IDENTIFICATION OF UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS IS AN INTEGRAL-PART OF RESEARCH - AN EXAMPLE FROM MOTOR CONTROL

Research is inherently subjective. It is conducted within a theoretica l and methodological framework, the validity of which depends on under lying assumptions about the nature of reality and knowledge. The inter pretation of one's own data, and the evaluation of the data interpreta tion of others, requires assessment of these underlying philosophical assumptions. We contend that while examination of philosophical assump tions is demonstrably an integral part of research, it is one which ha s largely been neglected in experimental psychology because researcher s have rarely explicitly identified their ontological and epistemologi cal assumptions. A contemporary debate in experimental psychology, tha t between representational and non-representational approaches to unde rstanding the control of movement, is discussed to illustrate the infl uence such ontological and epistemological assumptions have upon metho dological choices and upon the development and evaluation of theory.