury or brain lesion. But these are not cases of per-
ceptual learning, since these long-​term perceptual changes were not
the result of practice or experience.
My claim is that some cases of long-​term perceptual changes
are not perceptual learning since they are not the result of practice
or experience. This is helpful for further understanding Dennett’s
thought experiment involving the coffee tasters Chase and Sanborn.
In the thought experiment, Mr. Chase says that his aesthetic tastes
have changed (as I discussed earlier), but Mr. Sanborn also reports
a change, albeit one of a different kind. Like Mr. Chase, Mr. Sanborn
reports liking the coffee years ago when he started, but not liking it
anymore. Unlike Mr. Chase, however, Mr. Sanborn reports, “[M]y
tastes haven’t changed; my . . . tasters have changed. That is, I think
something has gone wrong with my taste buds or some other part of
my taste-​analyzing perceptual machinery” (Dennett, 1988, p. 52).
Unlike Mr. Chase, Mr. Sanborn has undergone a perceptual change.
Yet the change as Dennett describes it is a mere biological change,
a change in his “perceptual machinery,” as Mr. Sanborn puts it. It
is not described as a long-​term change in perception that is due to
practice or experience.
Dennett’s famous coffee taster thought experiment may seem
at first glance to involve perceptual learning, but if my analysis is
correct, it does not. Mr. Chase undergoes a change in aesthetic
taste, but not one in perception. And Mr. Sanborn undergoes a
change in perception, but it is a change due merely to biolog-
ical factors, not to practice or experience. So, like the case of
Mr. Chase, the case of Mr. Sanborn is not a case of perceptual
learning.
In perceptual learning, long-​term perceptual changes result
from practice or experience. But what types of experience? First,

12
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

it is important to recognize that pine trees or Cyrillic letters begin

to look different to you, not just because of experience in general,
but because of experience with particular types of stimuli, such as
pine trees or Cyrillic letters. At the same time, to count as percep-
tual learning, we need not say that the change in the look of, say,
a Marsh Wren must result from prior experience specifically with
Marsh Wrens. After all, the change may result from prior experience
with wrens more generally.
When thinking about what kind of practice or experience is
involved in perceptual learning, another important distinction
is between supervised and unsupervised perceptual learning.
Some perceptual learning occurs without any direction whatso-
ever. For instance, though nobody has ever told you what to listen
for, you may well be able to tell the difference, by sound alone,
between hot water being poured and cold water being poured,
and also be able to tell which is which.7 This is a case of unsuper-
vised perceptual learning, where through mere exposure to water
pouring, you have become able to distinguish different kinds of it
by sound alone. Other perceptual learning is supervised. For in-
stance, someone might tell you what to listen for when you are
trying to tell two words apart in a language you are learning, or
they might tell you which features are important for identifying a
pine tree. Unsurprisingly, supervision can speed up the learning
process (see, for instance, Biederman & Shiffrar, 1987; Jarodzka
et al., 2013). Supervised perceptual learning may involve coaches,
trainers, or educators, who try to develop skills in those they are
coaching, training, or educating. One such example is the baseball

7. To test yourself, see National Public Radio, What does cold sound like? See if your ear
can tell temperature [Radio Segment], All Things Considered, July 5, 2014. Retrieved from
http://​www.npr.org/​2014/​07/​05/​328842704/​what-​does-​cold-​sound-​like.

13
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

or softball coach who constantly tells batters to keep their eye on

the ball. Such supervision might tune a batter’s attention for the
long-​term.

Other Contrast Classes

1. PERCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT
I have mentioned several classes so far that contrast with perceptual
learning, including cases of cognitive penetration, merely biolog-
ical perceptual changes, changes in judgments based on perception,
and changes in behavioral reactions to perception. One further
and important contrast class with perceptual learning is perceptual
development.
As infants and young children, our perceptual systems de-
velop, and one question is whether this development is the result
of learning or not. In the perceptual learning literature, Kellman
and Garrigan (2009) consider and dismiss the view that all percep-
tual development is the result of learning; in particular, they think
that recent advances in studying infant perception, including elec-
trophysiological techniques, have provided data that tell against
the view:

Although perception becomes more precise with age and ex-

perience, basic capacities of all sorts—​such as the abilities
to perceive objects, faces, motion, three-​dimensional space,
the directions of sounds, coordinate the senses in perceiving
events, and other abilities—​arise primarily from innate or early-​
maturing mechanisms (Bushnell, Sai, and Mullin, 1989; Gibson
et al., 1979; Held, 1985; Kellman and Spelke, 1983; Meltzoff and
Moore, 1977; and Slater, Mattock, and Brown, 1990). (Kellman
& Garrigan, 2009, p. 57)

