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Psychology 267
relations between probabilities and historical sequence (sequence checks,
Markoff chains, and so on).Z4 It is therefore clear that once a probabilist model
is placed in its general theoretical context, it comprises a series of positions that
represent something more than the splitting up of facts and imply a certain
kind of structuralism (perceptions, conditioning and so on).
In this connexion, there is an imperceptible transition from general probabilist
models to more specific models governed by the theories of decision or
information, which add to their probabilist basis increasingly structured stages as
regards the notions used and the systematization of subjects’ reactions. When,
for example, an information model is applied to perception, it has to be specified
how ‘redundancy’ in the case of ‘good forms’ wil be regarded where the
repetition of the same elements or the same relations of equivalence leads to
significant symmetries and not to simple tautologies, such as those of a speaker
who repeats the same thing several times. Or again, applying the theory of games
to perceptive constancies presupposes that we define in the case of ‘super-constancies’
(see section 4, heading 11) how in fact ‘decisions’ are made that involve
positive reversal of the error to avoid the negative error, which leads to a
conception of equilibration via active and especially anticipatory compensation
of the subject, and no longer to a balance of forces, which implies a full structuralist
formulation.
’Graph’ models can be used as a simple and convenient means of linking in
the mind of the observer himself the successive reactions of the subject. However,
it is obvious that the model becomes interesting in quite another way once the
relations symbolized by the nodes and arrows match those established by the
subject himself. The graph then describes an overall structure, of which it is
possible to study, for instance, the openings, closures, internal equilibrium,
vector laws, etc.
Spatial or geometrical models lead to two kinds of results. In some cases, it
is the actual space of the subject that is thus described, which naturally implies
a high degree of structuralism. Luneburg thus sought to show in his study of
the perception of parallel ‘paths’ that the immediate impression of parallelism
was not accompanied by corresponding estimations of the equidistances, which
led him to conclude that primary perceptive space was of a Riemannian and
not of a Euclidean character (the correctness of the actual facts was verified by
Jonkheere). From other research (heterogeneous space of the field of centration,
and so on) it seems likely that initial perceptive space is, if anything, undifferentiated,
being neither Euclidean nor Riemannian,’and that it is these subsequent
perceptive activities that guide it in the direction of the most economical metrics,
which is Euclidean because of the greater number of equivalences that it
comprises (precisely as in the case of parallelism, for example).
In other cases, the geometrical model is less intended to describe the subject’s
space than the space of the total field in which the subject moves and which is
supposed partly to determine his reactions. One famous example is K. Lewin’s
‘topology’, but which unfortunately constitutes a rather inextricable mixture of
mathematical topology and ‘lived’ space, with the properties of the latter
constantly inflecting those of the former, so that there is little that is mathemat-