Experimental Methodology and Conceptual Clarity in the Study of Orienting Response Elicitation and Habituation: A Reply to Furedy

In response to Furedy's (1991) comments on Gati and Ben-Shakhar (1990), it is claimed that Gati and Ben-Shakhar's approach is a realist one in that it contributes to a conceptual clarification of theoretical issues related to orientation phenomena and to the formulation of a testable theory for orienting response (OR) elicitation and habituation. Furthermore, it is argued that at least some of the "brute facts" mentioned by Furedy as contradictions to Sokolovian OR theory (Sokolov, 1963) can be accounted for by a feature-matching approach, thus demonstrating the strength of this approach rather than its weakness.