Mental Representations And Psychological Laws

这项研究寻求一般的心理学规律，这些规律可以被理解为对我们进化所处的世界的普遍特征的适应。例如，我们世界的普遍特征包括：空间是三维的和欧几里得的。物体具有随时间保持的固有属性，尽管它们的瞬时位置、光照条件等发生了变化。属于重要自然类别的物体虽然彼此之间略有不同，但往往彼此足够相似，以在可能物体的抽象“空间”中形成紧凑区域(具有一定的位置、大小和形状)。可以被显示为在具有这种特征的世界中是自适应的心理学原理的例子包括以下三个：第一，空间中物体的某些特定运动在心理上是有利的，因为这些运动(A)在物理呈现时被判断为最简单或最自然，(B)最有可能在视觉错觉中被体验到，当一个物体突然消失并立即在不同的位置重新出现时，或者(C)当必须在心理上比较不同位置的两个相似物体的形状时，最可能产生这种情况。其次，颜色有三个自由度，任何给定的颜色都可以通过调节合适的混色设备上的三个旋钮来匹配。第三，学习到的对一个刺激的反应将推广到另一个刺激的概率根据这两个刺激之间的(适当定义的)差异程度的指数函数而均匀衰减，而做出表明这两个刺激是不同的区别反应所需的时间根据该差异的不同的倒数(或双曲线)函数而衰减。这些定律无法从神经生理结构的角度找到它们的最终解释，而神经生理结构本身必须得到解释；然而，它们可以被理解为在一个具有生物重大后果的物体属于自然种类的世界中实现了一种最佳策略。这些结果表明，大脑是按照不变的心理规律运作的，这与物理学的不变规律没有什么不同，前提是心理规律是根据产生不变性的唯一“心理空间”而不是根据物理测量定义的“物理空间”来表述的。心理空间被推定为与物理空间有关，这是由亿万年的自然选择塑造的心理物理转换。

This research seeks general psychological laws that can be understood as adaptations to universal characteristics of the world in which we have evolved. Universal characteristics of our world include, for example, the following: Space is three- dimensional and Euclidean. Objects have inherent properties that persist over time despite variations in their momentary positions, conditions of illumination, etc. Objects belonging to a significant natural category, although differing somewhat among themselves, tend to be similar enough to each other to form a compact region (having some location, size, and shape) in the abstract "space" of possible objects. Examples of psychological principles that can be shown to be adaptive in a world with such characteristics include the following three: First, certain particular motions of an object in space are psychologically favored in the sense that those motions (a) are judged simplest or most natural when physically presented, (b) are most likely to be experienced in the visual illusion of "apparent" motion, which arises when one object is suddenly caused to disappear and immediately to reappear in a different position, or (c) are most likely to be imagined when two similar objects in different positions must be compared mentally with respect to shape. Second, colors have three degrees of freedom in the sense that any given color can be matched by adjusting just three knobs on a suitable color-mixing apparatus. Third, the probability that a response learned to one stimulus will generalize to another stimulus decays uniformly according to an exponential function of the (properly defined) degree of difference between those two stimuli, while the time required to make a discriminative response indicating that the two stimuli are different decays according to a different, reciprocal (or hyperbolic) function of that difference. Such laws cannot find their ultimate explanation in terms of neurophysiological structures, which themselves must be explained; they can however be understood as realizing an optimum strategy in a world in which objects having biologically significant consequences belong to natural kinds. Such results suggest that the mind operates in accordance with invariant psychological laws, not unlike the invariant laws of physics, provided that the psychological laws are formulated in terms of the unique "psychological space" yielding invariance and not in terms of the "physical space" defined by physical measurement. The psychological space is presumed to be related to the physical space by a psychophysical transformation that has been shaped by eons of natural selection.