Absence of Gibson from history books

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I've sampled some literature on the history of psychology (because I am going to teach a course on the subject). In none of the books I've seen is the work on Gibson, let alone the Ecological movement, mentioned. Why is this? Many of Gibson's conclusions (e.g., on optical flow) are always mentioned in introductory psychology texts. Any reason for his absence?

-- Casper Hulshof (c.d.hulshof@utwente.nl), October 08, 2002

Answers

Interesting observation. One factor is that Gibson's work major work wasn't all that long ago. _The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems_ was published in 1966 and _The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception_ in 1979. Now, however, at the beginning of the 21st century, many events from the 1960s and 1970s have begun to creep into history of psychology texts (such as early cognitivism), so perhaps it is time for Gibson to begin to appear there as well.

Another factor, however, is, I believe, the ongoing animosity that exists between the Gibsonians and "mainstream" perception researchers. In the early 1990s I took a graduate perception seminar in which a whole week was devoted to describing the presumed fundamental errors underlying the Gibsonian approach to vision (at the same time, my dissertation supervisor was a former student of Gibson's). Notice also that Gibsonian work has been confined, more or less, to their own journal (_Ecological Psychology_), rarely appearing in the mainstream perception journals. One interesting exception is the debate between Fordor & Pylyshyn and Turvey & Shaw that appreared in _Cognition_ in the late 1980s or early 1990s (though many traditional psychologists would not condider cognition to be a mainstream journal -- "too phiolosophical").

As early as the mid-1980s, however, the Gibsonian approach was appearing in some perception textbooks. Margaret Matlin's, I believe, has a section on Gibson.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), October 08, 2002.


> Another factor, however, is, I believe, the ongoing animosity that > exists between the Gibsonian and "mainstream" perception > researchers.

I agree with you. Part of the problem is that some sort of 'movement' has formed, which emphasizes ecological concerns.

> supervisor was a former student of Gibson's). > Notice also > that Gibsonian work has been confined, more or less, to their own > journal (_Ecological Psychology_), rarely appearing in the > mainstream perception journals.

I work in the field of educational psychology, and recently I've seen use of the term 'affordance' (coined by Gibson) showing a steady increase. Reference to Gibson is mostly made by people who have either not read or not understood most of his work. In the field of education, this sort of thing happens all the time actually (e.g., it has happened with Vygotsky's work before).

> As early as the mid-1980s, however, the Gibsonian approach was > appearing in some perception textbooks. Margaret Matlin's, I > belive, has a section on Gibson.

The book _Theories of Visual Perception_ (by Ian Gordon) has a complete chapter devoted to direct perception. The book provides a well-written account of most of Gibson's theoretical work.

-- Casper Hulshof (c.d.hulshof@utwente.nl), October 08, 2002.


I am not an expert on James J.Gibson's perceptional theories, but I will take a guess on this question. I believe that Gibson's theories could be interpreted as consistent with a contemporary interactionist viewpoint (i.e., balance view of heredity and environment). His view is consistent with our having some mainly built-in perceptional brain mechanisms common within our species and some modification of the perception brain from internal and external environmental influences (including learning and perceptual experience). However, his theories came at a time when many psychologists in perception and cognition were trained in programs that were still strongly influenced by approaches that over emphasized learning and constructionism (viewpoint that perception is built up through complex processes rather than being very directly related to the environmental stimulation). The Gibsonian approach might have been precieved as too supportive of naturalistic interpretations of perception (i.e., too much importance to built-in and often automatic brain mechanisms and too little importance to the role of learning or cognitive elaboration). As more support for a balanced approach on the heredity and environment issue emerges, Gibson may be more recognized as a pioneer in the development of the modern type of interactionist approach to perception. If Gibson was alive today, he also may not have have much problem with the contemporary view that "automatic, species-specific, built-in brain mechanisms" are seen today as less automatic, less built-in (dependent on some type of environmental influences, often what we would decribe as learning or perceptual experience) and a little less consistent within a species than we used to think. Rather than thinking in terms of correct or incorrect views of heredity vs. environment and direct perception vs. constructionism, we should appreciate how the various viewpoints have synthesized into improved contempory theories. I also thing the difficulty of the subject matter and possibly his writing style could have limited the attention he got (e.g., he introduced some difficult new terminology). Also it would be interesting to know how much his wife (famous in her own right for the visual cliff paridigm) contributed to his theory.

