Abstract
The ecological approach developed by the late James J. Gibson (1966, 1979) has been described as a revolutionary psychology (Heft, 1988a; Mace, 1977; Neisser, 1976, 1990; Reed, 1988, 1996; Reed & Jones, 1979; Turvey, 1977). It is a radical departure from the way perceiving, and knowing more generally, have been traditionally conceptualized in psychology and philosophy. At the heart of Gibson’s ecological approach is an original analysis of the environment, which in turn leads to a novel view of person—environment relations with significant implications for psychology and epistemology. Because of the distinctive nature of these conceptualizations of the environment and person—environment relations, Gibson’s ecological approach has been promoted as having particular significance for environment—behavior (EB) studies and environmental design (Heft, 1981, 1988a; Kaminski, 1989; Krampen, 1991; Landwehr, 1988; Lang, 1987).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Adolph, K. E. (1995). Psychophysical assessment of toddlers’ ability to cope with slopes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 21, 734–750.
Adolph, K. E., Gibson, E. J., and Eppler, M. A. (1990). Perceiving affordances of slopes: The ups and downs of toddlers’ locomotion (Emory Cognition Project, Report #16). Atlanta, GA: Emory University.
Altman, I., and Rogoff, B. (1987). World views in psychology: Trait, interactional, organismic, and transactional perspectives. In D. Stokols and I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (pp. 7–40 ). New York: Wiley.
Ball, W. A., and Tronick, E. (1971). Infant responses to impending collisions: Optical and real. Science, 171, 818–820.
Barker, R. G., and Wright, H. F. (1951). One boy’s day: A specimen record of behavior. New York: Harper.
Benedikt, M. L. (1979). To take hold of space: Isovists and isovist field. Environment and Planning B, 6, 47–65.
Benedikt, M. L., and Burnham, C. A. (1985). Perceiving architectural space: From optic arrays to
isovists. In W. H. Warren and R. E. Shaw (Eds.), Persistence and change: Proceedings of the first international conference on event perception (pp. 103–114). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bergson, H. (1910). Time and free will: An essay on the immediate data of consciousness (F. L. Pogson, Trans.) New York: Macmillan.
Bonnes, M., and Secchiaroli, G. (1995). Environmental psychology: A psycho-social introduction. London: Sage.
Bower, T. G. R., Broughton, J. M., and Moore, M. K. (1970). Infant responses to approaching objects: An indicator of response to distal variables. Perception and Psychophysics, 9, 193196.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brunswik, E. (1956). Perception and the representative design of psychological experiments. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Burtt, E. A. (1954). The metaphysical foundations of modern science New York: Doubleday. (Originally published in 1924.)
Carello, C., Grosofsky, A., Reichel, F. D., Solomon, H. Y., and Turvey, M. T. (1989). Visually perceiving what is reachable. Ecological Psychology, 1, 27–54.
Cutting, J. E. (1986). Perception with an eye for motion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Daniel, T. C., and Vining, J. (1983). Methodological issues in the assessment of landscape quality. In I. Altman and J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Behavior and the natural environment: Human behavior and environment (Vol. 6, pp. 39–84 ). New York: Plenum.
Dewey, J. (1896). The reflex arc concept in psychology. Psychological Review, 3, 357–370.
Downs, R. M. (1976). Personal constructions of personal construct theory. In G. T. Moore and R. G. Golledge (Eds.), Environmental knowing (pp. 72–87 ). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Fogel, A. (1993). Developing through relationships. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Franck, K. D. (1984). Exorcising the ghost of physical determinism. Environment and Behavior, 16, 411–435.
Garling, T., Book, A., and Lindberg, E. (1984). Cognitive mapping of large-scale environments: The interrelationship of action plans, acquisition, and orientation. Environment and Behavior, 16, 3–34.
Garling, T., and Golledge, R. G. (1989). Environmental perception and cognition. In E. H. Zube and G. T. Moore (Eds.), Advances in environment, behavior, and design (Vol. 2, pp. 203–236 ). New York: Plenum.
Garner, W. (1974). The processing of information and structure. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books.
