May 1975
The Problem of Information Pickup
Psychology 512
J. J. Gibson, Cornell University
The World Wide Web distribution of James Gibson’s “Purple Perils” is for scholarly use with the understanding that Gibson did not intend them for publication. References to these essays must cite them explicitly as unpublished manuscripts. Copies may be circulated if this statement is included on each copy.
We agree, at Cornell, that the process of attention perception is an activity, but just what form this activity takes is not agreed upon. Following is a set of questions for discussion.
1. Can we say that the neural inputs of a perceptual system (as distinguished from a sense) are already organized and thus do not have to have an organization imposed upon them, e.g., by the spontaneous self-distribution of brain processes, or by the formulation of connections in the brain (Perceptual Systems, p. 267).) Is this consistent with the formula that an exploratory perceptual system “extracts” the invariant information over time?
2. The metaphor of a perceptual system that “resonates” to information, and that “tunes itself” to “interesting” information, or that keeps hunting until the experience is “clear,” is vague (Perceptual Systems, p. 271). What other metaphors does psychology have available for describing the act or perception?
3. Hebb’s reverberating circuits in the brain are contrasted with the circular activity of an eye-retina-nerve-brain-nerve-eye-retina system p. 275). But both conceptions involve a circuit instead of a stimulus-response arc. What are the assumptions of a “cybernetic” theory of the brain’s action in perception as contrasted with a “chain-of-causation” theory?
4. What is the evidence to suggest that perception occurs in brief successive stages, and that these stages are characteristic of any act of perception? How good is it? (It seems that the evidence is limited to the reports obtained from tachistoscopic experiments only.)
5. It is suggested (p.283) that such processes as associating, organizing, remembering, recognizing, expecting, and naming all carry the implication of being “operations of the mind upon the deliverances of sense,” and thus appeal to mentalism It is then suggested that other processes called differentiating, establishing, covariation, extracting invariants, and separating off the variants are more like biological activities and thus do not appeal to mentalism. Does this sound persuasive?