ABSTRACT
A generation ago, the work of Herman Witkin and his associates on cognitive style helped to bring about a significant change in psychology's perspective, the overthrow of an older "doctrine of immaculate perception" and the acceptance of a competing "New Look" framework. The older doctrine treated perception as passive and reactive. The world delivers energies to the senses; the sensory organs translate the energies into neural events and the neural events ultimately present the world to the person. Witkin's approach made perception active, holding that the person regulates and organizes what is perceived. Some scientific work is foundational, posing new questions and redirecting the research enterprise. One subtle but important effect of Witkin's work was to make the environment part of the subject of psychological inquiry. Psychology deals with the ways in which people adapt to their environment. In so doing it must ask what is the environment a person deals with and what part does the person play in defining it?
