Phase Transition Hypothesis of Perception and Cognition in the Visually Impaired

Perception and cognition are core processes that transform external sensory signals into internal representations for knowledge construction and understanding, and in visually impaired individuals, this transformation is reorganized through auditory and tactile feedback. To explain how perceptual information evolves into stable cognitive representations under limited sensory bandwidth, this study proposes Phase Transition Hypothesis of Perception and Cognition. The proposed hypothesis models the perceptual–cognitive process as a dynamic phase transition, in which sensory information evolves from fragmented perception into organized cognition. To counteract perceptual bias induced by information collapse, the Perceptual Dynamic Optimization Mechanism adaptively regulates sensory deviations to stabilize the perceptual–cognitive transition, whereas the Cognitive Potential Model, derived from the Free-Energy Principle, elucidates how stable and self-organizing cognition emerges from this dynamic process. A cognitive simulation system and a blind writing navigation experiment are conducted to validate the hypothesis. Experiments demonstrate the proposed adaptive correction of perceptual bias and the phase transition mechanism from perception to cognition.