ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an introduction to cybernetics, to the principle of the control of perception, and to a hierarchical model for such control systems. It focuses on the inter-relationship of the concepts of cybernetics and those of Piaget. The book is concerned with the actual application of interactive methods of assessment both in research settings and in educational practice. It explores the value of a more interactive assessment in the measurement of language in young children, and describes the principles of cybernetics to the entire system for assessment of children with learning problems. Norbert Wiener described, in his Introduction to the original edition of Cybernetics in 1948, the fruitful interdisciplinary interchange in which the concept of feedback arose during the Second World War.
