A historical review of long-term visual-transposition research in Japan

Since 1960, more than 37 long-term experiments have been performed in Japan concerning up-down and left-right reversal and inversion, yet these contributions to a field of study pioneered by Stratton 100 years ago remain unfamiliar outside Japan, as most articles have not appeared in English. Japanese researchers have focused on several basic elements of perceptual systems, such as intersensory relationships, sensory-motor coordination, spatial frames of reference, and position constancy. Although subjects have not adapted perfectly to a transposed world in the course of these two- or three-week scale experiments, important data, particularly concerning left-right reversed vision, have been generated. I, myself, have conducted all three types of visual transposition experiments a number of times and propose a model comprised of three subsystems: that is, top-down, bottom-up, and sensory-motor systems. Central to my theory is the notion that the essential change has occurred in the subject's own body image, and that the spatial representation of the body image is visual in nature, not non-visual proprioception (as deduced from Harris' (1965) hypothesis).