FIGURE 3

BNS 78-1777 9-28-78

49

E

இ

SAME OBJECT, 60° ROTATION IN DEPTH PLANE

FIGURE 4

0

20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
ANGLE OF ROTATION (DEGREES)

MEAN REACTION TIME FOR "SAME" PAIRS

DEPTH-PLANE ROTATION

BNS 78-1776
9-28-78

FIGURE 5

50

Dr. ATKINSON. Mr. Brown, I don't know whether this is quite as remarkable to you as it is to me: relations are absolutely orderly and can be reproduced in any laboratory in the country. This is a major step forward in understanding the relationship between the physiology of these processes and their representations as mental images.

I want to comment also on Dr. Chapin's remarks about computer speech. As you may have seen in the most recent issue of Science '80 a discussion of this topic; it emphasizes computer electronics. What is not emphasized is that none of this work could have been done without a deep understanding of the linguistic rules that characterize speech. Those rules have emerged in recent years from an interdisciplinary approach to these problems by neurobiologists, linguists, and computer scientists-all grappling with the rules that characterize human speech and with the application to computers.

No one could have foreseen that application when this work began to evolve, but it was an important and critical application.

Dr. CLARK. Mr. Chairman, Dr. Friedl would like to say a few words.

Mr. BROWN. Yes, Dr. Friedl.

Dr. FRIEDL. I would like to get back to the problem of translation that we were talking about and to suggest that one of the problems we have is exemplified by what happened here this morning.

We had a presentation of what might look to a lay audience like a rather simple result. After all, everyone knows that it isn't hard to tell whether things are the same or different and, really, what difference does it make that you have discovered that there is a regular process by which this occurs.

So, a lay audience might have looked at that presentation and said, "Yes, but so what?" It takes the kind of comment Dr. Atkinson made to explain that what looks like a simple discoverey, is, in fact, not simple but contains complex elements.

So, I would like to suggest that, in dealing with this whole problem of translation, part of the problem is that very often the results of scientific research look terribly simple, and this is especially true in the social sciences. They give us the feeling that we are repeating commonsense, that we are saying commonsense things. The translation, therefore, ought to say, "Yes, this looks simple but see what the consequences are." Let's try to explain why it is not, in fact, simple.

Mr. BROWN. I am reminded of the fact that there is a long history of scientific effort trying to understand the design of the brain. There is a book by that name, which dealt with some of the same kinds of things; namely, how we are motivated to act by things that form in our brains and if you take that far enough you get into all sorts of radical political discussions about how social change occurs because people have an image in their brains of a different kind of society. Are you going to do any research like that and get yourself into a lot of trouble?

Dr. ATKINSON. I am going to be cautious and let Dr. Simon respond to those remarks.

Mr. BROWN. All right. They create a warm feeling in people and blocks are all right but you can't go too far with this kind of thing. All right. We will get to the more controversial areas.

Dr. CLARK. The next presentation is by Dr. John Yellen, Program Director for Anthropology. He will address currently active research