ABSTRACT
Whether one depicts this internalized cognitive semiotic structure in terms of 'associations', 'mediating processes' (Osgood, 1958), cognitive processes (Neisser, 1967), or facilitated synaptic networks (Hebb, 1961) etc, is for the moment not really the issue. It is sufficient for this investigation that the visual perception of objects activates certain thought processes (the nature of which can be deduced from observable behaviour), or vice versa, that certain thought processes activate selective responses in the visual perception of objects. The universe of the signifier, namely visual images in the perceiver's mind, may activate the universe of the signified, namely specific memory traces, and vice versa. (This is simply a reformulation in psychological terms of the earlier model which stated that each universe supplied the relevance of the other.)
In analogy to the term 'psycholinguistics' I have called the psychological study of internalized semiotic structures psychosemiology (although the psychological status of semiology was clearly present in its original definition by de Saussure).
