ABSTRACT
Can a process so fundamental as perception be subject to the fads and fancies induced by a Zeitgeist in the minds of those who seek to understand it? Perception, the most solidly based of all cognitive processes, surely cannot be whipped about with the wind of the times, however processes like memory ( “ short” or “long” ?), images (“reproductions” or “constructions”?), or intelligence (“normative” or “operational”?) may be conceived variously by fickle thinkers in one decade or another. And yet, signs and portents assure us (uneasy psychologists) that it is. Recall unconscious inference, dredged up from time to time ever since Hemlholtz. What about the fact that it wasn’t fashionable to mention perception at all during the heyday of S-R theorizing? What about the “ new look” in the early Fifties? And now, what about the craze for information-processing models of perception?
