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examBoard: AQA
examType: GCSE
lessonTitle: Review and Practice - Gibson Theory
James J. Gibson (1904-1979) developed a revolutionary approach to understanding how we perceive the world around us. Unlike other theorists who believed perception involved complex mental processing, Gibson argued that perception is direct - we pick up information from our environment without needing to process or interpret it first.
Key Definitions:
Gibson's theory is a bottom-up approach to perception. This means perception starts with the sensory data (what we see, hear, etc.) and builds up to recognition, rather than starting with our expectations or prior knowledge. According to Gibson, all the information we need is already present in our environment - we just need to pick it up!
Gibson emphasised that perception evolved to help animals survive in their environments. He studied perception in natural settings rather than artificial lab conditions. This "ecological validity" was crucial to his theory - he believed we should study how people perceive in real-world situations where perception has real consequences.
One of Gibson's most influential ideas is the concept of affordances. Affordances are the possibilities for action that objects in our environment provide or "afford" us. For example:
Affords sitting, standing on, moving
Affords opening, closing, passing through
Affords grasping, eating, throwing
Importantly, affordances exist whether or not we perceive them. A chair affords sitting even if no one is around to sit on it. However, affordances are relative to the organism - a chair might afford sitting to a human but could afford shelter to a mouse.
Gibson was particularly interested in how we perceive movement. When we move through our environment, the pattern of light reaching our eyes changes in systematic ways - Gibson called this "optic flow." The centre of our visual field appears to expand outward, creating a flow pattern that provides direct information about:
For example, when driving, the road appears to flow outward from a central point. This optic flow pattern helps us navigate without needing to consciously calculate distances or speeds.
Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk (1960) conducted the famous "visual cliff" experiment with infants. They created a platform with a shallow side and a deep side, both covered with glass. Most babies refused to crawl onto the "deep" side despite the glass surface being equally solid throughout. This suggests that even very young infants can directly perceive depth information (an affordance for falling) without needing to learn it through experience.
Gibson proposed that our environment contains "invariants" - stable, unchanging properties that provide reliable information about the world. These invariants remain constant despite changes in lighting, viewing angle, or distance.
As surfaces recede into the distance, their texture appears to become finer and more compressed. This texture gradient provides direct information about depth and distance without requiring mental processing.
When one object blocks our view of another, we directly perceive that the blocked object is further away. This invariant relationship provides immediate depth information.
When we move our head, closer objects appear to move more quickly across our visual field than distant objects. This motion parallax is another invariant that provides direct depth information. Try this yourself: hold your thumb up at arm's length and look at it with one eye. Move your head side to side and notice how your thumb appears to move against the background.
Kohler (1962) conducted experiments where participants wore inverting glasses that turned the visual world upside down. Initially, participants struggled to function, but after a few days, they adapted and could perform normal activities. When the glasses were removed, they experienced disorientation again before readjusting. This suggests that perception involves some form of learning and adaptation, which challenges Gibson's direct theory. However, Gibson might argue that participants were simply learning to detect new invariants in the altered optic array.
Gibson's direct theory stands in contrast to constructivist theories of perception (like Gregory's), which propose that perception is an active process of construction based on past experiences and expectations.
Gibson's ideas have had practical applications in various fields:
Test your understanding of Gibson's Direct Theory of Perception:
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