James J. Gibson
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James Jerome Gibson (; January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979) was an American psychologist and is considered to be one of the most important contributors to the field of
visual perception Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding Biophysical environment, environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the ...
. Gibson challenged the idea that the
nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes ...
actively constructs conscious visual perception, and instead promoted
ecological psychology Ecological psychology is the scientific study of perception-action from a direct realist approach. Ecological psychology is a school of psychology that follows much of the writings of Roger Barker and James J. Gibson. Those in the field of Ec ...
, in which the mind directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction or processing. A ''
Review of General Psychology ''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for General Psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, the ...
'' survey, published in 2002, ranked him as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, David Rumelhart,
Louis Leon Thurstone Louis Leon Thurstone (29 May 1887 – 29 September 1955) was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his cont ...
,
Margaret Floy Washburn Margaret Floy Washburn (July 25, 1871 – October 29, 1939), leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman to be grante ...
, and Robert S. Woodworth.


Biography


Early life

James Jerome Gibson was born in
McConnelsville, Ohio McConnelsville is a village (United States)#Ohio, village in Morgan County, Ohio, United States located 21 miles southeast of Zanesville, Ohio, Zanesville and 26 miles northwest of Marietta, Ohio, Marietta. The population was 1,784 at the 201 ...
, on January 27, 1904, to Thomas and Gertrude Gibson. He was the oldest of three children and had two younger brothers, Thomas and William. Gibson's father worked for Wisconsin Central Railroad, and his mother was a schoolteacher. Because his father worked on the railroad, Gibson and his family had to travel and relocate quite frequently, moving throughout the Dakotas and Wisconsin until they finally settled down in the Chicago suburb of
Wilmette Wilmette is a village in New Trier Township, Cook County, Illinois, United States. Bordering Lake Michigan and Evanston, Illinois, it is located north of Chicago's downtown district. Wilmette had a population of 27,087 at the 2010 census. The ...
. When Gibson was a boy, his father would take him out on train rides. Gibson recalled being absolutely fascinated by the way the visual world would appear when in motion. In the direction of the train, the visual world would appear to flow in the same direction and expand. When Gibson looked behind the train, the visual world would seem to contract. These experiences sparked Gibson's interest in optic flow and the visual information generated from different modes of transportation. Later in life, Gibson would apply this fascination to the study of visual perception of landing and flying planes.


Education and career

Gibson began his undergraduate career at
Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...
, but transferred after his freshman year to
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, where he majored in philosophy. While enrolled at Princeton, Gibson had many influential professors including Edwin B. Holt who advocated
new realism New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
, and Herbert S. Langfeld who had taught Gibson's experimental
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
course. After taking Langfeld's course, Gibson decided to stay at Princeton as a graduate student and pursued his Ph.D. in psychology with Langfeld serving as his doctoral adviser. His doctoral dissertation focused on memory of visual forms, and he received his Ph.D. in 1928. E. B. Holt, who was taught by
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, inspired Gibson to be a radical empiricist. Holt was a mentor to Gibson. While Gibson may not have directly read William James’ work, E. B. Holt was the connecting factor between the two. Holt's theory of molar behaviorism brought James's philosophy of radical empiricism into psychology. Heft argues that Gibson's work was an application of William James’. Gibson believed that perception is direct and meaningful. He discussed the meaning of perception through his theory of
affordances Affordance is what the environment offers the individual. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'', and it occurs in many of his earlier essays. However, his best-kno ...
. Gibson also was influenced by James' neutral
monism Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished: * Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
, nothing is solely mental or physical. Gibson started his career at Smith College as a psychology teacher. While at Smith, Gibson encountered two influential figures in his life, one of which was the
Gestalt Gestalt may refer to: Psychology * Gestalt psychology, a school of psychology * Gestalt therapy, a form of psychotherapy * Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test, an assessment of development disorders * Gestalt Practice, a practice of self-exploration ...
psychologist
Kurt Koffka Kurt Koffka (March 12, 1886 – November 22, 1941) was a German psychologist and professor. He was born and educated in Berlin, Germany; he died in Northampton, Massachusetts from coronary thrombosis. He was influenced by his maternal uncle, ...
. Although Gibson did not agree with Gestalt psychology, he nevertheless agreed with Koffka's belief that the primary investigations of psychology should be problems related to perception. The other important figure Gibson met during his time at Smith College was his wife, Eleanor Jack, who became a prominent psychologist known for her investigations such as the " visual cliff." The two were married on September 17, 1932, and later had two children, James Jerome Jr. in 1940 and Jean Grier in 1943. In 1941, Gibson entered the U.S. Army, where he became the director of a unit for the Army Air Forces' Aviation Psychology Program during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. Of particular interest to him was the effect flying an aircraft had on visual perception. He used his findings to help develop visual aptitude tests for screening out pilot applicants. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1946. After the war ended, he returned to Smith College for a short period during which he began writing his first book, ''The Perception of the Visual World'', in which he discussed visual phenomena such as retinal texture gradient and retinal motion gradient. Before the book was published in 1950, Gibson moved to
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
where he continued to teach and conduct research for the rest of his life.