Geldard, F. (1972) The human senses (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley
Gibson, E. J. (1969). Principles of perceptual learning and development. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Gibson, E. J. (1994). Has psychology a future? Psychological Science 569–76
Gibson, E. J., Riccio, G., Schmuckler, M. A., Stoffregen, T. A., Rosenberg, D., and Taormina, J. (1987). Detection of the traversability of surfaces by crawling and walking infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Perception and Performance, 13, 533–544.
Gibson, E. J., and Schmuckler, M. A. (1989). Going somewhere: An ecological and experimental approach to development of mobility. Ecological Psychology, 1, 3–25.
Gibson, E. J., and Walk, R. D. (1960). The “visual cliff.” Scientific American, 202, 64–71.
Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, J. J. (1967). New reasons for realism. Synthese, 17, 162–172.
Gibson, J. J. (1971). The information available in pictures. Leonardo, 4, 27–35.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Glotzbach, P. A., and Heft, H. (1982). Ecological and phenomenological approaches to perception Nous 16108–121
Golledge, R. G. (1987). Environmental cognition. In D. Stokols and I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (pp. 131–174 ). New York: Wiley.
Golledge, R. G., Smith, T. R., Pellegrino, J. W., Doherty, S., and Marshall, S. P. (1985). A conceptual model and empirical analysis of children’s acquisition of spatial knowledge. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 5, 125–152.
Gregory, R. (1970). The intelligent eye. London: Weidenfeld.
Haber, R. N. (1969). Information-processing approaches to visual perception. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Haber, R. N. (1974). Information processing. In E. C. Carterette and M. P. Friedman (Eds.), Handbook of perception, vol. 1: Historical and philosophical roots of perception (pp. 313–333 ). New York: Academic.
Haber, R. N. (1983). The impending demise of the icon: A critique of the concept of iconic storage in visual information processing. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 6, 1–54.
Haber, R. N. (1985). Perception: A one hundred year perspective. In S. Koch and D. E. Leary (Eds.) A century of psychology as science (pp. 250–281). New York: McGraw-Hill
Hallford, W. (1984). Sizing-up the world: The body as a referent in a size judgment task. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus.
Hart, R. (1979). Children’s experience of place. New York: Irvington
Hart, R., and Moore, G. T. (1973). The development of spatial cognition: A review. In R. M. Downs and D. Stea (Eds.) Image and the environment (pp. 246–288). Chicago: Aldine
Heft, H. (1981). An examination of constructivist and Gibsonian approaches to environmental psychology. Population and Environment: Behavioral and Social Issues, 4, 227–245.
Heft, H. (1983). Way-finding as the perception of information over time. Population and Environment: Behavioral and Social Issues, 6, 133–150.
Heft, H. (1985). Way-finding and the flow of information along a path of locomotion. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, Denison University, Granville, Ohio.
Heft, H. (1988a). The development of Gibson’s ecological approach to perception: A review essay. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 8, 325–334.
Heft, H. (1988b). Joachim F. Wohlwill (1928–1987): His contributions to the emerging discipline of environmental psychology. Environment and Behavior, 20, 259–275.
Heft, H. (1988c). Affordances of children’s environments: A functional approach to environmental description. Children’s Environments Quarterly, 5, 29–37.
Heft, H. (1989). Affordances and the body: An intentional analysis of Gibson’s ecological approach to visual perception. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 19, 1–30.
Heft, H. (1993). A methodological note on overestimates of reaching distance: Distinguishing between perceptual and analytical judgments. Ecological Psychology, 5, 255–271.
Heft, H. (1996). The ecological approach to navigation: A Gibsonian perspective. In J. Portugali (Ed.), The construction of cognition maps (pp. 105–132 ). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Heft, H., and Blue, B. (1991). Affordances and children’s way-finding. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, Denison University, Granville, Ohio.
Heft, H., and Wohlwill, J. F. (1987). Environmental cognition in children. In D. Stokols and I. Altman (Eds.), Handbook of environmental psychology (pp. 175–204 ). New York: Wiley.
Hochberg, J. (1978). Perception ( 2nd ed. ). New York: Prentice-Hall.
