The Neglected Situation of Vision in Experimental Psychology

Abstract

The orthodox conception of `visual perception' entertained in cognitive psychology is that retinal images inside eyeballs or impressions in the `mind', which are very different from our actual visual experiences, are organized into a perception under an individual's skin. Even though this conception is caught up in profound `grammatical' confusions about the concept of seeing or visual perception, nevertheless, it provides experimental psychologists with `instructions' as to how to conduct experiments on `visual perception'. In the main body of the paper an attempt is made to demonstrate how this orthodox conception is embodied in the actual course of interaction in psychological experiments. In the analysis of audio-visual recordings of an `experimental' psychological experiment, I show that the actual course of interaction in the psychological experiment exhibits some distinct features, which are interactively organized so as to constitute the `private' character of `vision' in the experiment.