The Perception of Egocentric 
Orientation
When subjects wear inverting 
optical devices, they 
eventually learn to negotiate 
the environment successfully.  
At first, however, they 
frequently misjudge the 
location of objects.

How do we manage to perceive 
veridically the orientations of 
things, or a scene as a whole, 
in relation to ourselves? This 
question is often posed 
because, as most people know, 
even though the image of the 
scene on the back of the eye is 
upside down and reversed left 
to right, we see the world as 
upright in relation to 
ourselves. This is not the 
difficult problem that it may 
first appear to be, however. In 
fact, the more interesting and 
puzzling problem is how we 
would perceive the world if the 
retinal image were turned 
around and made upright.