A Historical Review of Perceptual Defense

A review of the history of perceptual defense was traced back to the history of perception and sensation. More than three hundred articles have appeared on the literature since the presence of the concept of perceptual defense. The change of interest in the investigation has been shifted from the dynamic aspect to the perceptual behavior and the emphasis of the role of individual difference in personality. Other trend of the verbal behavioristic interest has been concentrated on the problem of word frequency and response bias. In view of the amount of experimentation conducted, the advance of perceptual defense is always impressive. There may be less studies of it in the future. However, perceptual defense remains an intellectual challenge to the field of verbal learning.