From: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Psychology Press, 1986
“The hypothesis of conversion is consistent with the traditional theory that successive inputs of a sensory nerve are processed, that a series of signals is interpreted, or that the incoming data of sense are operated on by the mind. Sensations are converted into perceptions, and the question is, how does this come about? In the case of successive retinal images, the process is supposed to be that of memory. It may be called short-term or primary memory, or immediate memory as distinguished from long-term memory, but the basic assumption is that each image has to be held over, or stored in some sense, in order for the sequence to be integrated, that is, combined into a unit. The present percept is nothing without past percepts, but past percepts cannot combine with the present except as memories. Every item of experience has to be carried forward into the present in order to make possible perception in the present. Memories have to accumulate. This is the traditional theory of memory made explicit. It is full of difficulties, but it has seemed to provide the only explanation of how images could be integrated.”

From: The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited, Joseph and Barbara Anderson, University of Illinois Press
“… there are at least two major implications of the demythologizing of persistence of vision. First "persistence of vision", the term, the concept, the myth, must be given a place in the history of film scholarship, but can no longer be given currency in film theory. The time has surely come when only the creationists among us will cling to the myth of persistence of vision as an actual explanation of how movies come to be. Second, and more important, the concept of the passive viewer implied by the myth, the one upon whose sluggish retina (or brain) the images pile up, must be replaced by an enlightened understanding of how viewers actually interface with motion pictures. If we viewers process the motion in a motion picture the same way we process motion in the real world, then we must ask how we process motion in the real world. The short answer to this question is that we process movement in active meaning-seeking ways. We rapidly sample the world about us, noting the things that change and the things that do not change. We turn our heads for a better view; we move left or right to gain additional information provided by a different angle. We move closer or farther away. We actively seek more information about things that interest us. We seek greater clarity of both our vision and our understanding. And our perceptual system continuously notes whether everything in our field of vision is moving or whether only certain things are moving, the former indicating that we are moving, and the latter that something else is moving.”