The relationship between the velocity of cognitive processes and the frequency of stimulus reversals.

Thurstone (1944) asserted that perceptual processes are related to the characteristics of personality. He thought that subjects’ judgements obtained in perceptual tests could be used to detect the differences of personality. Granger (1953) and Eysenck (1959) agreed with this issue, adding that a common mechanism could be involved during the performance of tests of perception and personality. Bergum and Bergum (1979) found a positive correlation between the degree of creativity and the frequency of reversal of ambiguous figures as, for example, the Rubin’s vase. Beer (1990) experimentally tested if there were significant correlations between intelligence, curiosity, spatial skills and frequency of reversal of the Necker’s cube and Schröder’s stair. He found no significant correlations, but other authors (Witkin et al. 1954, Jackson, 1958; Testu, 1985) found significant correlations between perceptual and cognitive processes. This contradiction between experimental results can be due to a methodological problem in comparing the measurements of cognitive skills with those of perceptual processes. In this research we tried to disentangle this problem. Experimental data were analyzed by using models of structural equations. These equations express the relations between latent and observed variables and their validity can be tested by a specific statistical package called LISREL (Linear Structural Relationship), developed by Karl Jöreskog and Sörbom (1996). Experimental findings show that: 1) There are strong cues that support the hypothesis that there is a dependence between cognitive processes involved in problem solving by insight and mechanism of figure-ground reversal; 2) Figure-ground reversal and reversal of spatial orientation of three-dimensional stimuli probably are two different perceptual mechanisms; 3) Cognitive processes involved in insight problems, that require ability of reorganizing the structure of a problem, are different from those involved in problems that require only speed of processing.