Psychological 
Aspects 
  
C 
-— 
Human beings can hardly THINK LOGICALLY as a 
   
  
  
computor does, step by step, line after line. 
We excell in ASSOCIATIVE THINKING, seeing something 
red, the idea of & tomato may come up; and in & 
flash "throwing soft tomatoes to & hard politician", 
or "a peaceful plate with tomato-soup". And the 
thinking goes on, such that at the end we sometimes had forgotten what 
brought us on that line. : 
Associative thinking is stimulated by other senses and additional 
impressions, for instance the smell of something may recall & lost event. 
For photo-interpretation.in particular of yalue is the property that 
man cannot think in statistical terms - a tree is not for 60% an oak, 
for 30% a beech and for 10% uncertain - no, it is an oak and basta. 
Certainty is needed, vague lines are better drawn in soil science 
interpretation, even on the danger of being wrong. If certainty is not 
available, or not "makeble", we quickly loose interest completely and 
ignore the irrelevant details. 
LA specific property, which compensates for the inability of logical 
thinking is the capacity to transform a task. If a person's name has 
to be remembered, and if a direct recall fails, an analysis is made 
on bases of other events and facts, related to that person. Where 
did we meet him last time, who else was in the group, where did we 
talk about, etc., and suddenly the name is there. 
Fantasy may be another specifio property of ihinking; it is somewhat 
the opposite of Menory.] 
OBSERVATION, To take the final decision and to check 
it is done in terms of language. This is also the 
case with thinking, and memory relies for a great 
deal on language too. It has become clear that 
language is the mother and not the servant of our 
thoughts. (Bronowski 1966, Ch. II). Consequently, a 
practical approach to education in photo-interpreta- 
tion in an international institute is to adopt the language of the 
students as the working language. So the ITC did for the South American 
students and changed from English to Spanish; some staff members felt 
in reality the deeper sense in the above statement about the servant and 
the mother, 
Photo-interpretors, if concerned with basic principles of their 
profession, often use expressions as "recognition", which is followed by 
"identification", both depending upon local and general knowledge 
and the so-called "reference levels",