Mercy plus Perceiver 103Each card has symbols printed on it, which vary in number, shape and
color. The subject is given the deck, and told to sort the cards, but not
given any instructions on how they should be sorted. Instead, after the
subject makes some particular choice, the examiner tells him whether his
sorting decision has been right or wrong. Whenever a person has made ten
correct decisions, the examiner then changes the criterion for judging, also
without telling the subject. For instance, the tester may begin by expecting
the subject to sort the cards according to color. He may then change to
accepting decisions based upon shape.
In order to complete this task successfully, a person must use Perceiver
thought to decide how Mercy experiences are connected, believe in those
facts, and then on his own initiative, change these beliefs when they are no
longer correct. It is this altering of belief which humans with dorsolateral
frontal damage find especially difficult. Instead, they tend to stick with the
first sorting rule that they discover. Amazingly, when the criterion for
sorting changes, they may even tell the examiner the new rule while
simultaneously continuing to sort by the old one, even saying “This is
wrong, and this is wrong,” while repeatedly making those same incorrect
decisions.^8
We have looked at the brain locations for Perceiver automatic thought
and for the Perceiver internal world. I suggest that the brain also contains a
processor which handles Perceiver thought, called the hippocampus. There
are two of these brain centers, one located underneath each temporal lobe,
behind and above the amygdala.
The neurological evidence connecting Perceiver thought with the right
hippocampus is quite clear. In fact, some researchers even make a
distinction between the right and left hippocampi, associating Perceiver-
like thinking with the former and Server-like thought with the latter:
“Evidence from single unit and lesion studies suggests that the
hippocampal formation acts as a spatial or cognitive map...Computations
within this framework enable the animal to identify its location within an
environment, to predict the location which will be reached as a result of
any specific movement from that location, and conversely, to calculate the
spatial transformation necessary to go from the current location to a
desired location...In infra-human species such as the rat, the cognitive map
is confined to the analysis and manipulation of spatial information; but for
the human the concept is broadened to include the notion of a semantic
map in the left hippocampus. This map acts to organize abstract linguistic
material into a map-like narrative. The right human hippocampus is held to
function as a purely spatial system.” 9
Objects in Space and Time
Let us review. We started this section by looking at object recognition.
I suggested that this task is performed by automatic Perceiver strategy