[From Bruce Abbott (950511.1820 EST)]
Bill Powers (950511.0800 MDT) --
Apparently, some people are interested in behaviors that involve acting
with perceptions of the controlled variable temporarily interrupted, as
when you reach for the soap in the shower with your eyes full of
shampoo. This seems to be a contradiction of the idea of control of
perception, so naturally they want to know how PCT explains that
behavior.
One approach to such questions that I favor on alternate weeks is to say
"Well, why don't you learn first how ordinary behavior works according
to the PCT model, and then see if you can come up with an explanation of
your own that uses the same principles?" Unfortunately, this only works
for people who already see how ordinary behavior is explained by PCT and
are willing to do the work. A person who still believes that ordinary
behavior is output controlled by inputs is really asking the question as
a challenge -- "If you're so smart, how would you explain THIS?"
I trust you are placing me in the former category. Because the above
paragraphs follow a quote of Rick's response to something _I_ had stated, it
would be easy to draw a different inference.
Bruce Abbott (950510.1320 EST)
I suggest that you are building a model of how
the cursor (and, perhaps, mouse) movement should look and feel over
time.
Or you could be calibrating the imagined target movement. The test I
suggested above might tell us which is going on: move the cursor in some
other relationship to the target beside "on" it. If you practice "on"
the target when you can see it, but can track "beside" it when you
can't see it, I think this might favor the hypothesis of remembered
target movement.
I'm not sure I see the difference. I would view "calibrating the imagined
target movement" as simply a part of building (refining) the model.
Don't forget that while you can see the target, you're also visually
tracking it. Do your eyes move as if following the invisible target?
Well, when I'm doing the task, my eyes are following the visible cursor,
which I'm trying to make follow the invisible target. If I try a run
without moving the cursor, I THINK my eyes are "tracking" the imagined
target position. (My gaze seems to be moving over the screen in an
appropriate manner.)
With your introduction of the informational graph after the run, we have
to test something else: does it make any difference in the rate of
improvement, or is it just something to keep the cognitive systems
happy?
The practice I was talking about was being done _exclusively_ with the
target invisible. Without the graph, there would be no way to compare your
actual pattern of movement to the required one, and thus no way to detect
and correct errors. On the other hand, if you interspersed visible-target
and invisible-target trials, practice "feeling" the appropriate pattern
during visible-target trials might be sufficient by itself.
Rick Marken (950511.1400) --
Bruce Abbott (950511.10:15 EST)
Isn't this pattern a world-model?
I would call the pattern itself a perception (an imagined perception); but I
agree that whatever _generated_ that perception is a "world model".
Fine with me. I was thinking of the "world model" as the perception called
into being by that structure; I hadn't really thought about what to call the
structure itself.
Regards,
Bruce