Honors and awards

After publication of his book in 1950, Gibson won the Warren Medal as a member of the
Society of Experimental Psychologists The Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP), originally called the Society of Experimentalists, is an academic society for experimental psychologists An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determin ...
in 1952. He also became a division president for the
American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
(APA) and for the
Eastern Psychological Association The Eastern Psychological Association (abbreviated EPA) is a professional organization for psychologists in the Eastern United States. It holds annual meetings where members present their research findings to colleagues. Established in 1896, it ...
. Among many of Gibson's other honors were receiving the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1961, becoming a Fulbright fellow at
Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...
, a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Gibson was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 1967. Gibson received honorary doctorates by Edinburgh and Uppsala Universities. Gibson died in
Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...
on December 11, 1979. He was 75 years old.


Major contributions and works


Gibson's approach to visual perception

The question driving Gibson's research on perception was "how do we see the world as we do?". This instigated his empirical research, the environment, and how the individual experiences said environment. There were two primary ways in which James J. Gibson reformed the way psychology views perception. The first is that the templates of our stimulation are affected by a moving organism. This was shown through his research on optic arrays. Secondly, he formulated the idea of three-dimensional space being conceptual. To Gibson, perception is a compilation of the person's environment and how the person interacts with it. James Gibson's major contributions throughout his career were published in three of his major works: ''The Perception of the Visual World'' (1950), ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'' (1966), and ''The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception'' (1979). Much of Gibson's work on perception derives from his time spent in the U.S. Army Air Force. Here, he delved into thoughts on how imperative perception is on daily functions. His work may be the first to show a distinct difference between types of perception. Form perception, on one hand, is a display of two static displays, whereas object perception, involves one of the displays to be in motion. Gibson laid down the base for empirical perception research throughout his lifetime. He did work on adaptation and inspection of curved lines, which became a precursor for perceptual research later. His basic work rejected the perspective that perception in and of itself is meaningless, he instead argued meaning is independent of the perceiver. He claimed that the environment decides perception, and that meaning is in what the environment "affords" the observer.


Major works

In his classic work ''The Perception of the Visual World'' (1950) he rejected the then fashionable theory of behaviorism for a view based on his own experimental work, which pioneered the idea that animals 'sampled' information from the 'ambient' outside world. He studied the concept of
optical flow Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and a scene. Optical flow can also be defined as the distribution of apparent veloci ...
(later published as part of his theory of affordance). According to Gibson, one determines the optical flow (which can be described as the apparent flow of the movement of objects in the visual field relative to the observer) using the pattern of light on the retina. The term '
affordance Affordance is what the environment offers the individual. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'', and it occurs in many of his earlier essays. However, his best-know ...
' refers to the opportunities for action provided by a particular object or environment. This concept has been extremely influential in the field of
design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ...
and
ergonomics Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Four primary goals of human factors learnin ...
: see for example the work of
Donald Norman Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935) is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his books on design, especially '' The Design ...
who interacted with Gibson and who adapted Gibson's idea of affordances (with significant conceptual amendments) to industrial design. In his later work (such as, for example, ''The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception'' (1979)), Gibson became more philosophical and criticised cognitivism in the same way he had attacked behaviorism before. Gibson argued strongly in favour of direct perception and
direct realism Direct may refer to: Mathematics * Directed set, in order theory * Direct limit of (pre), sheaves * Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces Computing * Direct access (disambiguation), ...
(as pioneered by the Scottish philosopher
Thomas Reid Thomas Reid (; 7 May ( O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he wa ...
), as opposed to cognitivist
indirect realism In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, the question of direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, is the debate over the nature of conscious experience;Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Cons ...
. He termed his new approach
ecological psychology Ecological psychology is the scientific study of perception-action from a direct realist approach. Ecological psychology is a school of psychology that follows much of the writings of Roger Barker and James J. Gibson. Those in the field of Ec ...
. He also rejected the information processing view of cognition. Gibson is increasingly influential on many contemporary movements in
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
, particularly those considered to be post-cognitivist. One of the most important statements in this book is that Gibson maintains that the optical information of an image is not an impression of form and color, but rather of invariants. A fixated form of an object only specifies certain invariants of the object, not its solid form. (p. 227) Meaning that there is far more information available to our perceptual systems than we are consciously aware of, which may lead us to puzzle over 'invariances' that our visual or other systems easily solve. Gibson did work on perception with his wife, Eleanor J Gibson. Together they proposed perceptual learning as a process of seeing the differences in the perceptual field around an individual. An early example of this is the classic research study done by
Eleanor Gibson Eleanor Jack Gibson (7 December 1910 – 30 December 2002) was an American psychologist who focused on reading development and perceptual learning in infants. Gibson began her career at Smith College as an instructor in 1932, publishing her first ...
and R. D. Walk, the visual cliff experiment. In this experiment an infant that was new to crawling was found to be sensitive to depth of an edge.


