ABSTRACT
WHAT CAUSES THE GREATER FREQUENCY OF AUTOCENTRIC OR allocentric perception in one person as compared with another, the prevalence of one or the other in the same person at one moment as compared with another? What causes perception to shift from the autocentric to the allocentric, or from the allocentric to the autocentric mode? These perceptual modes and their fluctuations do not occur alone, restricted to the perceptual function, but as part of a total attitude, a total mode of relatedness of the perceiver to something in the environment, and they shift together with a shift in total attitude. This implies that they also occur together with a particular tonus and motor attitude which may lead to actual movements or to slight changes in posture and expression, or consist merely of changes in muscular and visceral tonus.1 When I am looking or listening for something rather than looking at or listening to, the perceptual attitude tends toward the (secondary) autocentric mode. At that moment I am not interested 1] This observation is consistent with the theories of perception which emphasize the unity of perception and movement. Compare Viktor von Weizsacker, Der Gestaltkreis. Tbeorie der Einheit von Wabrnehmen und Bewegen, 4th ed. (Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart, 1950); Heinz Werner and Seymour Wapner, "SensoryTonic Field Theory of Perception," in Jerome S. Bruner and David Krech, eds., Perception and Personality (Duke University Press, Durham, 1949/5o), pp. 88-107.
