Jennifer J. Freyd - US grants

The proposed research is motivated by two related viewpoints which both assume that dynamic information is important to mental representations. One viewpoint claims that mental representations are dynamic, meaning that a temporal dimension is integral to the representation, even when the stimulus being represented is static. A second viewpoint sees information pick-up as "transitional perception", meaning that perceivers are particularly sensitive to the transitions between states and not just the end states themselves, for both static and dynamic stimuli. Both of these perspectives motivate experiments demonstrating that some static stimuli are perceived and represented in terms of dynamic processes. For instance, handwriting recognition is understood as involving knowledge of construction processes, such that a handwritten letter can be thought of as a static trace of a dynamic process. Similarly, the perception of snapshots of real-world action scenes is understood as involving the mental unfreezing of the action frozen in the photograph. A related research strategy is to investigate the internalization of physical constraints, such as momentum and gravitational acceleration, on moving objects. There are two reasons for this second focus; first, if the representation of static stimuli involves knowledge of past and future events then people's representations of moving objects should reflect properties of moving objects in the world; second, if dynamic information is integral to mental representations it should be describable and lawful. The proposed research, when carried out, should tell us more about the role of dynamic information in mental representations of both static and phenomenonally dynamic stimuli.

The proposed research is motivated by two related viewpoints which both assume that dynamic information is important to mental representations. One viewpoint claims that mental representations are dynamic, meaning that a temporal dimension is integral to the representation, even when the stimulus being represented is static. A second viewpoint sees information pick-up as "transitional perception", meaning that perceivers are particularly sensitive to the transitions between states and not just the end states themselves, for both static and dynamic stimuli. Both of these perspectives motivate experiments demonstrating that some static stimuli are perceived and represented in terms of dynamic processes. For instance, handwriting recognition is understood as involving knowledge of construction processes, such that a handwritten letter can be thought of as a static trace of a dynamic process. Similarly, the perception of snapshots of real-world action scenes is understood as involving the mental unfreezing of the action frozen in the photograph. A related research strategy is to investigate the internalization of physical constraints, such as momentum and gravitational acceleration, on moving objects. There are two reasons for this second focus; first, if the representation of static stimuli involves knowledge of past and future events then people's representations of moving objects should reflect properties of moving objects in the world; second, if dynamic information is integral to mental representations it should be describable and lawful. The proposed research, when carried out, should tell us more about the role of dynamic information in mental representations of both static and phenomenonally dynamic stimuli.

This Research Scientist Development Award (Level II) application requests support for training and research in two related directions: (a) an extended and more thorough completion of the candidate's research on dynamic information and mental representation currently funded by NIMH research grant 2-R01-MH39784; and (b) a broadening of the research program on mental representations to include an exploration of using the connectionist framework to model dynamic mental representations. and to include an integration of dynamic mental representations with "shareability" (Freyd, 1983c). The research currently funded by the R01 grant assumes that dynamic information is fundamental to perception and cognition even when the stimuli to be thought about or perceived are technically static (such as handwritten characters, snap-shots, and even stable scenes). This research is motivated by a theory of dynamic mental representations (Freyd, 1987), which claims that a temporal dimension is sometimes necessary to mental representation. Thus a major focus of the proposed research is to provide detailed support or such a theoretical position: Experiments in the area of "representational momentum" and related phenomena will continue to determine whether the temporal dimension in representations has certain similarities to time in the world, such as directionality and continuity. Training and research in mathematics, neurobiology, and computer science is proposed to allow a broadening of the current research program to include a connectionist simulation of dynamic representations, with the goals of creating a unified theory of mental representation is requested. Such a theory would address the relationship between dynamic representations underlying perceptual processes, and those representations that support the sharing of information and conscious introspection. The unified theory would draw on the concept of shareability (Freyd, 1983c) which predicts that shared knowledge structures have been transformed from private (e.g. perceptual) representations such that information is represented categorically instead of continuously.