THE INTRINSIC SYSTEMS OF THE FOREBRAIN 



1341 



Wurzburg school (55) and their Gestalt-orientcd 

 successors (2, 62, 149) have consistently emphasized 

 the distinction between the 'content' of thought and 

 its 'motor'; between knowledge and intention (6-2). 

 These formulations, however, frequently confounded 

 two of the pairs of distinctions made in this presenta- 

 tion: the disdnction between the delineative and the 

 economic aspects of problem solution on the one hand 

 and, on the other, that between the attitudinal 

 (partitioning) factors and the events upon which 

 these attitudes operate. Piaget (104) comes somewhat 

 closer to maintaining separate these distinctions. This 

 correspondence between Piaget's analysis ot the re- 

 sults of his experiments and that presented here may 

 be due to the similarity of the formal devices used: 

 Piaget's 'groups of displacements' are included in the 

 'systems of transformations' referred to throughout 

 this presentation. 



Social scientists have also made use of the dis- 

 dnction between the delineative and the economic 

 aspects of problem solution. Thus, Parsons dis- 

 tinguishes between determinants of 'interest' in a 

 problem and those of 'value-orientation which provide 

 the standards of what constitute satisfactory solutions 

 of these problems' (100). Basic to this distinction is 

 the difference as yet grasped only vaguely, between 

 the acquisition of information (128) and its utiliza- 

 tion (140-142). The development of this disdnction 

 in the social, as well as in the biological (and in the 

 physical) sciences, is hampered by the fact (already 

 mentioned above) that, in connotative use, the lan- 

 guage of occidental cultures fails to separate clearly 

 the differences brought out by the neurobehavioral 

 analysis made here: difierences between attitudinal 

 factors and the events upon which these attitudes 

 operate on the one hand, and between the delineative 

 and the economic aspects of problem solution on the 

 other. Recently, there has been in North America a 

 shift in popular connotation away from attitudinal 

 determinants— e.g. the term 'honesty' no longer 

 refers exclusively to 'telling the truth,' 'respecting 

 others' property' and such, but also to 'behaving 

 according to how one feels and sees the situation,' even 

 if this entails occasional lying or stealing (119). 

 Such confusion in connotative meaning creates 



especial difficulties for a science that must obtain 

 data almost exclusively from verbal reports. The 

 results of analyses such as this one of neurobehavioral 

 data may be most usefully applied to the social 

 sciences as keys that open avenues of conceptualization 

 common to all sciences — conceptualizations now 

 locked behind the intricacies of verbal beha\-ior. 



We thus, from the biological standpoint, see the cerebrum, 

 and especially the cerebral cortex, as the latest and highest ex- 

 pression of a nervous mechanism which may be described as 

 the organ of, and for, the adaptation of nervous reactions. The cere- 

 brum, built upon the distance-receptors and entrusted with 

 reactions which fall in an anticipatory interval so as to be 

 precurrent . . . , comes, with its projicience of sensation and the 

 psychical powers unfolded from that germ of advantage, to be 

 the organ par excellence for the readjustment and the perfecting 

 of the nervous reactions of the animal as a whole, so as to im- 

 prove and extend their suitability to, and advantage over, the 

 environment. . . . Only by continual modification of its an- 

 cestral powers to suit the present can it fulfil that which its 

 destiny, if it is to succeed, requires from it as its life's purpose, 

 namely, the extension of its dominance over its environment. 

 For this conquest its cerebrum is its best weapon. It is then 

 around the cerebrum, its physiological and psychological 

 attributes, that the main interest of biology must ultimately 



turn. 



Sherrington, C. S. The Integrative 

 Action of the Nervous System, p. 390 (129). 



Whatever the merit of this manuscript, much is due to 

 George Miller who led me by the hand through the formidably 

 formal gardens of mathematics and who instigated not only 

 the experiment but also many of the ideas reported; to Jerome 

 Bruner who initially posed a number of the psychological 

 problems discussed here and who gave encouragement through 

 the difficulties of solution; to the several others who at one 

 time or another provided ideas and support to the effort; 

 Jane Connors, Eugene Galanter, Edward Green, Hellmuth 

 Kaiser, Harriet Knapp, Judy and Walter RosenbUth; to W. S. 

 Battersby and Ernest R. Hilgard for their helpful comments 

 on earlier drafts of this attempt; to Jerome Schwartzbaum 

 for valuable help with statistical problems; and to the 12 

 little rhesus monkeys who skillfully, patiently and impa- 

 tiently played the multiple object game with me daily for 6 

 months. The experiments described were performed as part 

 of a program of research generously supported by grants from 

 the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health, Ed- 

 ucation and Welfare, and from the Division of Psychiatry, 

 Department of the Army. 



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I. Adev, W. R., I. D. Carter and R. Porter. J. M'euro- 



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 ■2. Allport, F. H. Theories of Perception and the Concept of 



Structure. New York; Wiley, 1955, p. 148- 



3. Allport, F. H. Theories of Perception and the Concept of 

 Structure. New York; Wiley, 1955, p. 14- 



4. Amassian, V. E. A. Res. Nerv. & Ment. Dis., Proc. 30: 



371. '95I- 



