| Brunswik first studied engineering but then took the Ph.D. in 1927 under Karl Bühler at Vienna. He is credited with the establishment
of the first psychology laboratory in Turkey while serving as a visiting lecturer at Ankara in 1931-1932. In 1935 he moved to the
University of California at Berkeley at Tolman's invitation. In a monograph in 1934 Brunswik set out the essential ideas for his probabilistic functionalism, although The conceptual framework of
psychology is a more complete and integrated exposition of his ideas. An organism learns to use the proximal cues about it to the
degree that these cues predict the distal situation: since we rarely have adequate information about our world (except in very
special, limited circumstances), we perceive according to probability: the most frequent previous experience under the current conditions will
ordinarily be expected. To understand perception, then, the researcher simply needs to take an "ecological survey"—a natural environment study of the way things are in the everyday world. In the case of both humans and animals. Brunswick emphasised studying the properties of the organism's environment as well as the organism itself. His probability notions make him the
intellectual forerunner of W. K. Estes. Because of his work on shape and size constancy. Brunswik has been considered by some to be a Gestalt
psychologist—something he vehemently denied. No doubt the prominent figures of the Gestalt movement would be rather uneasy with his notion that the laws of
perceptual organization are learned. |
|
|