Ecology and perception

Gibson believed that the environment and animals are not separable items. He stated that without the environment animals cannot survive and without animals there is no environment. The environment is what we
perceive Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
at any given moment. All animals are able to perceive. Humans perceive the environment directly. This is why we are unable to perceive things in the environment that are too small to see, such as an
atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...
.


Affordances

Gibson coined the noun
affordance Affordance is what the environment offers the individual. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'', and it occurs in many of his earlier essays. However, his best-know ...
. For Gibson the noun affordance pertains to the environment providing the opportunity for action. Affordances require a relationship in which the environment and the animal can work together. An example is that mankind has changed the environment to better suit our needs. When coming across Earth's natural steep slopes, man designed stairs in order to afford walking. In addition, objects in the environment can also afford many different behaviors, such as lifting or grasping. Gibson argued that when we perceive an object we observe the object's affordances and not its particular qualities. He believed that perceiving affordances of an object is easier than perceiving the many different qualities an object may have. Affordances can be related to different areas of the
habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
as well. Some areas of the world allow for concealing while some allow for
foraging Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavi ...
.


Legacy

James J. Gibson left a lasting impact on the way that psychologists and philosophers conceptualize perception and action. He rejected the behaviorists' assumptions that learning involves the formation of associations between stimuli and responses, adopting instead a holistic view related to that of the Gestalt psychologist
Kurt Koffka Kurt Koffka (March 12, 1886 – November 22, 1941) was a German psychologist and professor. He was born and educated in Berlin, Germany; he died in Northampton, Massachusetts from coronary thrombosis. He was influenced by his maternal uncle, ...
with whom he had contact. He argued that the perceived environment is not composed by stitching together such elements as shapes and edges, but rather that the world is made up of meaningful features that are experienced continuously as wholes. He will perhaps be best remembered for his theory of affordances, which some theorists have suggested provides a fundamental way to understand the duality of mind and external reality. Previous theories of sensory meaning have argued that perceptions are separate and private from one another. This stance placed all of the perceptive meaning on the individual, which meant there was no way to find common ground on individuals' shared experiences. Gibson contended that when stimulus information is being sought out, meaningful properties of that stimulus are also perceived relationally. For instance, a softball affords "throwing" if the observer notices that the ball fits well in a person's hand, and that the weight allows it to be thrown. The training of aviators is a practical application of Gibson's views, which such suggest that training should be as realistic and unconstrained as possible. Gibson's work indicates the interactivity of observers and the
natural environment The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses ...
, and has been dubbed ecological psychology as a result. Gibson also argued that perceptual experimenters were misguided in their control over physical variables of stimuli, and the display of stimulus information should be manipulated instead. This stance breaks from traditional thought in that Gibson posited that fundamentally sound experiments could be conducted in the external world without having to construct artificial laboratory settings.


Publications

* Gibson, James Jerome., Crooks, Laurence E. "A theoretical field-analysis of automobile-driving." The American journal of psychology 51.3 (1938): 458 https://doi.org/10.2307/1416145 * Gibson, J.J. & Gibson, E. (1955). "Perceptual learning: differentiation or enrichment?" Psyc. Rev., 62, 32–41. * Gibson, J.J. (1950). The Perception of the Visual World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. * Gibson, J.J. (1960). "The Concept of the Stimulus in Psychology." The American Psychologist 15/1960, 694–703. * Gibson, J.J. (1966). The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. * Gibson, J.J. (1972). "A Theory of Direct Visual Perception." In J. Royce, W. Rozenboom (eds.). The Psychology of Knowing. New York: Gordon & Breach. * Gibson, J.J. (1977)
The Theory of Affordances
(pp. 67–82). In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (eds.). Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. * Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (1986) * Gibson, J.J. (1982). Reasons for Realism: Selected essays of James J. Gibson, E. Reed & R. Jones (eds.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.


References


External links

* Key JJG resources at

* Major centre for direct perception research
Centre for the Ecological Study of Perception and Action (CESPA)

The Gombrich/Gibson Dispute
* Donald Norman

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gibson, J. J. 1904 births 1979 deaths 20th-century American psychologists Environmental psychologists Princeton University alumni People from McConnelsville, Ohio