[From Stefan Balke (970528.1130 CET]]
Rick Marken (970527.0920 PDT)
Bill Powers (970527.0619 MDT) replying to Stefan Balke (970527.1100
CET):When you say your statement is a disturbance, you aren't specifying >>
what perception it is supposedly disturbing. To do the Test, you
have to define a variable that you think is under control.
I would say that this is the most common misconception people have >about
doing the Test. Most people seem to get the idea that The Test
involves the application od "a disturbance". What is often forgotten or
ignored is the fact that the notion of a disturbance makes no
sense unless one has, in mind, some variable whose value _would_ be
changed by the disturbance _if it were not under control_.The most essential (and difficult) aspect of the Test is _guessing_ >what
variable(s) an organism _might_ be controlling. Once you have
guessed what variable _might_ be under control, it is easy to think of
things that would change the value of this variable if it were _not_
under control.
Thanks, Bill and Rick,
now I've learned to make a more complete analysis at first (but I'm still
puzzling how to do that :-)). I remember the example of the car and the wind
(disturbance), blowing the car out of the lane (which surely would happen
without an attempt to steer the car in the center of the lane (reference
state) and the movement of the steering wheel (action)). Here we have
everything well defined and most of the variables are even measurable. But
in the social context it's more difficult to say A (which is an action of
one person) would have moved B (which is an action of person b) into this
direction, but it didn't, therefore we have a hint that a control process
could be involved.
One problem could be that we are confronted with a hierachie of lot's of
control systems, and the absense of any control is in contrast to the windy
road example not to be expected. So there always will be the possibility of
alternative explanations.
Best, Stefan