ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to provide an explicit statement of the theoretical orientation that underlies each of our contributions to the present volume (Cooper, chapter 8; Hochberg, chapter 11). This point of view fuels, as well, our individual and joint programs of research on object perception and representation; it underscores the centrality of mental representations of objects to theory and research in visual cognition. The discussion is divided into two parts. In the first section, we argue for the necessity of a conceptual level corresponding to a “mentally represented object,” and we offer two examples of phenomena based on perceptual couplings (Hochberg, 1974) that compel us to conclude that mental representations comprise a necessary analytic tool for studying visual cognition. In the second section, we consider the idea that mental representations of visual objects and events reflect the internalization of properties of their external physical counterparts. We cite several examples of phenomena and experimental results that show this solution to be overly simple; we suggest, instead, that the central challenge is to study and understand just those cases in which the analogy between mental representations and physical objects breaks down.
