Brunswikian Resources for Event-Perception Research

Abstract

Recent psychological research aimed at determining whether dynamic event perception is direct or mediated by cue-based inference convincingly demonstrates evidence of both modes of perception or apprehension. This work also shows that noise is involved in attaining any perceptual variable, whether it perfectly (invariantly) specifies or imperfectly (fallibly) indicates the value of a target or criterion variable. As such, event-perception researchers encounter both internal (sensory or inferential) and external ecological sources of noise or uncertainty, owing to the organism's possible use of imperfect or ‘nonspecifying’ variables (or cues) and cue-based inference. Because both sources play central roles in Egon Brunswik's theory of probabilistic functionalism and methodology of representative design, event-perception research will benefit by explicitly leveraging original Brunswikian and, more recent, neo-Brunswikian scientific resources. Doing so will result in a more coherent and powerful approach to perceptual and cognitive psychology than is currently displayed in the scientific literature.