I guess it’s because of our memory. We don’t have to be looking at something to know that it exists, and we can remember what something looks like even when we’re not actually looking at it.
I think this is something that develops when we are quite young. You know how babies like to play peek-a-boo? When you hide your face behind your hands, they can’t see you so they think you are gone. You move your hands, and to them, you magically reappear. I don’t know the age at which we learn object permanence: “the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched” (Wikipedia. It says this develops at 8-12months), but this helps us understand the world and the way things fit into it.
You can picture your Mother because you hold images of her within your memory and you are able to call these up when you want to. If you had a disorder called Prosopagnosia, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between different people’s faces, or picture your Mother’s face.
I guess it’s because of our memory. We don’t have to be looking at something to know that it exists, and we can remember what something looks like even when we’re not actually looking at it.
I think this is something that develops when we are quite young. You know how babies like to play peek-a-boo? When you hide your face behind your hands, they can’t see you so they think you are gone. You move your hands, and to them, you magically reappear. I don’t know the age at which we learn object permanence: “the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched” (Wikipedia. It says this develops at 8-12months), but this helps us understand the world and the way things fit into it.
You can picture your Mother because you hold images of her within your memory and you are able to call these up when you want to. If you had a disorder called Prosopagnosia, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between different people’s faces, or picture your Mother’s face.
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