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Perceptual control theory (PCT) is a model of behavior based on the properties of negative feedback control loops. A control loop maintains a sensed variable at or near a reference value by means of the effects of its outputs upon that variable, as mediated by physical properties of the environment.
The Method of Levels originated in Bill Powers’ phenomenological investigations into the mobility of awareness relative to the perceptual hierarchy. [3] He prepared a description of it for his 1973 book, Behavior: The Control of Perception, but the editor persuaded him to remove that chapter and the chapter on emotion. [4]
William T. Powers (August 29, 1926 – May 24, 2013) was a medical physicist and an independent scholar of experimental and theoretical psychology [1] [2] [3] who developed the perceptual control theory (PCT) model of behavior as the control of perception.
Perceptual control theory (PCT) is a psychological theory of animal and human behavior originated by William T. Powers. In contrast with other theories of psychology and behavior, which assume that behavior is a function of perception – that perceptual inputs determine or cause behavior – PCT postulates that an organism's behavior is a ...
Gary Cziko is an American researcher, and author [1] in the field of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign who has worked on the philosophical model known as perceptual control theory (PCT) – a model whose original developer, William T. Powers, was his mentor. [2]
As early as the 1860s, with the work of Hermann Helmholtz in experimental psychology, the brain's ability to extract perceptual information from sensory data was modeled in terms of probabilistic estimation. [5] [6] The basic idea is that the nervous system needs to organize sensory data into an accurate internal model of the outside world.
Equifinality is the principle that in open systems a given end state can be reached by many potential means. The term and concept is due to the German Hans Driesch, the developmental biologist, later applied by the Austrian Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the founder of general systems theory, and by William T. Powers, the founder of perceptual control theory.
Although not explained by reinforcement theory, the extinction burst can be understood using control theory. In perceptual control theory, the degree of output involved in any action is proportional to the discrepancy between the reference value (desired rate of reward in the operant paradigm) and the current input. Thus, when reward is removed ...