Associative Processes and Task Relations in Perceptual Learning

Abstract

Although it is commonly assumed that past experience, involving associative processes, influences perception, little agreement exists regarding either the nature or the manner of this influence. Early experiments served as convincing demonstrations of the effects of various experiences on perception, but they did not provide a specification of the details or functional relations in the processes involved. Some of the questions concerning these details have been brought into sharper focus by the generalization and differentiation hypotheses of E. J. Gibson, and by experiments stemming from the hypothesis of acquired distinctivenss and equivalence of cues of Dollard and Miller. However, the designs of tasks employed in these experiments have been such as to compound perceptual and associative processes in the same task. It is suggested that discussions leading to the development of a clearer taxonomy of tasks, for use in experiments on perceptual learning, would reduce confusion of these processes and permit empirical determination of relations between perception and learning.