Perceptual psychology is a subfield of
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
that concerns the conscious and unconscious innate aspects of the human cognitive system:
perception
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, ...
.
A pioneer of the field was
James J. Gibson. One major study was that of
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-kno ...
s, i.e. the perceived utility of objects in, or features of, one's surroundings. According to Gibson, such features or objects were perceived as affordances and not as separate or distinct objects in themselves. This view was central to several other fields as software
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
and
usability engineering
Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human–computer interaction and specifically with devising human–computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness. It provides structured methods for achieving ...
,
environmentalism
Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad Philosophy of life, philosophy, ideology, and social movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the health of the environment (biophysical), environment, par ...
in psychology, and ultimately to
political economy
Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...
where the perceptual view was used to explain the omission of key inputs or consequences of economic transactions, i.e. resources and wastes.
Gerard Egan and Robert Bolton explored areas of interpersonal interactions based on the premise that people act in accordance with their perception of a given situation. While behaviour is obvious, a person's thoughts and feelings are masked. This gives rise to the idea that the most common problems between people are based on the assumption that we can guess what the other person is feeling and thinking. They also offered methods, within this scope, for effective communications. This includes
reflective listening, assertion skills,
conflict resolution
Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of conflict and retribution. Committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information abou ...
etc. Perceptual psychology is often used in therapy to help a patient better their problem-solving skills.
Nativism vs. empiricism
Nativist and
empiricist approaches to perceptual psychology have been researched and debated to find out which is the basis in the development of perception. Nativists believe humans are born with all the perceptual abilities needed. Nativism is the favored theory on perception. Empiricists believe that humans are not born with perceptual abilities, but instead must learn them.
References
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Cognitive biases