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AN ECOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF KNOWING BY WIELDING
Author(s) -
Turvey M. T.,
Solomon H. Yosef,
Burton Gregory
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1989.52-387
Subject(s) - psychology , data science , computer science , cognitive science , ecology , cognitive psychology , biology
The ecological approach to perception, as developed by James Gibson, is described and applied to how one knows, by means of the haptic perceptual system, various properties of hand‐held objects. Four sets of experiments are reviewed in which subjects reported on the extent, orientation, shape, and fractional components of unseen objects wielded freely. For each task, an invariant specific to the object property in question is identified in the structured arrays of rotational moments and strains produced by the act of wielding. Results are discussed in relation to the concepts of attention and stimulation, as reformulated by the ecological approach, and the general theory of perception as information pickup.