"Perceptual Set" in Young Children
Hayne W. Reese · Child Development · 1963
It has been demonstrated that the interpretation of an ambiguous figure by college students can be controlled by presenting the ambiguous figure after the presentation of a series of unambiguous figures which have common conceptual properties. For example, Bugelski and Alampay (i) presented the ambiguous figure depicted in Figure I to one group after a series of pictures of animals and to another group after a series of pictures of human faces. The former group tended to give an animal response, and the latter a human response. Bugelski and Alampay suggested that on the set-inducing trials S labels the unambiguous figures as members of a class and implied that the class concept mediates the response to the ambiguous figure (see also [2]). The mediational interpretation of the set effect can be derived from four assumptions. (a) On set-inducing trials the concept (verbal response) is conditioned to some ready signal such as E's beginning to turn over the next card. (b) The concept produces a stimulus which has tendencies to elicit other verbal responses. (These tendencies, or habits, are presumably acquired during the learning of the meaning of the concept.) Therefore, eliciting the concept increases the probabilities of occurrence of a group of other responses. (c) The ambiguous figure has tendencies to elicit two or more verbal responses designating objects of different conceptual classes