What Are the Origins of Cognitive-Field Interactionist Psychology?

Morris Bigge and S. Samuel Shermis

Cognitive field interactionist psychology-originated in Germany during the early part of the twentieth century. Leaders in its early development were the Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941). All three migrated to the United States, where they devoted their professional lives to development and refinement of the Gestalt position.

Gestalt is a German noun for which there is no equivalent English word, so the term was carried over into English psychological literature. The nearest English translation of Gestalt is an organized "configuration" or "pattern," including all of that of which the pattern is composed. Thus, we refer to related theories that either represented or grew out of Gestalt psychology as interactional or configurational psychology. As configurational psychology has evolved, other names such as organismic, field phenomenological, and cognitive-field psychology  have developed from it. Cognitive-interactionist psychology was introduced into the United States in the middle 1920s. It has gathered a large number of exponents and now can be considered the leading rival of the behaviorisms. However, a great many psychologists are eclectic in the sense that they borrow elements from both schools of thought but do not identify with either.

Gestalt psychology was formally outlined by Wertheimer in 1912. Its central idea is that an organized whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, a triangle is greater than the sum of the three line segments that form it. This is because of its Gestalt.

The notion that a thing cannot be understood by studying its constituent parts but only by studying it as a totality is probably very old. Gardner Murphy suggests that it can be found in the literature of pre-Socratic Greece.' Various Greek writers proposed that the universe could best be understood through "laws of arrangement" or "principles of order," rather than through study of its basic building blocks, the elements. In contrast, other Greek writers were "atomists;" they sought the key to understanding through a study of individual elements. just as the former might be called the originators of the Gestalt idea, so the latter might be called the originators of the atomistic idea that characterized early behaviorism.

The nineteenth-century forerunners of Wertheimer include Ernst Mach (1838-1916) and Christian Von Ehrensfels (1859-1932). Although Mach held that the worlds of physics and psychology are essentially the same, he also argued that psychology must take into account those sensations that do not correspond to the physical reality before the viewer. These "nonphysical" sensations are sensations of relationship. For example, a person may see three dots on a sheet of paper and think of them as the points of a triangle. There is nothing in the individual dots to suggest this; it is their configuration that prompts the relationship.

In the 1890s, following Mach, Von Ehrenfels pursued the same ideas. He stated that, in all perception, qualities appear that represent morethan the physical items sensed. A perceiver tends to confer on the physical objects of a perception a form, configuration, or meaning; one tries to organize or integrate what one sees. A school of thought began to form along the lines explored by these two men, and a new term came into use-Gestaltqualität,which means approximately "the quality conferred by a pattern."

Wertheimer and his followers formulated a series of "laws" of perception and identified them by the concepts Pragnanz, similarity, proximity, closure, good continuation,and membership character. According to the basic law of Pragnanz, if a perceptual field is disorganized when aperson first experiences it, he or she imposes order on that field in  predictable way that follows the other five laws. Similarity means that similar items (dots, for instance) tend to formgroups in perception. Proximity means thatperceptual  groups are favoredaccording to the nearness of their respective parts.

Closure means that closedareas are more stable than unclosed ones. Draw a 340' arc and ask a viewer whatyou have drawn; the viewer  verylikely will say "a circle." This is an example of closure. Since toachieve closure is satisfying to one, closure might be considered a dynamic alternative to Thorndike's  mechanistic law of effect. Good continuation is closely related to closure. It means that, in perception, one tends to continuestraight lines as straight lines and curves as curves.

According to the law of membership character, a single part of a whole does not have fixed characteristics; instead, its characteristics are gotten from the context in which it appears.As Gardner Murphy put it, "the Gestaltist insists that the attributes oraspects of the component parts, insofar as they can be defined, are defined by their relations to the system as a whole in which they are functioning."'For example, a patch of color in a painting derives its quality from itscontext-the surrounding picture pattern-more than from anything inherent initself.

The Gestalt "laws" imply that in perception, one's organization of a field tends to be as simple and clear as the existingconditions allow. Hence, a person, in experiencing one's world, imposes an organization that is characterized by stability, simplicity, regularity, and symmetry. A viewer groups individual itemsin a field so they will have a pattern; one relates similar items as are required for completeness; and, if present patterns are meaningful, one triesto maintain them into the future. Imposing a "good" Gestalt, as happens when the foregoing events occur, is a psychological task. It does not necessarily involve any change in the physical environment. Rather, it represents a change in how a person "sees" or perceives one's physical environment.

