Toward a Theory of Perception: Participation as a Function of Body-Flexibility

Summary

The main purpose of this study was to present a tentative statement of a theory of perception in which the role of the body was emphasized. The relationship of the body to the perceived world was conceptualized in terms of a dynamic body-schema, the extent and flexibility of which was termed body-flexibility. This hypothetical construct—i.e., body-flexibility—was seen as emerging in ontogenesis along a developmental continuum from immature to mature. The immature perceiver was conceptualized as embedded in a world, with minimal polarization of his body and his world, with minimal consciousness of his body-as-subject and body-as-object of experience. The mature perceiver was conceptualized as having the ability to distantiate: i.e., as conscious of his subjective and objective poles of being in relation to the phenomena of experience. The ability to distantiate was conceptualized in terms of degree of body-flexibility. The language and constructs of this statement were mostly distilled from the works of Church, Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, Schachtel, Schmidt, and Werner.

The phenomenon of perception addressed to, from the framework of the construct of body-flexibility, was participation. The literature on this phenomenon under its kindred names—Einfühlung, physiognomic perception, etc.—was reviewed. An analysis was made of the assumptions underlying the “role taking,” “projection,” “Gestalt,” Schachtel's “kinesthetic empathy,” and Lévy-Bruhl's and Piaget's “participation” approaches to the phenomenon. A major issue in the literature is whether participation increases or decreases in ontogenesis. The general hypothesis of this study was that participation increases in ontogenesis as a function of body-flexibility.

Body-flexibility was operationally defined in terms of trials to fixation and to extinction of the Uznadze kinesthetic and visual illusions, which were designated kinesthetic and visual body-flexibility tasks. Participation was operationally defined in terms of scores obtained on four tests: expressive lines, expressive faces, portrait sensitivity, and interview situation. The sample consists of 48 children—12 Ss per 5- to 6-, 7- to 8-, 9- to 10-, and 11- to 12-year-old group—and 38 adults. The general trend of the results showed an increase in body-flexibility with age, an increase in participation with age, and the level of performance on the tests of participation could be predicted from the level of performance on the body-flexibility tasks. Some conceptual and operational problems, and future research designs to help clarify certain issues were discussed. It was concluded that, although the general hypothesis was significantly supported, the construct of body-flexibility required further refinement.

A minor study concerning Piaget's use of the law of relative centrations to interpret his Uznadze illusion findings was also conducted. The results suggested that the law may not be universal. A second minor study explored the feasibility of using an imaginal task to evaluate the degree of body-flexibility. The results were seen as possible evidence for Werner's principle of orthogenesis, but provided inconclusive support for the construct of body-flexibility.