Ecological psychology is a
term claimed by several schools of psychology with the main one
involving the work of James J. Gibson and his associates, and another on
the work of Roger G. Barker, Herb Wright and associates at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Whereas
Gibsonian psychology is always termed Ecological Psychology, the work of Barker
(and his followers) is also sometimes referred to as Environmental Psychology. There is a some
overlap between the two schools, although the Gibsonian approach is more
philosophical and deeply reflective on its predecessors in the history of
psychology.
Both schools emphasise 'real
world' studies of behaviour as opposed to the artificial environment of the laboratory.
Barker
Barker's work was based on his
empirical work at the Midwest Field Station. He wrote later: "The Midwest
Psychological Field Station was established to facilitate the study of human behavior and
its environment in situ
by bringing to psychological science the kind of opportunity
long available to biologists: easy access to phenomena of the science unaltered
by the selection and preparation that occur in laboratories." (Barker,
1968). The study of environmental units (behavior
settings) grew out of this research. In his classic work "Ecological
Psychology" (1968) he argued that human behaviour was radically situated: in other words, you couldn't make
predictions about human behaviour unless you know what situation or context or
environment the human in question was in. For example, there are certain
behaviours appropriate to being in church, attending a lecture, working in a
factory etc., and the behaviour of people in these environments is more similar
than the behaviour of an individual person in different environments. He has
since developed these theories in a number of books and articles.[1]
Gibson
James
J. Gibson, too, stressed the importance of the environment, in particular,
the (direct) perception of how the environment of an organism affords
various actions to the organism. Thus, an appropriate analysis of the
environment was crucial for an explanation of perceptually guided behaviour. He
argued that animals and humans stand in a 'systems' or 'ecological'
relation to the environment, such that to adequately
explain some behaviour it was necessary to study the environment or niche in
which the behaviour took place and, especially, the information that
'epistemically connects' the organism to the environment.
It is Gibson's emphasis that the foundation
for perception is ambient, ecologically available information – as opposed to
peripheral or internal sensations – that makes Gibson's perspective unique in
perceptual science in particular and cognitive science in general.[2]
The aphorism:
"Ask not what's inside your head, but what your head's inside of"
succinctly captures that point.[3]
Gibson's theory of perception is information-based rather than
sensation-based and to that extent, an analysis of the environment (in terms of
affordances), and the concomitant specificational information that the organism
detects about such affordances, is central to the ecological approach to
perception. Throughout the 1970s and up until his death in 1979, Gibson
increased his focus on the environment through development of the theory of affordances
- the real, perceivable opportunities for action in the environment,
that are specified by ecological information.
Gibson rejected outright indirect perception, in favour of ecological
realism, his new form of direct
perception that involves the new concept of ecological affordances. He also
rejected the emerging constructivist, information processing and cognitivist views that assume and
emphasize internal representation and the processing of meaningless, physical
sensations ('inputs') in order to create meaningful, mental perceptions
('output'), all supported and implemented by a neurological basis (inside the
head).
His approach to perception has
often been criticised and unfairly dismissed when compared to widely publicised
advances made in the fields of neuroscience and visual perception by the computational and cognitive approaches.
However, developments in cognition
studies which consider the role of embodied cognition and action in psychology can be seen to support
his basic position.
Given that Gibson's tenet was that
"perception is based on information, not on sensations", his work and
that of his contemporaries today can be seen as crucial for keeping prominent
the primary question of what is perceived (i.e., affordances, via
information) – before questions of mechanism and material implementation are
considered. Together with a contemporary emphasis on dynamical systems theory
and complexity theory as a necessary methodology for investigating the
structure of ecological information, the Gibsonian approach has maintained its
relevance and applicability to the larger field of cognitive science.
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