James J. Gibson

James Jerome Gibson ( born January 27, 1904 in McConnelsville, OH, † December 11, 1979 in Ithaca, NY ) was an American psychologist and mainly dealt with the psychology of perception. Gibson taught from 1929 to 1949 at Smith College and from 1949 until his death at Cornell University. He was married to the developmental psychologist Eleanor J. Gibson.

Gibson established a psycho -ecological theory of visual perception and perception in general. The focus of his theory is less cognitive processing, but rather the interaction of the perceiver with certain characteristics of the environment. In order to understand perception, consequently, the analysis of the environment and the active subject is important. The perceiving organism explores its environment while active, which can be interpreted as opposing position to behaviorism and cognitivism. Also by neurobiologists this approach is confirmed today: "Animals and humans behave first, and then the structure of the sensory world determined " (Gerhard Roth 1996: 320).

Specific creatures

Perceptual processes do not happen unspecific in animals, they are not solely dependent on the existence of respective sense organs, but by the specificity of the species-specific life support. Gibson says that aspects of the natural or cultural environment for all living things have to act different offers ( affordances ). The same moth has as prey for a bat as another offer for an individual, an ant or a tiger. The type of life support of an organism determines whether an object or an animal or a human being are important prey, enemy, annoying side effect, risk or insignificant facts. In that respect, a reasoned from the life preservation of the species, each specific orientation.

In a specific environment ....

Gibson has especially studied in the field of visual perception, the arrangements, conditions of the human environment and are described in their specificity, as they are to offers of human actions. Thus the cognitivist attempt the description of human environment is given as a non-specific physical. Human perception and orientation ( mental) is directed by Gibson, which offers a situation that is the possibilities to act to recognize. This orientation is built by the people in different areas in the course of life and is the knowledge base of our actions. You may also be lost (eg in stroke and dementia) again in amnesic processes, although the perception in the strict sense, as sensory ability is not lost.

Active ...

Gibson stresses that, for example, must have learned motor to see, namely to control body movements, head movements, our eye movements, so that one can ever see what you want to see. Alone in seeing with one eye ten eye muscles are involved (M. ), which must be specifically controlled: For the control of the iris opening according to the light intensity: sphincter pupillae, pupillary dilator M.; for controlling the lens curvature - a function of the iris opening - for near or distance vision: M. ciliaris ( from tensor chorioidae: Brücke'scher muscle and Fibrae circulares - Müller ring shear muscle - consisting ); continue for the movement of the eyeball, the musculi bulbi ( medial rectus, lateral rectus, superior rectus, inferior rectus, superior oblique, inferior oblique ). Then there are the corresponding muscle of the other eye, the muscles of the neck, upper body, legs to align objects that we want to uphold. " Images " on a "passive retina ," representations of "features " - starting points of countless treatises on perception - can achieve organismic perception, however, never functional.

By Gibson, the activity seriously, it presupposes a subject that bypasses intentional specifically with its environment. Thus, the non-specific approach of most psychological theories is overcome, neither have a conception of the specific environment of organisms with specific offers ( affordance, affordances ) for specific organisms, nor a concept of specificity of the functional organization of mental processes of organisms. In the extension of the approach of JJGibson one finds today the subject scientifically oriented critical psychology.

Works (selection)

  • A study of the reproduction of visually Perceived forms. Princeton University, 1928. (Dissertation)
  • The Concept of Stimulus in Psychology. The American Psychologist 15/1960, 694-703
  • The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. 1966th Dt. , The meaning and the process of perception. Hans Huber, Bern 1973. ISBN 3-456-30586-9
  • The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. 1979 Dt: .. Perception and the environment. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich 1982. ISBN 3-541-09931-3
  • Edward Reed, Rebecca Jones ( ed.): Reasons for Realism. Selected Essays of James J. Gibson. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale 1982. ISBN 0-89859-207-0
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