Vision, therefore, isn’t just a question of the details of what we see. While images can be broken down and examined in the granular terms proposed by researchers like Treisman, especially in tightly controlled lab conditions, the vision we rely on to survive in a chaotic world deals in things—objects, people, and places. Indeed, from the earliest stages of processing, we perceive our surroundings not as an assemblage of colors and contours, but in terms of categories.
