James Gibson’s ecological approach to locomotion and manipulation

Adolph, K. and Hoch, J. and Ossmy, Ori (2019) James Gibson’s ecological approach to locomotion and manipulation. In: Wagman, J.B. and Blau, J.J.C. (eds.) Perception as Information Detection: Reflections on Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Resources for Ecological Psychology Series. Taylor & Francis, pp. 222-236. ISBN 9780429316128.

Abstract

James J. Gibson highlighted four types of basic actions: postural actions, exploratory actions, locomotion, and manipulation. In contrast to typical approaches, Gibson’s ecological approach to locomotion and manipulation is not merely about the well-studied human activities of walking and reaching. Gibson acknowledged the importance of learning and exploration throughout The Ecological Approach. Albeit absent from The Ecological Approach, development is integral to Gibson’s proposal that perception functions to detect affordances for action. The Ecological Approach outlined several important functions of vision for guiding locomotion: keeping balance, controlling collision, steering, navigating a cluttered environment, and coping with variations in the ground surface. For each posture in development, infants must learn all over again to generate, detect, and use perceptual information about body-environment relations to perceive affordances for balance and locomotion. Simple association learning cannot work because the status of the body and the environment are always changing.

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