The deep origins of Ecological Psychology lie in the
philosophies of Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and
New Realism. But that is a much longer story...
The first key paper of the modern science is probably
a paper on perceptual learning (Gibson and Gibson,
1955), in which it was proposed that perceptual
learning involved better discriminating
stimuli. That is, this
type of learning does not involve gaining more
sophisticated mental processes, but rather more
sophisticated sensitivity to the details of the world.
Discussion generated by this paper, and further
related works, were guided by a search for the
'discriminated thing' needed to fill in the
perceptual-learning theory. The most obvious candidate
would be something like the stimulation created by the
retinal image... but the problem with the retinal
image were already well known: The retinal image is not specific to
the properties of the world, and therefore it cannot
provide a firm basis for accurate perception.
Gibson's prior work on optic
flow was working towards a solution, but
something more radical was needed.
This culminated in the second key paper (Gibson,
1961), in which it was pointed out that we could study
the ecology of ambient energy, i.e., the structure of
the light waves, sound waves, etc. that are bouncing
all around you in whatever room you are reading this
in. The visual side of this work would be called
Ecological Optics, and from that we get the
'ecological' in 'Ecological Psychology'. The
structured energy around us is specific to the
properties of the world, and so if we can discriminate
this ambient energy in the right ways, we come to know
the properties of the world. Or, if we want to back
off just a touch: At
least some of the structure in the ambient
energy is specific to at
least some of the aspects of the world we
would like to know about, and so, in
those moments when we managed to correctly
discriminate the correct pattern-structures, we are
accurately and unambiguously discriminating something
about the objects and events around
us.
A few years later (Gibson, 1966) this idea was put
into the a book-length discussion of the evolution of
perceptual systems, which include both the sensory
organs and all the other parts of the organism
involved in moving so as discriminate these patterns.
The evolutionary context in which human abilities are
thereby put, and the developmental context that
started this whole line of thinking, led to some
speculation in the final chapters about what aspects
of the world we would expect organisms to perceive:
Evolution and development both occur in the context of
behavior, and so we might expect organisms to evolve
and develop so that they discriminate those aspects of
the world relevant to behavior. That is, we would
expect animals (including people) to be best at
discriminating the world in terms of what it affords
them, e.g., in terms of what future actions the
current situation makes possible, e.g., in terms what
outcomes can be realized by the actions the animal is
capable of performing. To make this concept more
concrete, Gibson invented the term 'affordance.'
Still later (Gibson, 1979), the more radical
consequences of this new understanding of perception
were explored at length. Gibson had been a very well
reputed perceptual researcher in the '40's and '50's,
before any of this ecological thinking began, but by
the time of his last book there were a growing number
of people interested in pursuing the more aggressive
research agendas he had laid out. The most obvious
research tasks were: 1) Identify higher-order
invariants that specify properties of the world, 2)
Show that organisms (these days, typically 'people')
are sensitive to those invariants, 3) Put those
together into demonstrations that behavioral success
is due to proper sensitivity to invariants. Oh, and 4)
don't shy away from opportunities to do this in the
context of tasks not traditionally thought of as
'perceptual.' The most important early
proponents of Gibson's thinking were Michael Turvey,
Bob Shaw, and Bill Mace, who played pivotal roles in
founding the International
Society for Ecological Psychology, the journal
Ecological Psychology, and the Center for the
Ecological Study of Perception and Action (CESPA) at
the University of Connecticut. David Lee made the
first solid demonstration of an optical invariant used
to guide a critical behavior - the rate of
acceleration of optic expansion (symbolized 'tau'),
which can be used to regulate timing of impact with a
surface (e.g., birds retracting their wings when
diving into water at break-neck speeds). Clair
Michaels and Claudia Carello put out the first book
that could be considered a textbook for the field "Direct
Perception."
Today, Ecological Psychology has a small, but
thriving research community using this approach to
study the full range of psychological phenomenon.
