INTERDEPENDENCE OF FORM AND FUNCTION IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS EXPLAINS PERCEPTION OF PRINTED WORDS

Perception is described within a complex systems framework that includ es several constructs: resonance, attractors, subsymbols, and design p rinciples. This framework was anticipated in J. J. Gibson's ecological approach (M. T. Turvey & C. Carello, 1981), but it is extended to cog nitive phenomena by assuming experiential realism instead of ecologica l realism. The framework is applied in this article to explain phonolo gic mediation in reading and a complex array of published naming and l exical decision data. The full account requires only two design princi ples: covariant learning and self-consistency. Nonetheless, it organiz es and explains a vast empirical literature on printed word perception .