14
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

Put another way, the empirical evidence from the last few decades
is clear: many basic perceptual abilities that come out of perceptual
development are not learned, so they should not count as percep-
tual learning.
Assuming that Kellman and Garrigan are correct that not all per-
ceptual development is the result of learning, this prompts a need
to distinguish between perceptual development, on the one hand,
and perceptual learning on the other. A plausible way to do it is to
say that the abilities mentioned by Kellman and Garrigan—​such as
the abilities to perceive three-​dimensional space, the directions of
sounds—​which arise from innate or early maturing mechanisms,
fall under the category of perceptual maturation. Perceptual matu-
ration contrasts with perceptual learning, and perceptual devel-
opment then involves both perceptual learning and perceptual
maturation.
What exactly is the difference between perceptual learning and
perceptual maturation? The distinction is difficult to draw cleanly,
but there are several tendencies worth noting. As Fahle (2002)
puts it, “unlike learning,” maturation “ascribe[s]‌the main thrust
of the changes in a behavior to genetics, not the environment”
(p. xi; see also Goldstone, 1998, p. 586). According to Fahle (2002),
“[C]hanges in observable behavior are seen as the consequences
of the growing and maturation of the organism along a largely pre-
defined path rather than as a consequence of information gathered
through interaction with the outside world” (p. xi). Put another way,
in perceptual maturation more so than in perceptual learning, the
main thrust of the perceptual changes is genetics. While there are
bound to be messy cases, the tendency is that in perceptual learning
more so than in perceptual maturation, the main thrust of the per-
ceptual changes is interaction with the environment. Furthermore,
perceptual maturation is distinct from perceptual learning in that it

15
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

tends to follow a predefined path. That is to say, perceptual matura-

tion can be thought of as the natural unfurling of perceptual abilities.

2. PERCEPTION-​B ASED MOTOR SKILLS

A further point of contrast with perceptual learning is motor skill,
even those motor skills that are perception based. Consider, for in-
stance, a study by Williams and Davids (1998), which reported that
when expert soccer players defend against opponents, they focus
longer on an opponent’s hips than non-​experts do. Suppose, quite
plausibly, that nobody ever instructed the soccer players to attend in
that way. Suppose instead that practice and experience tune the at-
tention of the players, such that when they then defend, they attend
more to the opponents’ hips. As I will argue, this tuned attention is
a long-​term change in perception that results from practice or expe-
rience. That is, it is an instance of perceptual learning (see section
1.3). At the same time, it serves to enable certain perception-​based
motor skills. For instance, attending to the hips is part of what
enables soccer players to keep an offender in front of them, or to
keep an offender from completing an easy and uncontested pass,
or to keep an offender from shooting and scoring. That is to say,
without the attentional tuning, expert soccer players would not be
able to perform as high above baseline as they do.
Perceptual learning can enable perception-​based motor skills,
yet it is important to distinguish these motor skills from percep-
tual learning. In fact, arguably, perceptual learning does not in itself
give you a skill, properly speaking. One reason for this, drawing on
Stanley and Krakauer (2013), is that acquiring a skill quite plau-
sibly requires receiving instruction (at least initially) or observing
someone else, whereas the attentional tuning case just described
would seem to require none of that (para. 13). Furthermore, ar-
guably, as Stanley and Krakauer put it, “our skilled actions are

16
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

always under our rational control” (para. 14; see also Stanley &
Williamson, 2017, p. 718). Yet there is an important sense in which
one cannot control a tuned attentional pattern. Goldstone, for in-
stance, cites a study on attentional tuning by Shiffrin and Schneider
(1977). In that study, letters were used first as targets in the exper-
iment but were later used as distractors to be ignored (Goldstone,
1998, p. 589). Because of their prior training with the letters, the
participants’ attention became automatic with respect to the letters
in the scene, even though they were deliberately trying to ignore
them. It may seem at first glance that this effect would be short-​
lived, and so would not count as perceptual learning. However, Qu,
Hillyard, and Ding (2016) found that such an effect lasted for at
least three to five months. The general lesson is this: After training,
it can be difficult to control a tuned attentional pattern because the
attention can be automatic toward particular properties. Perceptual
learning is not always under our rational control, unlike skills (as
Stanley and Krakauer describe them).

3. OTHER CASES
In addition to perceptual development and perception-based motor
skills, other points of contrast with perceptual learning include per-
ceptual changes brought about by drunkenness or depression (both
mentioned by Siegel, 2010, p. 107), as well as drug-​induced percep-
tual states, and perceptual changes that occur due to time dilation.
Changes brought about by drunkenness or drugs may well be per-
ceptual changes. But they are rarely long-​term, nor are the partic-
ular perceptual changes brought about by practice or experience in
a way that would count as learning.8 The same can be said about

8. An interesting case is the case of hallucinogen-​persisting perception disorder (HPPD).

People with HPPD continue to see hallucinations long after taking hallucinogenic drugs.

