Coin perception studies and the concept of schemata.

Abstract

The proposition that perception is influenced by object value and perceiver need has enjoyed an exciting career since it was given prominence by Bruner and Goodman in an oral and, later, a printed report (3) of dramatic differences between rich and poor children in their judgments of coin sizes. Whether that study or subsequent ones can be said to have upheld the proposition may be questionable; but the effect on psychologists is beyond doubt. They were refreshed and stimulated. The ideas, the experimental approach, and the results were new, and quite obviously appealed to current needs. It was with a little surprise that, perhaps two years ago, while ruffling through the time-blurred pages of the Psychological Review of 1906, I ran across an article which seemed to bear some kinship to contemporary studies but which had not, as far as I was aware, been referred to in the recent literature. That accident started a train of thought which, with the aid of a few other bits of historical material, has led to the present paper. Very briefly, what I have to say is this. First, there are certain points of agreement between several coin studies, old and new, but the agreement is not such as to encourage the Bruner-Goodman theory that perception itself is distorted by value and need, at least directly. Second, there may be some advantage in applying the concept of schemata to the coin perception problem, and to other perceptual problems as well. The .concept, which goes back to Head and Bartlett, has been very recently discussed in this Journal by Vernon (18).