Harry Heft

Affordances, Dynamic Experience, and the Challenge of Reification.

Why is it that affordances have received attention within psychology only in recent decades if they are supposedly what individuals perceive most fundamentally? This paradox can be explained, in part, by the fact that psychologists have usually considered the character of perceiving from a detached stance, and then reified the results of this analysis-an error that William James called the psychologists fallacy-rather than attending to the immediate flow of perception-action. By the same token, if ecological psychologists were to take stimulus information as what is perceived, rather than as part of a conceptual framework offered to explain how we perceive, they would be committing a similar reification error. Ecological optics as a conceptual framework is always open to revision, even while the reality of affordances is assumed. Bearing in mind this distinction between what is perceived and how it is perceived, investigators need to return regularly to immediate experience, both as a means of verifying that our concepts connect back to our experience of the world and as a way of uncovering new qualities of perceptual experience for investigation. From this perspective, several exemplars of phenomenologically driven perceptual research are examined. Furthermore, the multidimensionality of affordances is considered, with an emphasis on their place in the flow of immediate experience, development, and sociocultural processes.

Evaluating Environmental Scenes Using Dynamic Versus Static Displays

Perceivers’ assessments of dynamic and static displays of environmental scenes were compared to evaluate how readily responses to static displays can be extrapolated to experience in situ. The dynamic displays were videotaped segments taken along a route presenting transition events characterized by the property mystery. The static displays were freeze frames from each segment. Results indicated that assessments of static displays do not simply parallel those of dynamic displays. Preference ratings were higher for static displays, but preference ratings in the dynamic condition were more strongly correlated with a wider range of variables. Moreover, epistemic ratings were higher for dynamic than static displays. Turn segments of the route, where the greatest amount of new information is revealed, produced the highest ratings on epistemic and evaluative variables. Differences across display modes point to a greater need for understanding environmental perceiving in relation to the dynamic quality of everyday experiences.

The Social Constitution of Perceiver-Environment Reciprocity

Although animal—environment reciprocity is central to ecological psychology, one facet of this viewpoint remains underappreciated: organisms alter environments so as to better function in them. In many species this activity of “niche construction” includes coordinated actions by individuals jointly working toward common ends. Mounting paleontological and archeological evidence indicates that human evolution should be viewed in the light of such social considerations. The environment of our immediate human ancestors was marked by, among other things, group settlements, manufactured stone tools, and extensive migration. An emerging species such as ours, whose distinctive psychological qualities offered a selective advantage relative to these conditions, would flourish particularly if it could preserve the gains of prior generations even as its members continued to transform econiche features in functionally significant ways. This evolutionary perspective, with its due recognition of sociocultural processes, highlights 3 factors of importance for ecological psychology: (1) the history of person-environment reciprocity results in human environments whose natural and sociocultural factors are inextricably intertwined. (2) developing individuals enter human environments not as solitary explorers but through the guidance of more experienced persons with the result that much development takes shape through social mediation; and (3) a distinguishing and ubiquitous feature of human environments that is a product of collective human actions is places. Nearly all human activity, including most psychological research, occurs in places, and owing to their psychological significance, it would seem impossible to disentangle psychological and social processes. These 3 factors illuminate that a fully-realized ecological psychology will be one that includes recognition of the constitutive role played by social processes.

The Role of Environmental Features in Route-Learning: Two Exploratory Studies of Way-Finding

Cognitive representation of the overall layout of an environment provides information about the relative location of fixed sites in the setting which can be used for orientation purposes while navigating. It was suggested, however, that reliance on geographical orientation in way-finding is most likely in relatively undifferentiated settings. In differentiated settings individuals will tend to utilize environmental features, i.e., landmarks, in way-finding. This hypothesis was examined through two studies. In a laboratory investigation using a videotape of a walk through a neighborhood, subjects were able to learn the route in spite of the fact that the procedure minimized opportunities for geographical orientation, and landscape features appeared to play a significant role. In a field study which was conducted in a wooded area, one group of subjects was exposed to a route which contained prominent objects at each choice, while a second group initially experienced the route without the presence of such features. A subsequent test of way-finding failed to reveal a significant difference in performance errors between the two groups; however, the way-finding strategies adopted by subjects in each condition varied. While specific features and characteristics of the setting seemed to be utilized in route-learning, as well as memory for specific turns per se, geographical orientation did not appear to play an important role.