Two of Wertheimer's German colleagues, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka, were primarily responsible for publicizing Gestalt psychology and establishing it in the United States. Kohler is famous, among other things for his celebrated study of the learning process in chimpanzees (The Mentality of Apes, 1925). He set out to test Thorndike's hypothesis that learning is a matter of random trial and error in which correct responses are gradually stamped in. Kohler observed that in addition to the fact that they exhibit learning that might appear accidental, his apes also displayed a type learning that appeared insightful. Hence, Kohler concluded that Thorndike's laws of learning were inadequate. Koffka's book "Growth Mind" (1924) contained a detailed criticism of trial-and-error learning as conceived by Thorndike.  Koffka's book not only criticized Thorndike but also the major ideas of behaviorism.

Kurt Lewin took the spirit of Gestalt theory, added to it some new concepts, and coined a new terminology. He developed a fieldpsychology that he also called topological and vector psychology. Lewin spent his later years the United States where he acquired a considerable following. Lewin's psychological theory has contributed much to current cognitive-field theory.

During the development of the Gestalt-field family, its adherents have made two significant changes in their position concerning thepresumed moral and actional nature of human beings. The original German Gestaltists-Kohler, Koffka, and Wertheimer--thought that people were neutral-active beings whose activities conformed to a set of psychological lawsof organization. But the American Gestaltists, such as Raymond H Wheeler and Ernest E. Bayles, considered people to be neutral-interactive, purposive individuals whose interaction consisted of sequential relationships with their environments. Then, cognitive-field theorists adopted the Lewinian position and built their thinking around neutral-interactive persons perceptually in simultaneous mutual interaction with their psychological environments-SMI. For that reason, this family has come to be known as a cognitive-interactionist one.

It is in the process of developing an emergent synthesis from the two horns of the active-passive or subjective- objective dilemma that cognitive field learning theory has emerged. Within this psychology, learning is neither equated with unfoldment and sheer expression of inner urges nor is it a conditioning process that comes from the environment impinging upon a biological organism from without.  Instead, cognitive-field psychologists find the clue to the meaning of learning in the aspects of a situation within which a person and the person's psychological environment come together in a psychological field or life space.

As a result of experimentation conducted by cognitive interactionists, behaviorists generally are coming to recognize that the earlier atomistic stimulus-response idea, based as it was on the principle of simple reflex arcs, does not explain human behavior and learning adequately. Thus, there is a tendency among contemporary S-R conditioning theorists to speak of "molar behavior" or behavior of the whole organism in contrast to piecemeal or "molecular" behavior. Accordingly, these psychologists characteristically refer to "total responses to patterns ofstimulation." However, since they continue to think in terms of mechanically related stimuli and responses, they still are within the basic pattern of S-R conditioning theory.

Is Learning Development of Insights?

Ernest E. Bayles’ (1897-) thinking serves as a background and forerunner for  understanding current cognitive-interactionist learning theories. Gestalt psychologists have viewed human beings as interactive, purposive individuals acting in sequential relationships with their environments in keeping with prevailing psychological laws of organization.

The key concept  of Gestalt psychologists in describing learning is insight. A generalized insight is an understanding. Gestaltists regard learning as a process of developing new insights or changing old ones. Insights occur when an individual, in pursuing one's purposes, sees new ways of utilizing elements of one's environment, including one's own bodily structure. The noun learning denotes the new insights or meanings that are acquired.

Gestalt theorists attack three weaknesses in the theory that learning is conditioning:

(1)   the attempt of behaviorists to explain complex interrelated organizations in terms of simpler elements, that is, to insist that learning consists of an accumulation of individual conditioned responses or operants, each relatively simple in itself but eventuating in a complicated pattern of habits;

(2)   behaviorists' tendency to attribute learning to reduction of basic organic drives; and

(3)   behaviorists' tendency to ignore the apparent purposiveness ofmuch behavior. Thus, "The chief trouble with behaviorism ... is that it leaves out so much behavior.""

Gestalt psychologists view learning as a purposive, explorative, imaginative, and creative enterprise. This conception breaks completely with the idea that learning consists of either linking one thing to another according to certain principles of association or building behaviors in a deterministic, mechanistic fashion. Instead, the learning process is identified with nonmechanical development or change of insights.

The Gestalt definition of insight is a sense of, or feeling for, pattern relationships. To state itdifferently, insight is the "sensed way through," "solution" of, a problematic situation. Insights often first appear as vague "hunches."

