Apperception in primed problem solving.
Mental representation is a central theoretical concept in modern cognitive psychology. However, its investigation has been predominantly based on inapt perceptualist concepts, which presume that information contents in them, i.e., mental contents, solely arise from stimulus. This is in spite of the evidence that much in human thought does not have any sensory equivalence. Consequently, we make a difference between perception and apperception, as e.g., Kant and Wundt did, and argue in favor of a detailed analysis of this mental process that is responsible for the construction of representations. We present here five primed problem solving experiments. The basic idea was to demonstrate that depending on priming information people represent perceptually identical stimuli very differently, i.e., they ascribe different uses and meanings to objects and they integrate them differently to compose distinct solutions. In this vein, we demonstrate that people regularly rely on information, which is not or cannot be perceived in principle. On the ground of our empirical findings, we resurrect the issue on why the difference between perception and apperception is theoretically adequate and introduce some central concepts for the theoretical analysis of apperception such as "seeing as" and functional binding.
Helfenstein
Sacha
S
Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014 Jyväskylä, Finland. sh@jyu.fi
Saariluoma
Pertti
P
D000328:Adult; D003210:Concept Formation; D003243:Consciousness; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D008875:Middle Aged; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D011340:Problem Solving; D012016:Reference Values; D012718:Set, Psychology