The Relevance of Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Perception for Environment-Behavior Studies

The ecological approach developed by the late James J. Gibson (1966, 1979) has been described as a revolutionary psychology (Heft, 1988a; Mace, 1977; Neisser, 1976, 1990; Reed, 1988, 1996; Reed & Jones, 1979; Turvey, 1977). It is a radical departure from the way perceiving, and knowing more generally, have been traditionally conceptualized in psychology and philosophy. At the heart of Gibson’s ecological approach is an original analysis of the environment, which in turn leads to a novel view of person—environment relations with significant implications for psychology and epistemology. Because of the distinctive nature of these conceptualizations of the environment and person—environment relations, Gibson’s ecological approach has been promoted as having particular significance for environment—behavior (EB) studies and environmental design (Heft, 1981, 1988a; Kaminski, 1989; Krampen, 1991; Landwehr, 1988; Lang, 1987).

Children and their Environments: Children as agents in sustainable development: the ecology of competence

The great challenge of the twenty-first century may well be achieving sustainable development – which is ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’ (WCED, 1987: 8). Children stand at the heart of this definition in two respects. First, concern for future generations, which takes form in each new cohort of children, motivates development of this kind. Second, if practices consistent with sustainable development are to be carried forward through time, then children must be the bridge conveying their value and ways. For these reasons, many municipal governments and agencies that work with children are currently experimenting with approaches to integrate children into environmental planning. What is lacking in these efforts, however, is a coherent theoretical framework for investigating the question that these practical initiatives raise: what experiences prepare children to value and care for their local environment and join in community decision-making? Although there have been many surveys of young peoples environmental attitudes and knowledge, much less is known about environmental learning as children engage with their localities, or about how children learn to take collaborative action on behalf of the places where they live (Rickinson, 2001). Drawing on ideas in ecological psychology, we propose a framework for research on this topic. We submit that one impediment to advances on this front resides in dominant assumptions about the nature of perceiving and cognition.

The Ecological Approach to Navigation: A Gibsonian Perspective

From an ecological perspective, a basic form of navigating is wayfinding which involves the control of travel through perceiving temporally-structured visual information. This information consists of an optical flow of perspective structure generated by a perceiver moving along a path of travel. The generation of visual information through action, which in turn is controlled by that information, is indicative of the on-going, reciprocal interaction between the perceiver and the environment. It is suggested that the perspective structure consists of a sequence of transitions between successive vistas which uniquely specifies a route to a destination. Also, like the information specifying other types of events, this information can be described as a nested hierarchical structure that unfolds over time. A series of experiments are reviewed that employ dynamic displays of paths in order to examine this approach to way- finding. In addition, it is proposed that in the process of traveling paths through the environment, invariant information specifying the overall layout of the environment is revealed to a perceiver. In this way, the panorama of the environment is apprehended. The role of the affordances of places in navigational processes is also briefly considered. Overall, this ecological analysis suggests a need to reexamine our standard assumptions about the nature of perceiving and its role in navigation.

