p.330 The Darwinian concept of random variation and natural
selection through differential survival provides a general model for the deterministic description of adaptive phenomena.
Recently this model has seen increased application to the adaptive phenomena described by psychologists as problem solving
or learning. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest the application of the model to a third level, that is to
say, to the adaptive behavior demonstrated in carrying out or executing a well-learned habit. Such an application seems to
necessitate the conceptualization of sensory and perceptual processes implied in the title.
p.330 The early comparative biologists and evolutionists assembled impressive
evidence of the adaptive fit between organismic structure and environmental possibilities. To explain such
fit, three principal alternatives were available... The third model was the Darwinian theory of natural selection.
For this model, unlike the second, the modifications or variations are blind, are random, are individually nonappropriate,
are not of the order of corrections. But by chance there do occur those which provide better fit, and these survive and are
duplicated... his basic model of natural selection is uniformly accepted today, and stands as one of the great conceptual
achievements of the 19th century. In its abstract or formal aspects, it is a model which may be applied to other adaptive
processes, or other apparently teleological series of events in which modifications seem guided by outcome.
p.331 A second level of organismic fit to environment is to be found
in the behavioral modifications that occur within the life span of a single organism. Thus, a rat's behavior comes
more and more to "fit" the maze, to reflect the environmental possibilities.
p.331 Ashby [Design for a Brain] and Pringle [On the parallel between learning
and evolution] have explicitly proposed that the blind variation and selective survival model be applied to adaptation
at the level of animal problem solving and learning.
p.332 most contemporary learning theories contain a random trial-and-error
component... The major unsolved problems lie in the mechanisms of selection and retention, and these problems are formidable.
p.333 The settings, trials, or responses succeed each other in a blind or
random fashion, the subsequent responses being no more appropriate than the prior ones, except by chance.
p.333 A third level of adaptive fit of organism to environment occurs
in the execution of habits. Not only does the rat manifest adaptive fit in solving or learning the maze, but in addition
it usually manifests adaptive fit every time it runs the maze.
p.334 Let us consider a blind person who has learned the task of sorting
mixed machine parts into separate bins. The response of reaching is for the most part a body-consistent response, guided in
terms of body orientation and memory. The final phase of the grasping, however, involves an observable blind, random groping,
varying in extent depending upon the accuracy of the initial movement. Without the trial-and-error component, the object-consistent
adaptive fit of the response would not be achieved.
p.335 most object-consistent responses have a smooth, accurate, guided
quality which seems quite out of keeping with the prescribed random trial-and-error process. If the formal model for adaptive
fit is to be retained at this level, the only resolution seems to be to locate the trial-and-error process in the function
of the sensory organs. It is the burden of this paper that perception serves this function of trial-and-error exploration,
substituting for the motor trial and error found in the blind object-consistent response.
p.335 a ship's radar vicariously explores the waterways, by a trial and
error of radar beams learning the location of obstacles that might otherwise have been located by a trial and error of ship
movements and collisions.
p.336 even without temporally extended scanning, the eye in
a single glance provides spatial information which can substitute for motor trial and error, which can lead to smooth, guided,
object-consistent responses.
p.336 Vision can be seen as providing data about the spatial environment
intersubstitutable with what might be learned by blind trial and error.
p.337 When the telephone rings we ultimately reach the instrument even if
our chair is in a new spot and we must follow a course which never before has been followed. We respond to the bell by rising
and by being ready to grasp the telephone, perhaps by being set to say "Hello." [JLJ - when my telephone rings I do nothing.
My answering machine plays my message, and then the political group, collection agency calling for the individual who used
to have my phone number, or "pollster" calling hangs up since they have not reached a live person. Times have changed
since 1956.]
p.338 Vicarious trial and error... a process in which the substitute
trial and error serves as a source of current information about the immediate environment, in equivalence to locomotor exploration.
p.338 In VTE most literally interpreted there is a vicarious search of a
vicariously (through memory) represented environment. And while the process is instigated by the visible objects of the choice
point, it is not conceived as a search of them, or a learning about them.
p.338 Tolman in 1932... clearly makes the point
that vision can provide information and behavioral guides equivalent to those obtainable through motor exploration.
He seems alone among learning theorists in thus recognizing perception as a knowledge process substitutable for motor
trial and error.
p.338 The present argument differs from Tolman's mainly
in the emphasis upon the basic role of blind trial and selective retention in all adaptation or knowledge processes,
with the resulting effort to interpret perception as a random search process.
p.340 In the view of the present writer, psychology stands to gain much
from the experimental construction of automata which attempt to imitate life.
p.341 Selective survival among random variations is taken
as a general paradigm for instances of organismic fit to environment... Attention is called to a third level of organismic
fit to environment, in the adaptive responses employed in the flexible execution of well-learned habits... a suggestive parallel
is available in complex servo-systems such as the radar-controlled guiding of ship or projectile, in which a blindly
emitted beam is selectively reflected, and is used to substitute for a trial and error of ship movements or projectiles.
