ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some ways that light from visual images and scenes is encoded by the visual system. An eye-tracking device to monitor the fixations and saccades of viewers enabled Nodine, Locher, and Krupinski to compare art-trained and untrained viewers who examined six pictures such as Georges Seurat's Poseuses. The artists looked more globally than the untrained group, possibly to appreciate the composition of the picture. The accuracy was almost the same showing visual and cognitive information is both useful for identifying objects. Light perceived by viewers that emanates from a scene or artwork follows a path that begins with several mechanical steps in the eye before being registered by the nervous system as visual information. The visual information from the two streams is integrated very efficiently, and this may be one reason that people feel vision is instantaneous. Once light particles reach the retina the information can enter the nervous system.