-- Paul kleinginna (pkleinginna@gasou.edu), October 21, 2002.

Gibson's professional life just preceded the modern (neuro)cognition era. His methods, like his theory, are shaped by what may be discovered about every-day behaviour when observing it without much equipment. We cannot of course blame Gibson for being caught in his own time frame, nor can we blame him for the fact that he did not bring forward neural explanations or hyptheses for the direct way in which humans perceive and react to invariants in their environment. Neuropsychology, using tools like fMRI, evoked potential analysis and several other biologically oriented techniques, did not belong to the routines used by Gibson. I suspect that when he had lived 40 years later, he would have complemented his ecological perception theory with all sorts of neural underpinnings. To present-day experimental psychologists it is not satisfactory to state that people just see the world in a direct way and that this ability has its origin in the intimate relationship with their environment, i.e. the ecological view. Even if Gibson's may be generally right, it is felt by many researchers that hypotheses and explanations in terms of underlying mechanisms are missing. This is precisely the reason that, in my opinion, Gibson's theory is not a real theory: it demonstrates but does not explain. The whole machinery of neural processing as well as top-down cognitive factors is missing, which makes Gibson's view deficient from a scientific viewpoint. In fact, Gestalt psychology has a similar problem. It is not so much the fact that gestalt theory is not treated in psychology texts, but is seems invariant. Major psychology textbooks replicate their sections on Gestaltpsychology from editon to edition without any further development. Also, in Gestaltpsychology, the underlying mechanisms are lacking. This is ironically demonstrated by the fact that Gestaltpsychology did fine although the underlying neural explanations brought forward by the Gestalt psychologists appeared vague and wrong and have indeed been omitted from present-day treatments of the the theory. So, here is an other example of a set of interesting and striking observations without a theory. This is how I understand the observation of Casper Hulshof regarding Gibson's theory. The next question is: will theories like those of Gibson and the Gestaltists stay either obscure or frozen in time? I don't think so. I Predict that, as soon as neural mechanisms are proposed and investigated for the observations made by Gibson and the Gestaltists, their work will re-appear in the textbooks, however in a more appropriate scientific context. If, for example, neural mechanisms for affordances or perceptual invariants are specified and investigated, the theory will revive and be modified!

Jan Kroeze

-- Jan Kroeze (J.H.A.Kroeze@fss.uu.nl), March 26, 2004.


So am I to understand you correctly, Jan, to believe that *only* neurologically-based theories are "real" theories? Surely that cannot be correct. I think, if you read the historical record, you will find that the main criticisms of Gibson -- the ones that precented his position from becoming mainstream -- they have little or nothing to do with the (lack of) neurological specification of his central concepts. By the way, there is an interaction between Gibson and cognitive science (though not of a neurological orientation). It was adebate that appeared in the journal _Cognition_ in the 1980s between Gibson's students (Turvey?) and Fodor& Pylyshyn. Gibson (and Gibsonians) were/are fundamentally opposed to the idea that "information" is "processed" during perception.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), March 26, 2004.


Various comments regarding: (1) coverage of Gibson in Perception texts; (2) disciplinary significance of the visual cliff experiments; (3) the *tranformative-differentiationist* (rather than interactionist-enrichment) basis of the Ecological theory of * Direct Perception * can be found near the bottom of the following link:

http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/section3(210).htm

For instance, regarding the visual cliff data:

"The *empirical question* at issue was rather straightforward: At what age will different animals, placed on the central (raised) platform, move only to the shallow side and avoid the 'visual drop' (thus signifying that they can perceive the difference in distance to the ground below). The *proper theoretical interpretation* of the results, however, is still a matter of debate between those who retain the problematic *enrichment theory* of perception and those who have now accepted the Gibsonian *differentiation* theory."

*Also appearing in that (and preceding sections) are easily referenced demonstrative diagrams which (I think) help emphasize the different assumptions made by various forms of indirect perception.

Finally, I think Christopher is correct that the proponents of both indirect and direct perception mobilize evolutionary, neurological, and experimental data *but they do so in different ways.*

That is really the point I think.

Cheers, Paul F. Ballantyne

-- Paul F. Ballantyne (pballan@comnet.ca), March 26, 2004.


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