๐ง Ecological Psychology
Ecological Psychology is an embodied approach to psychology founded by James J. Gibson and developed by contemporary theorists, which posits that perception and action are continuous, direct, and situated within an organismโs environment. Rather than constructing internal mental models or representations from impoverished sensory inputs, organisms directly perceive affordancesโaction possibilities offered by the environment.
๐๏ธ Theoretical Framework
- Direct Perception: Organisms detect rich invariants in the ecological optical flow and ambient energy arrays directly, bypassing inferential computation.
- Affordances: Environmental properties defined relative to the action capabilities and embodiment of the observer.
- Organism-Environment System: The fundamental unit of psychological analysis is not the isolated brain or mind, but the coupled organism and its physical habitat.
๐ Related Entities & Concepts
- Embodiment & Situated Cognition
- Phenomenology
- The History and Philosophy of Ecological Psychology (Lobo et al. 2018)