17
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

cases of time dilation—​cases where one illusorily perceives objects,

properties, or events as slowing down (see, for instance, Phillips,
2013; Lee, 2014, pp. 10–​11). Time dilation involves a change in
one’s perception, but such cases are not long-​term, and the percep-
tual changes are not brought about by practice or experience as part
of a learning process. In instances of depression, as Siegel points out,
the world is said to look gray. This would be a perceptual change,
and it could potentially be long-​term. However, the perceptual
change is not brought about by practice or experience in a way that
would count as learning.

1.3 A TAXONOMY OF PERCEPTUAL

LEARNING CASES

Now that we have a better sense of what perceptual learning is,

my goal in what follows is twofold. First, I want to draw some
distinctions between different cases of perceptual learning. Second,
I want to say what cases of perceptual learning share in common.
In this section, I draw some distinctions. I also classify cases of per-
ceptual learning in the philosophical literature for the first time,
using these distinctions. In the next section, I give an account of the
common feature of cases of perceptual learning.
Cases of perceptual learning can be framed in different ways. We
might talk about the perceptual change in a single person over time.
In doing so, we are discussing perceptual learning as diachronic
and intrapersonal. For instance, we might discuss how wine tastes

For instance, someone might see trails from moving objects years after they have last taken
LSD. This is a long-​term change in perception, but it does not result from practice or experi-
ence in a way that would count as learning.

18
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

different to a person as she becomes an expert wine taster. However,

we might also discuss perceptual learning interpersonally, that is, as
involving two different people. So, for instance, we might compare
the perception of an expert wine taster with the perception of an-
other person who is a novice.
We might also think of the perceptual learning process as being
slow or fast. All perceptual learning involves long-​term changes;
however, the period needed to get to the long-​term changes may
differ. For instance, suppose I show you a picture of black and white
patches that you have never seen. Suppose that I then point out to
you that some of the patches make up a Dalmatian, and get you to
see it in that way.9 This is a case of fast perceptual learning, assuming
that it is a long-​term change in your perception. However, there are
also many instances of slow perceptual learning. For example, it may
take months or years of exposure to wine before it tastes different to
you due to learning (see Raftopoulos, 2001, p. 443, for further dis-
cussion of slow perceptual learning).10

9. See Bach, M., Hidden figures–​Dalmatian dog, Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions, August
11, 2002. Retrieved from http://​www.michaelbach.de/​ot/​cog-​Dalmatian/​index.html.
10. A helpful point of comparison with slow perceptual learning is change blindness, what Fred
Dretske (2004) describes as “difficulty in detecting, visible—​sometimes quite conspic-
uous—​differences when the differences are viewed successively” (p. 1). Demonstrations
of change blindness, for instance, might have a participant look at a picture of a farm on
a computer screen. A cornfield taking up most of the picture is slowly gaining in height,
but the participant will not typically detect the change. In many instances, slow perceptual
learning is like such a case of change blindness, because in many instances of slow percep-
tual learning, the learner is unaware of the particular gradual change. This is not to say that
the changes in perceptual learning are always entirely gradual, in the way that the perceptual
changes when looking at a demonstration of change blindness are. Furthermore, unlike in
change blindness, in perceptual learning the blindness is to a feature of one’s own changing
percept, not to changing features of the world. So while a participant in a change blindness
study might not detect the change in the actual height of the cornfield, someone undergoing
perceptual learning might not detect a change in the look of a pine tree. Slow perceptual
learning also typically happens over a much longer period of time than has been shown
in the standard demonstrations of change blindness in the literature. The farm-​picture

19
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

In what follows, I want to distinguish three different kinds of

perceptual learning: differentiation, unitization, and attentional
weighting. These kinds of perceptual learning have been well studied
by psychologists (see, for instance, the surveys of Goldstone, 1998;
Goldstone, 2003; and Goldstone and Byrge, 2015). They are the three
types of perceptual learning described in the most recent survey on the
topic (which is Goldstone and Byrge, 2015).11