An examination of constructivist and gibsonian approaches to environmental psychology

Much of the conceptual and empirical work in environmental psychology has been directly shaped byconstructivism — a metatheoretical framework which views perception as essentially a cognitive process. Two influential constructivist theories are information-processing and Piagets genetic epistemology. As a consequence of adopting this framework, environmental psychologists have focused their investigations on cognitive processes rather than the environment. However, the role played by cognitive processes in perception is a function of the degree to which phenomenal characteristics of the environment are specified in the information available to the perceiver, and the present emphasis by environmental psychologists on cognitive processes may reflect an underestimate of the richness of this information. J. J. Gibsons ecological analysis of perception postulates that environmental layout and meaning are directly specified in ambient light, and, as a result, his account suggests that the environment is a direct and unmediated determinant of perception and action. Further, he offers a framework which allows for both an objective and psychologically meaningful description of the environment. For these reasons, his perspective has much to offer the environmental psychologist.

A Psychologically Meaningful Description of Environments Requires a Relational Approach

We firmly agree with Coolen that a significant contribution the ecological approach (Gibson, 1979) can make to environment-behavior studies concerns the central but vexing question of meaning. It is central because the meaning of environments for individuals underlies so much of what we do in our daily lives. The places we choose to enter, the places we occupy for sustained or brief periods of time, and the ways we design and arrange places rest to a large extent on their meaning in relation to our actions and goals. The question of meaning is vexing from the standpoint of environment-behavior analyses because of the way meaning has typically been treated in the psychological and social sciences. Specifically, the theoretical traditions that form the backbone of most environment-behavior research assume that meaning is a subjective, mental quality that individuals’ impose on an otherwise meaningless environment of physical structures. However, to adapt a point raised by Wohlwill (1973) over 30 years ago, this theoretical stance places individuals who are investigating, assessing, or designing human environments in an untenable position. For if meaning is a quality that is present only in a subjective mental realm of separate individuals, how can it and similar psychological phenomena possibly be tied in any systematic ways to the environment? If psychological experience is all ‘‘in the head’’, why assume that environmental design efforts will matter at all psychologically? This way of thinking has impeded progress in developing a psychologically meaningful treatment of the environment. We have each held for some time that the ecological approach offers an avenue for overcoming this dilemma (e.g. Heft 1981, 1997, 2001, Kyttä 2002, 2003, 2004). The concept of affordances is central in this regard. This concept refers to the functional possibilities that a feature of the environment offers to a particular individual. That is, a feature’s affordances are its meanings considered from a functional standpoint for some individual. For example, a horizontal surface of support positioned approximately at knee-height affords ‘‘sitting-on’’ for an individual (Mark 1987). Considered in this relational manner, the feature is not merely a physical feature, but also a functionally meaningful one; it is a place to sit. And its functional significance Housing, Theory and Society, Vol. 23, No. 4, 210–213, 2006

The Tension Between the Psychological and Ecological Sciences: Making Psychology More Ecological

In spite of the fact that psychology has been committed to an evolutionary framework for over a century, ecological approaches to psychology, first proposed several decades ago, continue to be marginalized within the discipline. Considering the shared lineage of evolutionary and ecological thinking, this situation seems paradoxical, and, indeed, it reflects an underlying tension between the psychological and ecological sciences. The basis for this tension can be traced historically to psychology’s early embrace of Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary view of environment-mind correspondence, which is incompatible with the dynamic, relational character of ecosystems thinking. In this respect, William James criticized Spencer for failing to recognize the active and selective character of thought and action, which for James, is the hallmark of psychological processes. From this starting point, James’s psychology and philosophy of radical empiricism offers a relational and dynamic approach that is more in keeping with ecological thinking, particularly as these ideas were extended by James’s student, E. B. Holt, in his treatment of purposive, situated behavior. James Gibson’s ecological approach to perceiving builds, in part, on these bodies of work, and his concept of affordances locates meaning in perceiver-environment relations, that is, in situated action. Further, the ecological approach of Roger Barker, with its concept of behavior setting, offers an opportunity to bring sociocultural processes to bear on situated action. It is seen that socially normative actions are situated in behavior settings and have the character of being both regulated and flexible, dual properties that are examined through a consideration of Hayek’s analysis of purposive action. Collectively, these contributions advance an approach to psychology that is coordinative with the perspective of the ecological sciences.