We might say that an insight is a kind of intelligent "feel", we get about a situation that permits us to continue to strive actively to serve our purposes. When are insights verbalized?  Perhaps atonce; perhaps never. We probably know many things that we never manage to put in words. This is a problem on which animal experimentation sheds some light. Animals below human beings cannot talk; they can communicate but not by placing sounds together in coherent subject-predicate sentences. N the evidence indicates that when they are confronted with what to them a problems, they insightfully learn."

Gestalt psychologists do not use the term insights in a way to imply that they are necessarily true. Granted, the term sometimes is used this way by others. But the relativistic orientation of Gestalt theorists necessarily leads them to think of insights as trial answers or hypotheses thateither may or may not help one toward one's goal. Hence, they may or they may not be true. Truth, relativistically defined, is that quality of a tested insight that enables its possessor to design behavior that is successful in achievement whatever it is designed to achieve.

Insights, then, are to be considered not literal descriptions of objectival physical-social situations but, rather, as interpretations of one's self and one's perceived environment on the basis of which pertinent action rnay be designed. Although insights are not physicalistic descriptions of objects or processes in the environment, they necessarily do take account of the physical environment. Their usability depends in part uponhow well this is done. Insights may misinterpret a physical environment so badly that they are useless as rules of action, in which case they are to be regarded as false.

It is important to understand that insights are always a learner's own. It is true, of course, that they may become one's own through adoption. An insight is usable to a learner only if he or she can "fit it in," that is, understand its significance--for him or her. A teacher cannot give an insight to a student as we serve a person food on a platter. The teacher may acquaint students with insights, but they do not become insightsfor students until students see their meaning for themselves and adopt them astheir own.

One objection frequently raised against the Gestaltist tendency to construe all learning as insightful is that some learning tasks are performed successfully without apparent development of insight--for example, when a child memorizes the multiplication tables. Gestalt psychologists concede that some learning appears highly mechanical, but they are convinced that it is not so mechanical as it may appear. Accordingly, they contend that even though children may repeat the multiplication tables until they appear to have memorized them by rote, what they actually have done is to get the feel of some pattern that is present in the tables. The pattern may lie in the relationship of the numbers or perhaps merely in the order in which the student placed the numbers to "memorize" them.

One's use of the term insights does not imply that, for a person learn to something, the person must understand all aspects of its use. Any degree of "feel for a pattern" is sufficient to constitute insightful learning. For example, in learning to extract the square root of a number, one might develop  an insight as to why the method works, or the insight gained might be much more superficial; it might merely be a "feel" for the method--the pattern  of steps--with no real understanding of the basic algebraic formula (x + y)² = x² + 2xy +y ² .

WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF INSIGHTFUL LEARNING?

Before a military rifleman can become a sharpshooter, he must "feel" for his rifle. Often, a Tennessee squirrel hunter was slow in learning to be an army rifleman. He had an excellent feel for his squirrel gun,  but a squirrel gun was not an army rifle. In his army training he had to change old insights a swell as develop new ones. On his squirrel gun sights were fixed immovably to the barrel. To hit a squirrel, he had to take wind and distance into consideration and move the rifle away from a line on the target (windward and upward) to give "Tennessee windage” and "Kentucky elevation." He had developed truthful insights to the point that he could behave intelligently without thinking; he could  aim his gun and pull the trigger while giving very little ttention to what he was doing.

Since his army rifle had movable sights, which prior to the soldier’s aiming the rifle were to be adjusted to allow for windage and elevation, a soldier was supposed to set his sights and then line them directly on his target. Under pressure of target practice, the soldier used his newinsight to adjust his sights correctly, but when he began to fire, he gave his Tennessee windage and Kentucky elevation, and he missed the target completely. He had used two sets of incompatible insights. He could learn to shoot his army rifle accurately only by getting a complete feel for army rifle and by leaving most of his squirrel-gun aiming insights out of the picture...

Teaching for development of insights has definite implication for methods of teaching and learning spelling. Groups or families of words might be studied in such a way that students develop a feeling for a certain spelling pattern. Once a pattern is discovered, other words can be sought that conform to it. Cat, fat, and bat are "at" words. Now, what about  hat, mat, pat, rat, and sat? As students, working cooperatively with their teacher, find other word families, they will soon encounter words that apparently should, but do not, fit a given family-they find some limitations to an insight. They then seek other words with the same divergence from the "rule" and make a family of them. Or, in case there is only one divergent word, they think of itas an exception. As the insights into patterns of spelling are put into words, a class can formulate rules; but rules will now be generalized verbalizations of the student's insight as contrasted with meaningless statements memorized at the beginning of study.

