The constructivist theory of perception posits that we make guesses about what we see not only based on the sensations we receive but also on our expectations and past knowledge. Learning and past experience are crucial for shaping how we perceive the world.
Gibson proposed an alternate theory: perception is innate rather than learnt. Humans evolved to make accurate judgements based solely on the sensory information we receive. Gibson observed that as we move, we receive rich information about depth and distance directly, with no inference about the visual cues required.
- We are going to explore Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception.
- First, we will establish the theories of perception in psychology.
- Next, we will explore Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception more thoroughly, highlighting the core aspects of the theory.
- We will then explore the influence of nature on perception alongside the bottom-up theory of perception.
- After, we will cover examples of Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception.
- Finally, we will provide an evaluation of the direct theory of perception.
Fig. 1 - Various theories discuss how we perceive things, including Gibson's theory of direct perception.
Theories of Perception in Psychology
There are two major approaches to understanding perception in psychology. One theory, the direct theory of perception proposed by Gibson (1966), posits that what we perceive is a direct representation of the world around us. Moreover, the information environment provides is sufficient to lead to perception directly.
Gregory's constructivist theory of perception argues that sensation provides ambiguous and incomplete information about the environment. Therefore, interpretation is necessary to create a mental image of our world.
In the constructivist view, we don't perceive the world directly. What we perceive is our interpretation that our past experiences, beliefs, expectations, and emotions can influence.
Sensation refers to the detection of sensory data by our senses. For example, our auditory system detects acoustic waves and converts them into nerve impulses. According to constructivists, perception is the conscious experience of sensation (e.g. experience of hearing), which involves interpretation and inference.
Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception
Gibson's theory (1966) argued that perception is a direct process. Direct, meaning sensations themselves are enough to create a complete representation of the world around us. Gibson challenged the constructivist view; he proposed that there is no need for interpretation or inference as sensory data is sufficient.
Here is an overview of the main points in Gibson's theory of perception.
- Perception is a direct, bottom-up process. Perception doesn't require the use of past knowledge or the interpretation of sensory data.
- Sensory data is rich, complex, and sufficient to make accurate environmental judgments.
- Perception is an innate process that is a result of evolution.
Sensory data, like visual information, is complex and can provide us with information like depth, motion or distance.
Inference means making conclusions or guesses about what we perceive based on the sensory data we have. The constructivist approach proposes that perception is based on inference.
The Influence of Nature on Perception
Direct perception was proposed to be innate rather than learnt. It likely evolved as a product of evolution. Direct perception allows animals to quickly and reliably respond to the threats in the environment and therefore benefits their survival. The animals that developed the ability to quickly process information from the environment were, therefore, more likely to survive.
Bottom-up Theory of Perception
Gibson's theory proposes that perception is a bottom-up process. Bottom-up processing is data-driven and fully based on sensory information.
Sensory information (light) in the environment meets the retina; it is transformed into electrical impulses and processed in the visual cortex as a conscious experience of seeing.
This process is direct, the information travels only in one direction, and past experiences or interpretations are not required to make accurate judgments about the environment.
Fig. 2 - Bottom-up processing.
In contrast, the top-down theory of perception (constructivist approach) argues that our past experiences and expectations heavily influence perception. Previous knowledge is used to make guesses and interpret sensations that we experience.
Fig. 3 - Top-down processing.
Example of Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception
We will examine real-life examples of Gibson's theory, including affordance and motion parallax.
Affordance
Gibson is considered to be a founder of ecological psychology. Ecological psychology proposes that perception should be studied in a natural environment instead of a lab and that perception and action are inherently connected. Our environment directly guides our behaviour by offering us opportunities to act. Gibson referred to these opportunities as affordances.
The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.—Gibson (1979)
The idea of affordances is that we receive information about how we can act about it by looking at objects. According to Gibson, we can directly perceive affordances; we don't need any prior knowledge to decide how to act.
If we see a chair, we also perceive the affordances of a chair. For example, we can sit on a chair, stand on it or move it.
Motion Parallax
Motion parallax is a visual, monocular depth cue. Think about how the objects in your visual field move when you are in motion. When we are moving, objects near appear to move faster in relation to us, while objects far away appear to move slower.
Motion parallax is a way for us to directly gain information about the distance of objects around us based on the sensory information we receive.