Honikman, B. (1976). Personal construct theory and environmental meaning: Applications to environmental design. In G. T. Moore and R. G. Golledge (Eds.), Environmental knowing (pp. 88–98 ). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Ittelson, W. H. (1960). Visual space perception. New York: Springer.
Ittelson, W. H. (1973). Environment perception and contemporary perceptual theory. In H. M. Proshansky, W. H. Ittelson, and L. G. Rivlin (Eds.), Environmental psychology: People and their physical settings ( 2nd ed., pp. 141–154 ). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Holt.
Jansson, G., Bergstrom, S. S., and Epstein, W. (Eds.) (1994). Perceiving events and objects. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jiang, Y., and Mark, L. S. (1993). The pick-up of visual information about the crossability of gaps. Poster presented at the meetings of the American Psychological Society, Chicago.
Johansson, G. (1973). Visual motion perception. Scientific American, 232, 76–88.
Kaminski, G. (1989). The relevance of ecologically oriented conceptualizations to theory building in environment and behavior research. In E. H. Zube and G. T. Moore (Eds.), Advances in environment, behavior, and design (Vol. 2, pp. 3–36 ). New York: Plenum.
Kaplan, S., and Kaplan, R. (1982). Cognition and environment: Functioning in an uncertain world. New York: Praeger.
Kaplan, S., and Kaplan, R. (1989). Experiencing nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Katz, D. (1989). The world of touch. Edited and translated by L. E. Krueger. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (Originally published in 1925 )
Kohler, W. (1947). Gestalt psychology. New York: Liveright.
Krampen, M. (1991). Environmental meaning. In E. H. Zube and G. T. Moore (Eds.), Advances in environment, behavior, and design (Vol. 3, pp. 231–267 ). New York: Plenum.
Landwehr, K. (1988). Environmental perception: An ecological perspective. In D. Canter, M. Krampen, and D. Stea (Eds.), Ethnoscapes, vol. 1: Environmental perspectives (pp. 18–38 ). Aldershot, England: Avebury.
Lang, J. (1987). Creating architectural theory: The role of the behavioral sciences in environmental design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Lombardo, T. (1987). The reciprocity of perceiver and environment: The evolution of James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mace, W. (1977). James J. Gibson’s strategy for perceiving: Ask not what’s inside your head, but what your head’s inside of. In R. Shaw and J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology (pp. 43–65 ). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Mark, L. S. (1987). Eyeheight-scaled information about affordances: A study of sitting and stair climbing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 683–703.
Mark, L. S., Balliett, J. A., Craver, K. D., Douglas, S. D., and Fox, T. (1990). What an actor must do in order to perceive the affordance for sitting. Ecological Psychology, 2, 325–366.
Mark, L. S., Dainoff, M. J., Moritz, R., and Vogele, D. (1990). An ecological framework for ergonomic research and design. In R. R. Hoffman and D. A. Palermo (Eds.), Cognition and the symbolic processes (Vol. 3, pp. 477–505 ). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963). The phenomenology of perception. (C. Smith, Trans.) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Moore, G. T. (1976). Theory and research on the development of environmental knowing. In G. T. Moore and R. G. Golledge (Eds.), Environmental knowing (pp. 138–164 ). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Moore, G. T. (1979). Knowing about environmental knowing: The current state of theory and research on environmental cognition. Environment and Behavior, 11, 33–70.
Moore, R. C. (1986). Childhood’s domain: Play and place in child development. London: Croom/Helm.
Muchow, M., and Muchow, H. (1935). Der Lebensraum des Grosstadtkindes (H. Andrew, G. Gad, and J. F. Wohlwill, Trans.). Hamburg, Germany: M. Riegel.
Nasar, J. L. (1988). Environmental aesthetics: Theory, research, and application. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Neisser, U. (1976). Cognition and reality. San Francisco: Freeman.
Neisser, U. (1990). Gibson’s revolution. Contemporary Psychology, 35, 749–750.