HOW IS INSIGHT RELATED TO UNDERSTANDING AND GENERALIZATION?

Often, when an insight is first "caught," it applies to a single case. Even so, a person is likely to assume that theinsight may work in similar situations. Suppose, for example, that after studying a particular situation, we hypothesize, "Mary became a shoplifter because she felt unwanted by her parents." The natural next step is to think, "Boys and girls who feel unwanted at home tend to become thieves." Of course, this generalization is only suggested. It is not warranted by evidence from a single case. Before generalizations become reliable, that is, before they become understandings, it is usually necessary that they rest on a number of specific insights, all suggesting the same conclusion. In short, dependable generalizations--understandings--usually are products of considerable experience. Furthermore, they are prone to change in the course of experience, evolving continuously in the direction of greater usefulness as tools of thought.

An understanding of a thing or process is its generalized meaning; that is, it is a tested generalized insight. Thus, it entails one's ability to use an object, fact, process, or idea in several or even many somewhat different situations. It is one's understandings that enable one to behave intelligently-with foresight of consequences. A tested generalization or understanding is assumed to be valid in any future situation similar to the situations in which it was tested. Tested generalizations have the character of rules, principles, or laws. Such generalizations are frequently if-then statements :If we take a given action, then the probability is high that a given consequence will follow.

We emphasize that tested generalizations should be regarded as probabilities, not absolute answers. Although, to behave with foresight, we must assume that our generalizations have predictive value, the predictions ar ealways, to some degree, based upon probability. Yet many insights have been soadequately tested that we may safely treat them as if they were certainties. Certainties, so construed, are insights in which we have tremendous faith but still not absolute commitment.

HOW DOES COGNITIVE-INTERACTIONIST PSYCHOLOGY TREAT THINKING?

Cognitive interactionists interpret thinking to be a reflective process within which persons either develop new or change existing tested generalized insights or understanding. So construed, reflective thinking combines both inductive-fact gathering-and deductive processes in such a way as to find, elaborate, and test hypotheses. Thus, ther is no essential difference between reflective thinking and scientific processes, broadly defined. However, the term reflective does carry a connotation that is somewhat better suited to a description of student thinking than does the term scientific.

For many persons, science implies white-gowned technicians, microscopes and telescopes, chemical tables, and cyclotrons. Furthermore, it suggests precise measurement, use of mathematics, a large amount of rather esoteric wizardry, and neglect of moral values. However, scientific in its broadest sense covers not only a special kind of gadgetry and techniques but also a unique outlook, attitude, and method of inquiry.

Reflective thinking refers to the essential but non-gadget likefeatures of scientific method with which we may approach all problems, whether they are physical, social, or psychological. John Dewey gave us a classic definition of reflective thinking when he characterized it as the "active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends.""

Five rather definite aspects are present in each complete act of reflection. However, no one should suppose that a person goes through them in the consecutive, orderly fashion in which they may be listed. Any or even all of the aspects may develop concurrently. Moreover, reflection normally is characterized by confusion, hesitation, backtracking, and "going aroundin circles." In many cases it appears to a thinker that one will never reach a solution at all. And once reached, a conclusion often must be abandoned and the process started all over again. Reflection is seldom easy; at best it is exhilarating and exciting, and at worst it is painfully hard work beset with many frustrating moments.

The principal aspects of reflective thinking are:

1. Recognition and definition of a problem. This occurs when one becomes aware either of conflicting goals or of a goal having an intervening obstacle to its achievement. Often a problem consists of a newly sensed discrepancy in known data.

2. Formulation of hypotheses. Hypotheses are possible answers in the form of invented generalizations that, to be used most successfully, must be verified by human experience. In a relativistic sense all scientific generalizations are hypotheses in which greater or lesser degrees of assurance can be placed. They range from hunches, based on minimum data, to laws, which reflect a very high degree of factual verification.

3. Elaboration of logical implications of hypotheses. This process includes deducing the implications or consequences of both the hypotheses whose observations already have been made, so that the hypotheses may be checked against present knowledge, and the hypotheses whose observations have not yet been made, so that the hypotheses may be tested through experiments yet to be designed.

4. Testing of hypotheses. This involves attempts to verify the implications or consequences that were deduced under the third aspect in terms of both the data of previous experience-scrutiny-explanation-and data procured in experimental tests-prediction-verification.

5. Drawing conclusions. This consists of either accepting, modifying, or rejecting the hypotheses, or concluding that as of now the available pertinent evidence does not warrant taking any stand at all.