Visual Space Perception and Action: A Special Issue of Visual Cognition

Vision is not an end in itself. Instead, it has evolved to assure survival in a dynamic environment. Vision - as well as the other senses - evolved from the necessity to act in this environment. Therefore, perceptual processes and action planning are much more interlocked than evident at first sight. This special issue examines the basic processes of space perception and how these processes interact with action planning and motor control. The tasks under consideration range from the simple localization of a single object to the coordination of a series of events in natural scenes. The contributions were written by various experts in the field, ranging from experimental psychologists, neurophysiologists to computational modellers and philosophers. Each contribution introduces new concepts and ideas that explain how visual space is being established and represented. The overarching question is whether vision and action are based on a single spatial map or on different, interacting spatial representations.