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360 Books The fact that some of the basic tenets of behavioristic psychology had been shaken in recent years was only partly, and even then reluctantly, admitted by followers of this school. Although we find hints of there being an ‘outdated behavioristic lore’ (p. 404)and mention of specifichypotheses proposed by Hull now ceasing to be useful, behaviorists have not given up denying the existence of central mental processes, since such processes are believed to lack any ‘objective’evidence. This denial, as pointed out by Paivio right in his introduction, has made it impossible to solve the problems arising in this field. In fact, science cannot do without simplifications but there must be an upper limit in the simplifying procedure beyond which the event to be studied becomes eliminated. Paivio’s position is well supported by Th. Natsoulas, who pointed out during the course of the last decades that behaviorism came to the conclusion almost imperceptibly that some internal mental processes must exist. A passive admission of this kind, however, does not mean that its implications are also accepted. Against this passive acceptance, Paivio’s position is clearly stated : the existence of internal mental processes implies their participation in shaping human behavior, as maintained by the earlier schools of psychology that behaviorism tended to liquidate. Accordingly, the author, who keeps the S-R (stimulus-response) approach, sets himself the task of integrating behaviorism with the concepts of these earlier psychological disciplines. Of the mental factors neglected by behaviorism. Paivio devotes most of his attention to the role of visual imagery. Since these issues have already been dealt with by the earlier schools, their findings constitute the starting point for Paivio’s own research. His systematically performed experiments have led him to the conclusion that besides the verbal mediator imagery bears specifically on the evolution of symbolic functions and meaning (as shown ill Chaps. 2 and 3). It plays an important role in perception and symbolic processes (Chaps. 4 and 5): in learning and memory (Chaps. 6-10) and in the evolution, acquisition and use of languages (Chaps. 12 and 13). This being the case, all these functions need a double coding in the mental apparatus and for their interpretation a two-process model is required. In this way Paivio succeeds in showing that the integration of the behavioristic approach with that of the earlier psychological disciplines is really possible. By doing so, he has filled a gap and has potentially widened the bases of experimental I should like to add that as far as art is concerned, which this journal leads me to believe is just as important as science, the importance of imagery is rather greater than that acknowledged by Paivio. His thesis is that in human functions of the cognitive type, when information about the world is being elaborated, the verbal mediator and rules of association prevailing on the verbal level play the major part. But, at the same time, cognition and all the psychology. information about the world rely on imagery in many respects. Thus the verbal level absorbs imagery and yet cannot develop without it. In my opinion, however, the example of the artist and his visual art shows that there exists a sort of cognition and communication that proceeds on the visual level through pictorial works without taking recourse to words. The ideas communicated in this way may be very complex, as shown for example by Foucault in his analysis of Velasques’ ‘Las Meninas’ [I 3. There is no doubt that the potentials of the verbal plane are wider than those of imagery. I stated this myself in my paper in Leonard0 [2] saying that certain judgments easily verbalized cannot be expressed in paintings, such as ‘today it is fine but the day after tomorrow it will rain’, or ‘today it is mild but last week it was freezing cold’. On the other hand, the potentials of painting may be greater in other dimensions and it may be assumed that for the development of human existence, and within it for the stimulation of cognitive functioning itself, this autonomous ‘iconic’ coding is quite indispensable . REFERENCES I . 2. M. Foucault, Les mots et Ies choses (Paris: Gallimard...

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