NOTES ' 



HUNTER ON THE QUESTION OF FORM- 

 PERCEPTION IN ANIMALS 



H. M. JOHNSON 



Assistant Psychologist, Nela Research Laboratory, National Lamp Works of 



General Electric Company 



In a recent interesting communication, Mr. Hunter 1 calls 

 attention to the need of sharper distinction between the study 

 of form-discrimination and that of pattern-discrimination. He 

 presents the thesis that animals below man and children between 

 certain ages "have only a more or less crude pattern vision," 

 and are unable to discriminate forms. Mr. Hunter asserts that 

 there is no means of testing the validity of his belief unless the 

 surroundings of discriminable forms be changed, since the form 

 is " seen " with its surroundings and hence must be considered 

 as " part of a pattern." Even if no other objects are in the visual 

 field, the stimulus-object ' is seen surrounded by the more or 

 less irregular outline of the field of vision, and so is again part of a 

 pattern." As a means of controlling the surroundings, he pro- 

 poses that after form-discrimination has apparently been estab- 

 lished, the alleys of the Yerkes experiment-box leading to the 

 stimulus-forms be enclosed with hollow cylinders or hollow 

 triangular prisms. Thus, he says, ' it should be possible to 

 demonstrate experimentally whether the subject was reacting to 

 the ' forms ' or to the ' patterns.' " 



I am not clear as to two points raised in reading Mr. Hunter's 

 article. First, with reference to his proposed method of control : 

 Changing the enclosures of the alleyways would probably intro- 

 duce new olfactory stimuli, and if the animal should have to 

 touch any of the walls, the change would certainly introduce 

 new tactile stimuli. The introduction of any new stimulus- 



> Hunter, Walter, S.: The Question of Form-Perception. This journal, vol. 3, 

 1913, pp. 329 ff. 



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