Pomerantz, J. R., and Kubovy, M. (1981). Perceptual organization: An overview. In M. Kubovy and J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.), Perceptual organization (pp. 423–456 ).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Portugali, J. (Ed.) (1996). The construction of cognition maps Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Pufall, P., and Dunbar, C. (1992). Perceiving whether or not the world affords stepping onto and over: A developmental study. Ecological Psychology, 4, 17–38.
Rapoport, A. (1982). The meaning of the built environment. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Reed, E. S. (1987). The ecological approach to cognition. In A. Costall and A. Still (Eds.), Cognitive psychology in question (pp. 142–172 ). Brighton, England: Harvester Press.
Reed, E. S. (1988). James J. Gibson and the psychology of perception. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Reed, E. S. (1991). Cognition as the cooperation appropriation of affordances. Ecological Psychology, 3, 135–158.
Reed, E. S. (1996). Encountering the world: Toward an ecological psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reed, E. S., and Jones, R. K. (1979). James J. Gibson’s ecological revolution in psychology. Philosophy of Social Science, 45, 519–530.
Rock, I. (1983). The logic of perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rodaway, P. (1994). Sensuous geographies: Body, sense, and place. London: Routledge.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rogoff, B. (1993). Children’s guided participation and participatory appropriation in sociocultural activity. In R. H. Wozniak and K. W. Fischer (Eds.), Development in context: Acting and thinking in specific environments (pp. 121–154 ). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Russell, J A., and Ward, L. M. (1982). Environmental psychology. In M. R. Rosenzweig Sr L. W. Porter (Eds.), Annual review of psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 651–688). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc.
Saegert, S., and Winkel, G. (1990). Environmental psychology. In M. R. Rosenzweig and L. W. Porter (Eds.), Annual review of psychology (Vol. 41, pp. 441–478 ). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc.
Shore, B. (1996). Culture in mind: Cognition, culture and the problem of meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shotter, J. (1983). “Duality of structure” and “intentionality” in an ecological psychology Journal for the Theory of Social behavior 1319–43
Thelen, E., and Smith, L. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Thiel, P. (1970). Notes on the description, scaling, notation, and scoring of some perceptual and cognitive attributes of the physical environment. In H. M. Proshansky, W. H. Ittelson, and L. G. Rivlin (Eds.), Environmental psychology: Man and his physical setting (pp. 593–619 ). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Thiel, P. (1997). People, paths, and purposes. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Turvey, M. T. (1977). Contrasting orientations to the theory of visual information processing. Psychological Review, 84, 67–88.
Turvey, M. T. (1990). Coordination. American Psychologist, 45, 938–953.
Ward, C. (1978). The child in the city. London: Architectural Press.
Warren, W. H. (1984). Perceiving affordances: Visual guidance of stair climbing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 10 683–703.
Warren, W. H., and Whang, S. (1987). Visual guidance of walking through apertures: Body-scaled information for affordances. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 371–383.
Weisman, G. (1981). Evaluating architectural legibility: Way-finding in the built environment. Environment and behavior 13, 189–203.
Whyte, W. H. (1980). The social life of small urban spaces. Washington, DC: The Conservation Foundation.
Wohlwill, J. F. (1974). The environment is not in the head! In W. F. E. Preiser (Ed.), Environmental design research (Vol. 1, pp. 166–181 ). Stroudsburg, PA: Dowden, Hutchinson, and Ross.
Wohlwill, J F. (1976a). In search of the environment in environmental cognition research. In G. T. Moore and R. G. Golledge (Eds.), Environmental knowing (pp. 385–392). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Wohlwill, J. F. (1976b). Environmental aesthetics: The environment as a source of affect. In I. Altman and J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Human behavior and environment (Vol. 1, pp. 37–86 ). New York: Plenum.
Wohlwill, J. F. (1983). The concept of nature: A psychologist’s view. In I. Altman and J. F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Behavior and the natural environment: Human behavior and environment (Vol. 6, pp. 537 ). New York: Plenum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Heft, H. (1997). The Relevance of Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Perception for Environment-Behavior Studies. In: Moore, G.T., Marans, R.W. (eds) Toward the Integration of Theory, Methods, Research, and Utilization. Advances in Environment, Behavior and Design, vol 4. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4425-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4425-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3258-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-4425-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive