Basic Psychology: Ecological psychology

The scientific study of perception-action from a non-functionalist perspective is known as ecological psychology. Ecological psychology is a branch of psychology that adheres to much of Roger Barker's and James J. Gibson's writings. Ecological psychologists disagree with cognitive psychology's mainstream explanations for perception. Perception, action, and dynamical systems are three subcategories of ecological psychology. To be clear, many in this field would disagree with the separation of perception and action, claiming that the two are inseparable. These perceptions are shaped by an individual's ability to engage with, reflect on, and process their emotional experiences in relation to the environment. This emotional engagement capacity leads to action, collective processing, social capital, and pro-environmental behaviour.

Roger Barker's work was based on empirical research conducted at the Midwest Field Station. "The Midwest Psychological Field Station was established to facilitate the study of human behaviour and its environment in situ by bringing to psychological science the kind of opportunity long available to biologists: easy access to phenomena of science unaltered by the selection and preparation that occur in laboratories," he wrote later (Barker, 1968). This research led to the study of environmental units (behaviour settings). In his seminal work "Ecological Psychology" (1968), he argued that human behaviour was radically situated: that you couldn't predict human behaviour unless you knew what situation, context, or environment the human in question was in. For example, certain behaviours are appropriate for being in church, attending a lecture, working in a factory, and so on, and people's behaviour in these environments is more similar than an individual's behaviour in different environments. He has since expanded on these ideas in a number of books and articles.

James J. Gibson, too, emphasised the importance of the environment, specifically the (direct) perception of how an organism's environment allows it to perform various actions. As a result, an appropriate analysis of the environment was critical for explaining perceptually guided behaviour. He contended that animals and humans have a'systems' or 'ecological' relationship to their surroundings, and that in order to adequately explain some behaviour, it was necessary to investigate the environment or niche in which the behaviour occurred, as well as the information that 'epistemically connects' the organism to the environment.

Gibson's emphasis on ambient, ecologically available information – as opposed to peripheral or internal sensations – distinguishes Gibson's perspective in perceptual science in particular and cognitive science in general.  The adage "Ask not what's inside your head, but what your head's inside of" captures this concept.  Gibson's perception theory is information-based rather than sensation-based, and to that extent, an examination of the environment (in terms of affordances) and the accompanying specificational information that the organism detects about such affordances is central to the ecological approach to perception. Throughout the 1970s and until his death in 1979, Gibson increased his emphasis on the environment by developing the theory of affordances - the real, perceptible opportunities for action in the environment that are specified by ecological information.

Gibson rejected outright indirect perception in favour of ecological realism, his new form of direct perception based on the concept of ecological affordances. He also rejected the emerging constructivist, information processing, and cognitivist views, which assume and emphasise internal representation and the processing of meaningless, physical sensations ('inputs') in order to produce meaningful, mental perceptions ('outputs'), all of which are supported and implemented by a neurological basis (inside the head).

When compared to widely publicised advances in the fields of neuroscience and visual perception made by computational and cognitive approaches, his approach to perception has frequently been criticised and dismissed.