Differentiation
In cases of “differentiation,” as a result of practice or experience,
what previously looked12 to a subject (phenomenally) like a single
object, property, or event, later looks to her like two or more
objects, properties, or events. 13 William James (1890), for instance,

demonstration might take fifteen seconds, whereas the changes in perception during per-
ceptual learning might take several days or months to occur.
11. See also Goldstone, Braithwaite, and Byrge (2012) and Goldstone and Byrge (2015).
Goldstone (1998) also lists a fourth mechanism of perceptual learning called stimulus
imprinting, in which “detectors (also called receptors) are developed that are specialized for
stimuli or parts of stimuli” (p. 591). As an example, Goldstone highlights the fact that cells
in the inferior temporal cortex can have a heightened response to particular familiar faces
(Perrett et al., 1984, cited in Goldstone, 1998, p. 594). I do not treat the case of stimulus
imprinting in this book. For one, the recent Goldstone and Byrge (2015) survey on per-
ceptual learning does not include it, nor does their 2012 survey (Goldstone, Braithwaite,
and Byrge, 2012). Also, I am not entirely convinced that the effects of stimulus imprinting
are truly perceptual, instead of just involving an increase in speed and accuracy (that is, a
change only in response rather than in perception). For more on stimulus imprinting, see
Goldstone (1998, pp. 591–​596) and Goldstone (2003, pp. 239–​241).
12. I use the term “looks” in this section, but I do not mean to imply by it that the types of per-
ceptual learning I describe are strictly visual. Feel free to substitute “feels,” “smells,” “tastes,”
etc. as appropriate. Also, in addition to learning effects on the ways objects, properties,
or events look, feel, smell, taste, etc., my view is that there are also multisensory learning
effects. For instance, there are changes in the way one experiences the visual jolt and the
auditory clang of a cymbal as coupled, due to the fact that one has learned through experi-
ence that the jolt and the clang are part of the same event. In c­ hapter 5, I argue for this view
and expand upon it.
13. The view that underwrites my project is that there are intentional objects (objects,
properties, events, relations), and that they change due to learning. There is no need to

20
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

writes about how a person can become able to differentiate by taste

between the upper and lower half of a bottle, for a particular kind
of wine (p. 509). This can be understood in terms of differentia-
tion: what one previously tasted as a single thing, one later tastes as
two distinct things, as a result of learning. In another example of dif-
ferentiation, experimenters trained native Japanese speakers living
in the United States, for whom English was their second language,
to better distinguish between the phonemes /​r/​and /​l/​, which
they originally had a difficult time doing (Logan, Lively, & Pisoni,
1991).14 Another potential example is the case of dressmakers, who
develop fine-​grained hand-​eye skills through their stitching and
sewing, and have been found to have better stereoscopic acuity than
non-​dressmakers (Chopin, Levi, & Bavelier, 2017).15 That is to say,
they can better differentiate between different distances using bin-
ocular vision.
The concept of differentiation can help us to better under-
stand Block’s (1995) claim that “there is a difference in what it is
like to hear sounds in French before and after you have learned
the language” (p. 234). Siegel (2010) describes the prior expe-
rience as an experience in which one “can’t parse into words and
sentences” (p. 99). Casey O’Callaghan (2011) makes the same
point: “[H]‌earing foreign language is like hearing a mostly unbroken

posit looks in addition to intentional objects on my view. When I say that the look of an ob-
ject changes, I do not mean that this is something else changing in addition to the change
in intentional objects.
14. Following O’Callaghan (2015), I use the right-​side up “r” rather than the upside-​down “r”
for readability throughout this book. Importantly, this deviates from the way it is used in
the International Phonetic Alphabet.
15. The authors note that it is always possible that dressmakers go into dressmaking because
they have this ability, rather than the ability being a product of their training and experi-
ence. They also note that the ability could be a mixture of both factors (see Chopin, Levi,
& Bavelier, 2017, p. 3).

21
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

sound stream. Speech in your native language, however, auditorily

seems segmented into units separated by gaps and pauses” (p. 801;
O’Callaghan cites Barry C. Smith, 2009, p. 185, and Galen Strawson,
2010, p. 6, as making the same point; Jack Lyons does as well in
Lyons, 2009, p. 104). Put another way, in hearing a language one
cannot understand, one largely does not hear differentiated words
or sentences. On the other hand, in hearing a language one can un-
derstand, one does hear differentiated words and sentences. The
concept of differentiation helps us better understand the case.

Unitization
In cases of “unitization,” as a result of practice or experience, what
previously looked to a subject (phenomenally) like two or more
objects, properties, or events, later looks to her like distinct parts
of a single complex object, property, or event. To understand
unitization, consider the results of a study done by Gauthier and
Tarr (1997). On a computer, they constructed a set of photoreal-
istic action-​figure-​like objects called “Greebles” (see Figure 1.1).
Each Greeble has a particular body type and four appendages. The
family of each Greeble is determined by the shape of the large cen-
tral part of the body, rather than by the appendages (Gauthier et al.,
1999, p. 569). Each Greeble also has a sex, which is defined by the
direction of the appendages (as either all up or all down; Gauthier
et al., 1998, p. 2403). Individual Greebles of the same family and
sex differ only in the shape of the appendages (Gauthier et al., 1999,
p. 569). In Gauthier and Tarr (1997), participants were tasked with
identifying Greebles. At first, the participants would slowly locate
the important features of a particular Greeble, and then infer that
it was of a particular family and sex. After practice, however, the
participants would begin to see the Greebles not as collections of