You can experience motion parallax when looking outside of the window of a moving car or a train. You can notice buildings or trees in the distance move significantly slower than the trees and objects that are right next to the road.
If you look at objects very far away (like the moon), you might feel like they are not moving.
The fact that perception guides our actions can be used to make people slow down when driving. By gradually putting lines painted on roads closer and closer together, drivers can be made to think that they are speeding, which can cause them to slow down.
These road marking changes promote safe driving, which is an example of a practical application of Gibson's theory.
Evaluation of Direct Theory of Perception
Gibson's (1966) theory addresses some of the limitations of the constructivist approach, which undermined the direct role of sensory data. However, critics also point out a few problems with this approach.
Strengths of the Direct Theory of Perception
First, let's examine the strengths of the direct theory of perception.
- The theory rightfully points out that a large portion of perception is innate and doesn't require past experience. For example, infants intuitively show fear of rights when approaching a cliff, even if they haven't experienced falling off of a cliff before.
- Sensory data can provide accurate motion and depth information, as exemplified by motion parallax.
- Perception also occurs relatively fast; we can respond to the environment almost instantaneously, which the direct theory of perception better explains. The constructivist view of perception requires additional interpretation of information, which should take longer than direct perception.
Limitations of the direct theory of perception
Now, let's examine the limitations of the direct theory of perception.
- One limitation of Gibson's theory is that it doesn't explain visual illusions, which demonstrates that sometimes sensory information is insufficient to represent what we perceive accurately.
Some stimuli (e.g. distorted images or sounds) don't make sense to us. Still, after being primed with another stimulus, we can suddenly make sense of them (e.g. hidden dalmatian dog optical illusion).
You may remember the famous blue vs white dress illusion that became viral in 2015. Some people perceived the same image of a dress as blue and black, while others as white and gold, while the picture remained the same. Gibson's theory cannot explain this.
Gibson argued that illusions are artificial and often taken out of context, which is why our perception of them is inaccurate. Our perception evolved to make sense of rich sensory stimuli embedded in even richer contexts. Natural illusions limit this argument. Natural illusions occur in the natural world despite the rich context they are embedded in.
An example of a natural illusion is the waterfall illusion. After observing water going down a waterfall for some time, if we shift our gaze to the rocks near the waterfall, we can perceive them moving upwards, in the opposite direction to the movement of water we were observing.
It is also unclear how affordances work. Some have argued that most affordances result from learning rather than innate knowledge.
It is hard to ignore instances where we don't perceive everything directly in our environment. Especially in busy environments, we can focus on more important stimuli while ignoring others selectively.
Inattentional blindness is a phenomenon that occurs when we fail to notice something unexpected in our visual field because our attention was focused elsewhere. In one experiment, participants were told to watch a video of people passing a basketball between them and focus on counting how many times the ball was passed between people in white shirts but not black shirts.
During this task, half of the participants failed to notice a person dressed in a gorilla suit that showed up and thumped his chest in the middle of the screen (Simons & Chabris, 1999).
The cocktail party effect refers to our ability to filter particular information from background noise. When we are in a noisy environment like a party, we can still focus on a conversation we might be having and tune out the noise we are surrounded by. Similarly, we can detect words of personal importance from loud background noise, which occurs when we overhear our name being said in a conversation we weren't paying attention to.
Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception - Key takeaways
- According to Gibson, perception is a direct process that doesn't require past knowledge or inference. Sensory data itself is rich and sufficient to allow us to make accurate judgements about our environment.
- The direct theory of perception argues that perception is innate rather than learnt. Perception likely evolved to allow animals to respond to the environment quickly.
- Gibson's theory proposes that perception is a bottom-up process. Bottom-up processing is data-driven and fully based on sensory information. Information only travels in one direction.
- Affordances are the opportunities to act that the environment offers. They can be perceived directly.
- Motion parallax is a monocular depth cue experienced during movement. Motion parallax tells us about the distance of objects in relation to us.
- Gibson's theory rightfully points out that we can gain a lot of information and make accurate judgements based on sensory data, especially in natural environments. Moreover, perception is often instantaneous, supporting the direct theory of perception.
- Gibson's theory doesn't explain visual illusions or selective perception. It is also unclear how affordances work precisely and whether or not they require previous knowledge.
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