Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A source book of Gestalt psychology.Figural perception in the jay bird.

A source book of Gestalt psychology.: Figural perception in the jay bird. One of the most striking natural activities of the jay bird (even in captivity) is its hiding and retrieving of food. Since the bird is practically without a sense of smell, this achievement is especially remarkable because an object once hidden is thenceforth quite outside the bird's perceptual field. Only memory can be relied upon to rediscover a hiding place. But how does the bird recognize the critical place where food has been cached and how does it distinguish the particular objects which hide its prize from other similar objects in the vicinity? We can attack this problem only by presenting simple test situations resembling the bird's normal, biological conditions. It should then be possible to infer how the bird's perceptions are actually organized. The most practical test is for the experimenter himself to "hide" a bit of food (with the bird looking on) and then observe how it is found. If the bird is capable of doing this, we know already that the search was guided solely by vision and memory functions--not by some literal mechanical repetition of a process which he himself had performed at an earlier time. (The complete version of this article appeared as "Wahrnehmungspsychologische Untersuchungen am Eichelhäher," I., Zeitschrift für wissenschafdiche Biologie, Abt. c., Zeitschr, f. vergl. Physiol., 1928, 7, 144-194. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A source book of Gestalt psychology.Figural perception in the jay bird.

Download PDF
15 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/american-psychological-association/a-source-book-of-gestalt-psychology-figural-perception-in-the-jay-bird-yMlaWfddZ8

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company
Copyright
Copyright © 1938 American Psychological Association
Pages
238 –252
DOI
10.1037/11496-020
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

One of the most striking natural activities of the jay bird (even in captivity) is its hiding and retrieving of food. Since the bird is practically without a sense of smell, this achievement is especially remarkable because an object once hidden is thenceforth quite outside the bird's perceptual field. Only memory can be relied upon to rediscover a hiding place. But how does the bird recognize the critical place where food has been cached and how does it distinguish the particular objects which hide its prize from other similar objects in the vicinity? We can attack this problem only by presenting simple test situations resembling the bird's normal, biological conditions. It should then be possible to infer how the bird's perceptions are actually organized. The most practical test is for the experimenter himself to "hide" a bit of food (with the bird looking on) and then observe how it is found. If the bird is capable of doing this, we know already that the search was guided solely by vision and memory functions--not by some literal mechanical repetition of a process which he himself had performed at an earlier time. (The complete version of this article appeared as "Wahrnehmungspsychologische Untersuchungen am Eichelhäher," I., Zeitschrift für wissenschafdiche Biologie, Abt. c., Zeitschr, f. vergl. Physiol., 1928, 7, 144-194. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Published: Aug 13, 2007

Keywords: jay bird; figural perception; Gestalt psychology

There are no references for this article.