22
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

Figure 1.1. Gauthier and Tarr (1997) used “Greebles” to demonstrate per-
ceptual learning. At first, participants would have to detect several features
of a particular Greeble and then infer its sex and family. After repeated ex-
posure to the Greebles, however, participants were able to detect their sex
and family immediately and accurately. Psychologists call this “unitization,”
when “a task that originally required detection of several parts can be ac-
complished by detecting a single unit” (Goldstone, 1998, p. 602). The two
rows in Figure 1.1 divide the Greebles into two different sexes, while the five
columns divide them into five different families. Source: Behrmann et al.
(2005).

features but as single units. This showed up in the fact that those
trained with the Greebles performed much better than novices did
on speed and accuracy tests.
Unitization occurs for several categories of things in addition
to Greebles. For instance, due to practice or experience, we come
to unitize words (as opposed to non-​words), seeing them as single
units. Different words are, of course, qualitatively distinct from one
another. Nonetheless, when we see a word, we standardly see it as

23
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

unitized. This is part of what it is to see a member of the word cate-

gory. By contrast, we do not typically unitize non-words (for a dis-
cussion of this literature, see Goldstone, 1998, p. 602). Unitization
also happens for human faces, and for dog breeds when perceived
by dog experts (although not typically by non-​ experts) (see
Goldstone, 1998, p. 603).
The concept of unitization helps us to better understand
Siewert’s (1998) claim that when we recognize kinds (such as
sunflowers), certain “aspects of shape, color, and position . . . ‘go to-
gether’ ” (p. 256). Just as when the novice looks at Greebles, she has
to slowly run through a checklist of features, since she is unable to
see that certain features go together, so too is the person who has
never seen a sunflower before unable to see that certain aspects of
shape, color, and position go together. Through practice or expe-
rience, however, each person is able to see certain features of the
Greeble or the sunflower as going together.

Attentional Weighting
In cases of “attentional weighting” (also called “attentional tuning”),
the phenomenal look of an object, property, event, or spatial region
changes as a result of learning to attend (or learning not to attend) to
that object, property, event, or spatial region. Attentional weighting
effects have been demonstrated at length in sports science, among
other domains. I have mentioned a 1998 study on expert soccer
players that found that when they defend against opponents, they
focus longer on an opponent’s hips than non-​experts do (Williams
& Davids, 1998). A 2002 study on expert goalkeepers found that
during penalty kicks, they fixate longer on the non-​kicking leg,
while non-​experts fixate longer on the trunk area (Savelsbergh
et al., 2002). As well, a 2010 study on expert fencers found that they

24
 H o w t o U n d e r s ta n d P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

focus longer on the upper trunk area of their opponents than non-​
experts do (Hagemann et al., 2010). All of these cases involve atten-
tional weighting, a kind of perceptual learning whereby “perception
becomes adapted to tasks and environments . . . by increasing the
attention paid to perceptual dimensions and features that are im-
portant, and/​or by decreasing attention to irrelevant dimensions
and features” (Goldstone, 1998, p. 588; Goldstone & Byrge, 2015,
p. 819, give the same definition). For instance, the expert soccer
goalkeeper better performs the task of defending a penalty kick by
attending more to the non-​kicking leg of the shooter and attending
less to the trunk area (more on the relevant notion of attention later
on in this section).
As I detail in a bit more length in c­ hapter 3, my view is that long-​
term shifts in attention should be thought of as involving changes in
perception. Very roughly, this is because there is evidence that where
you attend alters your perception of all sorts features, including a
color’s saturation (Blaser, Sperling, & Lu, 1999), the size of a gap
(Gobell & Carrasco, 2005), spatial frequency (Abrams, Barbot, &
Carrasco, 2010), and contrast (Carrasco, Ling, & Read, 2004). Ned
Block, who was the first philosopher to highlight these experiments,
sums up that they “provide strong evidence for the claim that the
phenomenal appearance of a thing depends on how much attention
is allocated to it” (2010, p. 34). I agree with Block’s evaluation.
The concept of attentional weighting helps us to better under-
stand Peacocke’s Cyrillic case. As Siegel interprets the case:

When you are first learning to read the script of a language that is
new to you, you have to attend to each word, and perhaps to each
letter, separately. In contrast, once you can easily read it, it takes a
special effort to attend to the shapes of the script separately from
its semantic properties. You become disposed to attend to the

