________________
Perceiving--Touching/Pain, Seeing and Hearing
information at about this rate, which is also the order of frequency of the electroencephalogram.
At present, there is no adequate theory as to how the information from all sense-organs collected in the various cortical areas interacts to produce actions by us. It is likely that the 'puiting together' of all the information is a property of groups of neurons. Anyhow it is a mistake to try to discover soine 'final' stage of synthesis. Each part of the brain continually moves on from one action to another, just as the whole person does in real life. D. Development of the Programs of Seeing
A three year old child shows few eye movements. There is very marked improvement upto 11 years as the scanning procedure becomes more systematic. As the speed and efficiency improves, movements are enough to ailow the appropriate response. One can see this very well in the process of learning to read. At first, each letter must be examined separately, then words, phrases, sentences, whole paragraphs or perhaps pages or even whole books, can be in a sense 'comprehended' at a glance by a reader. The program for seeing probably consists of a routine thai dictates a series of operations, guided by subroutines as expectations are examined. E. Recovery of Sight
The most instructive of all the clinical studies of vision are those of patients who are born blind but have later recovered their sight after surgical operation. On recovery of vision, such patients are able to recognize only some of the objects that they already know by touch. They have, no program for seeing. With patience and time, they may learn to see, but it is a slow and painful process, unlike the normal acquisition of programs for seeing at the appropriate time of the developmental sequence of a child. This is an excellent example of one of the sensitive critical periods, when the brain is especially ready to develop some particular capacity. We have therefore a moderately clear idea of what we mean by programs for seeing. We shall discuss the programs of hearing in the next chapter together with those of speaking and writing.
