Gibson's Direct Theory of Perception

A brief overview and evaluation of Gibson'd Direct (bottom up) theory of perception.

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  • Gibson's Direct Theory (1979)
    • The optic array
      • Optic flow
        • As we move towards a point in our visual environment, objects that are directly in front of us appear stationary but objects to the side appear to move towards us.
      • Importance of movement
        • In order to collect this perceptual information, the perceiver has to move around the environment.
      • Ecological aspects of perception
        • In the real world, there are more queues to depth perception, such as texture gradient, which can inform us of how far away it is.
      • The role of invariants in perception
        • Although some things change when the observer moves, some things don't and it is these invariants supply us with information that is crucial for peception.
      • Making sense of the optic array
        • Resonance
          • Information is broadcast to the environment, and resonance is how you can make sense of the broadcast information.
        • Affordance
          • The potential for action offered by an object.
        • The usefulness of perception
          • Perception is the detection of useful information that may help something become adaptive.
    • Evaluating Gibson's Theory
      • Biological motion
        • The visual system's innate ability to detect movement information from sparse input and an example of how perception occurs from ecological data only.
          • Johansson (1973) provided good evidence to demonstrate  this. He  strategically placed small lights on different parts of a person's body and filmed the lights as the person moved.
            • Participants were able to perceive motion simply from a changing array of dots. Even young babies and non-human mammals responded appropriately when shown the  sequences, suggesting this is an innate ability (Fox and McDaniel (1982); Blake (1993)).
      • Time-to-contact
        • The ability to judge what responses need to be made when approaching an object, so that you can avoid bumping into someone.
          • Such judgments can only be made using direct information only. Lee et al. (1982) demonstrated this videotaping long jumpers. As they approached take-off, their stride length varied so that their final footfall position was correct.
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      • Innate perceptual abilities
        • Gibson and Walk (1960) found that infants could perceive depth innately.
      • Visual illusions
      • Explaining visual illusions
        • Both Gregory and Gibson's theory can explain visual illusions.
      • Strengths
        • It correctly ighlights the richness of information in the optic array.
      • Limitations
        • It cannot explain the influence of situation or culture.
      • These can also be explained in terms of direct perception.
        • Wraga et al. (2000) found that there was no Muller-Lyer effect when participants walked around a 3D display.
          • This shows that movement is important in perception because a static display leads to the illusion.

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TomCorf

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This is EPIC! so useful - thanks jrpeacock96

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