25
 T h e N at u r e o f P e r c e p t u a l L e a r n i n g

semantic properties of the words in the text, and less disposed to

attend visually to the orthographic ones. (2010, p. 100)

If Siegel’s interpretation of the case is correct, then it is a case of at-

tentional weighting. One starts by attending separately to each word
(or maybe even to each letter), but as one becomes familiar with the
script, one decreases attention to the orthographic features.
To get more precise about the relevant notion of “attention” in
attentional weighting, consider the common (but subtle) distinc-
tion between bottom-​up and top-​down attention. Wayne Wu (2014)
puts the distinction as follows. Bottom-​up attention is “roughly
understood as attention which is engaged due purely to sensory
input. . . . [I]‌t is defined as attention whose occurrence does not de-
pend on non-​perceptual representations such as the subject’s goals
(e.g., an intention to attend to an object)” (p. 281). When a sudden
flashing light or loud bang immediately grabs your attention, this is a
standard case of bottom-​up attention. By contrast, top-​down atten-
tion is “attention whose occurrence depends on a non-​perceptual
state, such as an intention to attend to a specific object” (p. 285).
When you start to look for the exit because you intend to leave a
building, this is a standard case of top-​down attention.
As Wu describes it, the top-​down versus bottom-​up distinction is
about “how attention gets initiated, i.e., whether the subject is pas-
sive or active in that initiation” (2014, p. 34). After the initiation of
attention, a further distinction becomes relevant: the distinction be-
tween controlled and automatic attention. As Wu puts it, controlled
attention is attention that is consistent with one’s intention (p. 33).
If I continue to look around for the exit because I intend to leave the
building, this is controlled attention. Automatic attention is the ab-
sence of control. To complicate things slightly, on Wu’s account, one
might ask whether attention is controlled or automatic with respect

26
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 91.

My FIRST, if you do, will increase;

My SECOND will keep you from Heaven,
My WHOLE—such is human caprice—
Is seldomer taken than given.

Answer

92.
When may a man reasonably complain of his coffee?
Answer

93.
Why does a duck put her head under water?
Answer

94.
Why does she take it out again?
Answer

95.
 In what terms does Shakespeare allude to the muddiness of the
river on which Liverpool lies?
Answer

96.

If the B mt put: If the B. putting:

So said one, but another replied: How can I put: when there is
such a-der?
Answer

97.
Why is a man who never bets, as bad as one who bets
habitually?
Answer

98.
When is a bonnet not a bonnet?
Answer

99.

Twice ten are six of us;

Six are but three:
 Nine are but four of us;
What can we be?
Would you know more of us?
I’ll tell you more;
Seven are five of us,
Five are but four!

Answer

100.

As I was going to St. Ives’

I met seven wives;
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits,—
Kits, cats, sacks and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives’?

Answer

101.
Helen, after sitting an hour, dressed for a walk, at length set out
alone, leaving the following laconic note for the friend who, she had
expected, would accompany her:
2 8.
2
Answer

102.
Come and commiserate one who was blind,
Helpless and desolate, void of a mind;
Guileless, deceiving; though unbelieving,
Free from all sin.
By mortals adored, still I ignored
The world I was in.
King Ptolemy’s, Cæsar’s, and Tiglath Pilezer’s
Birth days are shown;
Wise men, astrologers, all are acknowledgers,
Mine is unknown.
I never had father or mother
Alive at my birth.
Lodged in a palace, taunted by malice,
I did not inherit by lineage or merit,
A spot on the earth.
Nursed among pagans, no one baptized me,
Sponsor I had, who ne’er catechised me;
She gave me the name to her heart that was dearest;
She gave me the place to her bosom was nearest;
But one look of kindness she cast on me never,
Nor word of my blindness I heard from her ever.
Encompassed by strangers, naught could alarm me;
I saved, I destroyed, I blessed, I alloyed;
Kept a crown for a prince, but had none of my own;
Filled the place of a king, but ne’er had a throne;
Rescued a warrior, baffled a plot;
Was what I seemed not, seemed what I was not;
Devoted to slaughter, a price on my head,
A king’s lovely daughter watched by my bed.
How gently she dressed me, fainting with fear!
She never caressed me, nor wiped off a tear;
Ne’er moistened my lips, though parched and dry,
What marvel a blight should pursue and defy?
’Twas royalty nursed me wretched and poor;
’Twas royalty cursed me in secret, I’m sure.
I lived not, I died not, but tell you I must,
That ages have passed since I first turned to dust.
This paradox whence? this squalor, this splendor?
Say, was I king, or silly pretender?
Fathom the mystery, deep in my history—
Was I a man?
An angel supernal, a demon infernal?
Solve it who can.
 Answer

103.
A blind beggar had a brother. This blind beggar’s brother went to
sea and was drowned. But the man that was drowned had no
brother. What relation to him, then, was the blind beggar?
Answer

104.
Two brothers were walking together down the street, and one of
them, stopping at a certain house, knocked at the door, observing: “I
have a niece here, who is ill.” “Thank Heaven,” said the other, “I have
no niece!” and he walked away. Now, how could that be?
Answer

105.
“How is that man related to you?” asked one gentleman of
another.

