1950
Eleanor Gibson (1910–2002), James J. Gibson (1904–1979)
Eleanor and James J. Gibson were American psychologists who coined and expanded research on an ‘ecological approach’ to perceptual psychology. This ecological approach positioned perception as shaped by environment and the way the observer reacts and interacts with it. In other words, stimuli that prompt visual and sensory impressions were locally observed and directly perceived, rather than through neural or cognitive systems that involved evaluation and analysis. In fact, James J. Gibson was often criticized and in turn discredited for being stubbornly intent that neural, cognitive reactions to depth and movement, and relational observations that affect one’s perception were mutually exclusive, and purported that visual perception was based on the latter only, and not the former. Perception, in his view, did not rely on cognitive systems, but were direct responses that were not inferred or detected through a series of hints or cues.
Eleanor Gibson’s significant contributions to ecological perceptual psychology involved her studies on perceptual learning, and in part, child psychology. Perhaps her most well-known experiment done in collaboration with Richard Walk (1960) was a study on the development of depth and distance perception. Called the “Visual Cliff,” the experiment revolved around the chance observation that a newborn goat knew minutes after its birth not to move off of a high stand. This signaled that animals may have the instinct to perceive depth and distance. The experiment consisted of a plexiglass table top upon which the subjects were placed, with one half of it covered directly in a checkerboard cloth at its surface, and the other half with the same patterned cloth that laid four feet below. In most tests, from dogs, chickens, lambs, goats, pigs, monkeys, and human toddler, all animals avoided or were leery of stepping onto the “deeper” side — the side where the pattern was placed far below.
This experiment aligned with James J. Gibson’s hypotheses in 1950, at the time that he published The Perception of the Visual World that perception of texture gradients and motion perspectives were physical and direct. “The crucial mechanism in depth perception … is not the retinal image, with all its cues, but the changing flow of relationships among objects and their surfaces in the environment that the perceiver moves through” (Hunt). Depth is perceived through changes in “optic array.” Gibson believed that the optic array with its relational changes through movement provided enough information for the viewer to directly perceive depth and distance — without retinal or cognitive explanations.
Central to the Gibsons’ theory of direct perception was the concept of affordances that were provided by the environment, allowing opportunities for perceptual activity.
“[A]n affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both if you like. An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and the observer” (Gibson, 1979).
Though Gibson’s theories were often seen as having “no testable hypothesis, no quantitative predictions” (Nakayama), this may have also been the key to their utility in later influencing user-centered, ergonomic design. Donald Norman, director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego, and the author of The Design of Everyday Things expands on Gibson’s theories, and describes affordances as properties in the design of objects that suggest its use through visual hints.
To Gibson, value and meaning are gleaned from sources immediate to the viewer and their properties, rather than through cognitive systems — the system at play is a perceptual system, and the detection and observation of stimuli paired with the active responses to those stresses, which are relational, rather than absolute.
References:
Gibson, E. J., Walk, R.D. “The visual cliff.” Scientific American. 1960. pp 202, 67–71.
Gibson, J.J. The Perception of the Visual World. Houghton Mifflin. Boston, 1950
Gibson, J.J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin. Boston, 1979.
Heft, Harry. “An Ecological Approach to Psychology.” Review of General Psychology, Vol. 17, №2. American Psychological Association. 2013. pp 162–167.
Hunt, Morton. The Story of Psychology. Doubleday. New York, 1993. pp 466–468, 474–477.
Nakayama, Ken. “James J. Gibson — An Appreciation.” Psychological Review, Vol. 101, №2. The American Psychological Association, Inc. 1994. pp 329–335.