My most
exciting eco-psych related project is an attempt to
create a textbook for the field. Following my
announcement of the project at ICPA in Ouro Preto,
Brazil, over twenty people have volunteered to be part
of this project. The goal is to create
massively-multiauthored textbook that could be used
both for a specialized class on Ecological Psychology
and in a general class on Perception and Action. This
is likely a 4-5 year project, and we are still looking
for more people to create draft content and to edit
content in the later stages. If you are interested in
working on this, please contact me.
I am
collaborating with Lee
Rudolph and others on a project attempting to
model emotional movement in displays resembling the
classic Heider-Simmel task. Two geometric objects move
around, and if they move correctly, then people
experience them as emotional entities (e.g. 'that
triangle is angry' and 'that circle is scared'). Our
preliminary results are very encouraging and have been
presented in poster form at a few meetings, but we
have had remarkable trouble getting funded. It is a
familiar sob story, we always get at least one
reviewer who says we have the greatest things since
sliced bread, and at least one who thinks we are
incoherent. We'll keep trying for funding, and keep
doing the research, but the project is in slow-motion
unless we can figure the grant-scene out better.
There is
also an ongoing discussion in Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral Sciences about
the potential for Ecological Psychology to make a deep
contribution to social psychology. This grew out of an
article I wrote that listed many potential ways in
which E. B. Holt's New Realism could be relevant to
modern eco-psych.
Finally,
I am finishing up a series of papers from my
post-doctoral work on looking as an active, functional
behavior. This was developmental research, with human
infants, and I had several interesting idea for
further work along these lines. At some point I hope
to get back to this work lab-space gods or generous
collaborators willing.
Charles,
E. P. (Submitted). Verifying the social function of
young infant looking in parent infant interaction. British Journal of Developmental
Psychology
Charles,
E. P. (In press – September Issue 2011). Seeing
Minds in Behavior: Descriptive Mentalism. Review
of General Psychology.
Charles,
E. P. (2011). Ecological psychology and social
psychology: Continuing Discussion. Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, ‘Online
First’ publication available
Charles,
E. P., & Sommer, B. Ecological
Psychology. (In press). In, V. S. Ramachandran (Ed),
Encyclopedia
of Human Behavior, 2nd edition.
Maryland Heights MO: Elsevier
Charles,
E. P. (2011). Introduction. In E. P. Charles (Ed.) A New Look at New Realism: The Psychology
and Philosophy of E. B. Holt (pp. xxxi-lviii). Piscataway, NJ: Transaction
Publishers.
Charles,
E. P., & Smart, L. J. (2011). Studies
in Perception and Action XI. New York:
Psychology Press (a subsidy of Taylor &
Francis).
Charles,
E. P., Singer, M. E., & Rudolph, L. (2011)
Higher-order invariants underlying the perception of
emotion in Heider-Simmel tasks: A preliminary
report. In E. P. Charles, & L. J. Smart (Eds.),
Studies in Perception and Action XI
(pp. 2-7). New York: Psychology Press
Charles,
E. P. (2011). Ecological psychology and social
psychology: It is Holt or nothing! Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, 45,
132-153.
Charles, E. P., &
Rivera, S. M. (2009). Object permanence and method
of disappearance: Exploring the contradiction
between looking and searching measures of object
permanence. Developmental Science, 12,
991-1006.
Charles,
E. P. (2009). The (Old) New Realism: What Holt has
to offer for Ecological Psychology. Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral Science, 43,
53-66.
Charles, E. P. (2008).
Ecological psychology’s struggle to study perception
at the appropriate level of analysis: Examining the
past, guessing the future. In J. Clegg (Ed.), The
Observation of Human Systems: Lessons from the
History of Anti-Reductionistic Empirical
Psychology. Piscataway, NJ: Transactions
Publishers.
Charles,
E.
P. (2004). Dualities hidden influences in models of
the mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
27, 400-401.
Coss,
R.
G., & Charles, E. P. (2004). The role of
evolutionary hypotheses in psychological research:
Instincts, affordances, and relic sex differences. Ecological Psychology, 16, 199-236.
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