“Brother or sister I have none,

But that man’s father was my father’s son.”

Answer

106.
 Describe a cat’s clothing botanically.
Answer

107.
What is that which boys and girls have once in a lifetime, men
and women never have, and Mt. Parnassus has twice in one place?
Answer

108.
Why is the highest mountain in Wales always white?
Answer

109.
To what two cities of Massachusetts should little boys go with
their boats?
Answer

110.

There kneels in holy St. Cuthbert’s aisles

No holier Father than Father Giles:
Matins or Vespers, it matters not which,
He is ever there like a saint in his niche;
Morning and midnight his Missal he reads,
Midnight and morning he tells his beads.
Wide-spread the fame of that holy man!
Potent his blessing, and dreaded his ban:
Wondrous the marvels his piety works
On unbelieving heathen, and infidel Turks,
But strangest of all is the power he is given
To turn maidens’ hearts to the service of Heaven.

St. Ursula’s Prioress comes to-day,

At holy St. Cuthbert’s shrine to pray,
She comes with an offering; she comes with a prayer;
For she leads to the altar the Lady Clare.
Mary Mother! how fair a maid
To yield the world for the cloister’s shade!

She yields, to-morrow, her gold and lands

For the Church’s use, to the Church’s hands,
Renounces the world, with its pleasures and wiles,
And to-day she confesses to Father Giles:
Slight is the penance, I ween, may atone
For all of sin she hath ever known!

“Daughter! since last thou didst kneel for grace,

Hath peace in thy heart found a dwelling-place?
From thy breast hast thou banished each idle thought?
Save thy spirit’s weal hast thou pined for naught?”
Moist is her kerchief, and drooped her head,
But my FIRST is all that poor Clara said.

“Daughter! thy cheek hath grown pale and thin—

Is thy spirit pure and chastened within?
Gone from thy voice is its ancient mirth?
Are thy sighs for Heaven? Thy tears for earth?”
For earth are her sighs, yet poor Clara knows
My SECOND no more than the spring’s first rose!

Why doth he tremble, that holy man,

At eye so sad, and at cheek so wan?
Less burning the tears, less bitter the sighs
Heaven asks from its willing votaries!
And, alas! when my ALL weeps as Clara weeps,
Holy Church gaineth more than she ofttimes keeps!

Answer
 NOTABLE NAMES.

111.

One name that means such fiery things

I can’t describe their pains and stings.

Answer

112.

Red as an apple, or black as night:

A heavenly sign, or a “perfect fright.”

Answer

113.

Place an edible grain ’twixt an ant and a bee,

And the well-beloved name of a poet you’ll see.

Answer

114.

Each human head, in time, ’tis said,

Will turn to him, though he is dead.
 Answer

115.

A little more
Than a sandy shore.

Answer

116.

The dearest, “sweetest, spot on earth to me,”

And, just surpassing it, a name you’ll see.

Answer

117.
A head-dress.
Answer

118.
Inclining to one of the four parts of the compass.
Answer

119.
A mineral and a chain of hills.
Answer

120.
A metal, and a worker in metals.
Answer

121.
A sound made by an insect; and a fastening.
Answer

122.
A sound made by an animal; and a fastening.
Answer

123.
A sound made by an animal, and a measure of length.
Answer

124.
A Latin noun and a measure of quantity.
 Answer

125.
A bodily pain.
Answer

126.
The value of a word.
Answer

127.
A manufactured metal.
Answer

128.
To agitate a weapon.
Answer

129.
A domestic animal, and what she cannot do.
Answer
 130.
Which is the greater poet, William Shakespeare or John Dryden?
Answer

131.
A barrier before an edible; a barrier built of an edible.
Answer

132.
One-fourth of the earth’s surface, and a preposition.
Answer

133.
One-fourth of the earth’s surface, and a conjunction.
Answer

134.
A song; to follow the chase.
Answer
 135.
A solid fence, a native of Poland.
Answer

136.
An incessant pilgrim; fourteen pounds weight.
Answer

137.
A quick succession of small sounds.
Answer

138.
Obsolete past participle of a verb meaning to illuminate.
Answer

139.
A carriage, a liquid, a narrow passage.
Answer
 140.
To prosecute, and one who is guarded.
Answer

141.
A letter withdraws from a name to make it more brilliant.
Answer

142.
A letter withdraws from a name and tells you to talk more.
Answer

143.
Why is a man who lets houses, likely to have a good many
cousins?
Answer

144.
What relation is the door-mat to the door-step?
Answer
 145.
What is it that gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor’s
bill?
Answer

