Basic Psychology: Ecological psychology

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The scientific study of perception-action from a non-functionalist perspective is known as ecological psychology. Ecological psychology is a branch of psychology that is heavily influenced by Roger Barker and James J. Gibson's writings. The dominant explanations of perception set out by cognitive psychology are rejected by many in the field of ecological psychology. Perception, action, and dynamical systems are the three subcategories of ecological psychology. To be clear, many in this discipline would disagree with the separation of perception and action, claiming that the two are inextricably linked. An individual's ability to engage with, reflect on, and process emotional events in relation to the environment shapes these views. Action, collective processing, social capital, and pro-environmental behaviour are all influenced by emotional engagement.

Barker

Roger Barker's work at the Midwest Field Station was based on empirical research. "The Midwest Psychological Field Station was established to facilitate the study of human behaviour 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 unaffected by laboratory selection and preparation," he wrote later. (1968, Barker). This research led to the study of environmental units (behaviour settings). He contended in his landmark work "Ecological Psychology" (1968) that human behaviour was profoundly situated: that is, you can't predict human behaviour until you know what circumstance, context, or environment the human in question is in. There are some behaviours that are suitable for being in church, attending a lecture, working in a factory, and so on, and the behaviour of people in these situations is more comparable than the behaviour of an individual in other environments. He has expanded on these ideas in a number of books and papers since then.

Gibson

Gibson's emphasis on ambient, ecologically available information as the foundation for perception, rather than peripheral or internal experiences, distinguishes his approach in perceptual research and cognitive science in general. "Ask not what's inside your head, but what your head's inside of," says the adage. The ecological approach to perception is based on an analysis of the environment (in terms of affordances) and the associated specificational information that the organism perceives about such affordances. Gibson increased his focus on the environment throughout the 1970s and until his death in 1979 by developing the notion of affordances - the real, perceivable options for action in the environment that are determined by ecological knowledge.

In favour of ecological realism, Gibson's new form of direct perception based on the concept of ecological affordances, Gibson rejected blatant indirect perception. He also rejected the emerging constructivist, information processing, and cognitivist viewpoints, which assume and emphasise internal representation and the processing of meaningless, physical sensations ('inputs') in order to produce meaningful, mental perceptions ('outputs,' all of which are supported and implemented by a neurological basis (inside the head).

When compared to extensively publicised improvements in the disciplines of neuroscience and visual perception produced by computational and cognitive approaches, his approach to perception has been criticised and rejected.

Given that Gibson's tenet was that "perception is based on information, not on sensations," his work and that of his contemporaries can be seen as crucial for keeping the primary question of what is perceived (i.e., affordances, via information) front and centre before considering questions of mechanism and material implementation. The Gibsonian approach has maintained its relevance and applicability to the greater area of cognitive science, despite a recent emphasis on dynamical systems theory and complexity theory as crucial methodologies for exploring the structure of ecological information.

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