146.
What is brought upon the table, and cut but never eaten?
Answer

147.
What cord is that which is full of knots which no one can untie,
and in which no one can tie another?
Answer

148.
What requires more philosophy than taking things as they come?
Answer

149.
What goes most against a farmer’s grain?
Answer
 150.
Which of Shakespeare’s characters killed most poultry?
Answer

151.
THE BISHOP OF OXFORD’S RIDDLE.

I have a large box,1 two lids,2 two caps,3 two musical

instruments,4 and a large number of articles which a carpenter
cannot dispense with.5 I have always about me a couple of good
fish,6 and a great number of small size;7 two lofty trees,8 and four
branches of trees;9 some fine flowers,10 and the fruit of an
indigenous plant.11 I have two playful animals,12 and a vast number
of smaller ones;13 also, a fine stag,14 and a number of whips without
handles.15
I have two halls or places of worship,16 some weapons of
warfare,17 and innumerable weather-cocks;18 the steps of a hotel;19
the House of Commons on the eve of a division;20 two students or
scholars,21 and ten Spanish gentlemen to wait upon their
neighbors.22
To these may be added, a rude bed;a the highest part of a
building;b a roadway over water;c leaves of grass;d a pair of
rainbows;e a boat;f a stately pillar;g a part of a buckle;h several social
assemblies;i part of the equipments of a saddle-horse;j a pair of
implements matched by another pair of implements much used by
blacksmiths;j several means of fastening.k
Answer
 152.

Be thou my FIRST in study or in play,

Through all the sunny hours which make the day.
Go to my SECOND, and do not despise
Her useful teachings, wonderful and wise:
Yet, for this purpose, never be my WHOLE,
Nor seek to wander from a wise control.

Answer

153.

Be sure you do my FIRST, whene’er you see

My SECOND in the garden or the tree;
But set my WHOLE upon the open plain
If you would have a plenteous crop of grain.

Answer

154.

My FIRST is a house men love to view;

My SECOND you do when you fasten your shoe;
My THIRD is one of a loving two;
My WHOLE I fain would be with you.

Answer

155.
 1. A common fish, or an Eastern bay;
2. Part of a visage, or self to say;
3. The lowest part of window or door;
Whole. The end of a will that was made before.

Answer

156.
I have a little friend who possesses something very precious. It is
a piece of workmanship of exquisite skill, and was said by our
Blessed Saviour to be an object of His Father’s peculiar care; yet it
does not display the attribute of either benevolence or compassion. If
its possessor were to lose it, no human ingenuity could replace it;
and yet, speaking generally, it is very abundant. It was first given to
Adam in Paradise, along with his beautiful Eve, though he previously
had it in his possession.
It will last as long as the world lasts, and yet it is destroyed every
day. It lives in beauty after the grave has closed over mortality. It is to
be found in all parts of the earth, while three distinct portions of it
exist in the air. It is seen on the field of carnage, yet it is a bond of
affection, a token of amity, a pledge of pure love. It was the cause of
death to one famed for beauty and ambition. I have only to add that it
has been used as a napkin and a crown, and that it appears like
silver after long exposure to the air.
Answer

157.
When the king found that his money was nearly all gone, and that
he really must live more economically, he decided on sending away
most of his wise men. There were some hundreds of them—very fine
old men, and magnificently dressed in green velvet gowns with gold
buttons. If they had a fault, it was that they always contradicted each
other when he asked their advice—and they certainly ate and drank
enormously. So, on the whole, he was rather glad to get rid of them.
But there was an old lay which he did not dare to disobey, which said
there must always be:

“Seven blind of both eyes;

Ten blind of one eye;
Five that see with both eyes;
Nine that see with one eye.”

Query: How many did he keep?

Answer

158.
Why are not Lowell, Holmes, and Saxe the wittiest poets in
America?
Answer

159.
Why did they call William Cullen Bryant, Cullen?
Answer

160.
Why do we retain only three hundred and twenty-five days in our
year?
Answer
 161.
What seven letters express actual presence in this place; and,
without transposition, actual absence from every place?
Answer

162.
Is Florence, (Italy,) on the Tiber? If not, on what river does it lie?
Answer both questions in one word.
Answer

163.
Is there a word in our language which answers this question, and
contains all the vowels?
Answer

164.
What is it that goes up the hill; and down the hill, and never
moves?
Answer

165.