Perceptual Ecology

438 Pages·1978·11.509 MB·English

by  Edward C. Carterette and Morton P. Friedman (Eds.)

ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD
G. EKMAN*, STOCKHOLM D. B. LINDSLEY, Los ANGELES
C. W. ERIKSEN, CHAMPAIGN B. F. LOMOV, Moscow
W. K. ESTES, NEW YORK R. D. LUCE, CAMBRIDGE (U.S.)
P. FRAISSE, PARIS M. TREISMAN, OXFORD
W. R. GARNER, NEW HAVEN W. A. ROSENBLITH, CAMBRIDGE U.S.)
D. M. GREEN, CAMBRIDGE (U.S.) H. A. SIMON, PITTSBURGH
R. L. GREGORY, BRISTOL P. SUPPES, STANFORD
T. INDOW, TOKYO N. S. SUTHERLAND, SUSSEX
I. KOHLER, INNSBRUCK M. TODA, SAPPORO
* Until his death.
This is Volume X of
HANDBOOK OF PERCEPTION
EDITORS: Edward C. Carterette and Morton P. Friedman
Contents of the other books in this series appear at the end of this volume.
HANDBOOK
OF PERCEPTION
VOLUME X
Perceptual Ecology
EDITED BY
Edward C. Carterette and Morton P. Friedman
Department of Psychology
University of California
Los Angeles, California
ACADEMIC PRESS New York San Francisco London 1978
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
COPYRIGHT © 1978, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR
TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC
OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY
INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT
PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
Ill Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
United Kingdom Edition published by
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD.
24/28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Perceptual ecology.
(Handbook of perception ; v. 10)
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Perception. 2. Environmental psychology.
I. Carterette, Edward C. II. Friedman, Morton P.
[DNLM: 1. Perception. 2. Ecology. WL700 H234 v. 10]
BF311.P3625 153.7 78-11805
ISBN 0-12-161910-9 (v. 10)
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
VIRGINIA BROOKS (259), Department of Psychology, Columbia Univer
sity, New York, New York 10027
IRVIN L. CHILD (111), Department of Psychology, Yale University, New
Haven, Connecticut 06520
DIANA DEUTSCH (191), Department of Psychology, University of Califor
nia, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093
EDWARD GIRDEN (385), Department of Psychology, Florida International
University, Miami, Florida 33199
JULIAN HOCHBERG (225, 259), Department of Psychology, Columbia Uni
versity, New York, New York 10027
HARRY W. HOEMANN (43), Department of Psychology, Bowling Green
State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403
KRISTINA HOOPER (155), Department of Psychology, University of Cali
fornia, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064
JOHN M. KENNEDY (91), Department of Psychology, Scarborough Col
lege, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada M1C 1A4
DANIEL KLEIN (91), Department of Psychology, Scarborough College,
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada M1C 1A4
LOCHLAN E. MAGEE (91), Department of Psychology, Scarborough Col
lege, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada M1C 1A4
HOWARD R. MOSKOWITZ (307, 349), MPi Sensory Testing Division, MPi
Marketing Research, Inc., New York, New York 10021
XI
XÜ LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
ANNE D. PICK (19), Institute of Child Development, University of Min­
nesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
HERBERT L. PICK, JR. (19), Institute of Child Development, University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
GEORGE STINY (133), Design Discipline, The Open University, Milton
Keynes, England
DAVID H. WARREN (65), Department of Psychology, University of
California, Riverside, Riverside, California 92521
RIK WARREN (3), Department of Psychology, State University College at
Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14222
FOREWORD
The problem of perception is one of understanding the way in which the
organism transforms, organizes, and structures information arising from
the world in sense data or memory. With this definition of perception in
mind, the aims of this treatise are to bring together essential aspects of the
very large, diverse, and widely scattered literature on human perception
and to give a précis of the state of knowledge in every area of perception.
It is aimed at the psychologist in particular and at the natural scientist in
general. A given topic is covered in a comprehensive survey in which
fundamental facts and concepts are presented and important leads to
journals and monographs of the specialized literature are provided. Per
ception is considered in its broadest sense. Therefore, the work will treat
a wide range of experimental and theoretical work.
This ten-volume treatise is divided into two sections. Section One
deals with the fundamentals of perceptual systems. It is comprised of six
volumes covering (1) historical and philosophical roots of perception, (2)
psychophysical judgment and measurement, (3) the biology of perceptual
systems, (4) hearing, (5) seeing, and (6) which is divided into two books
(A) tasting and smelling and (B) feeling and hurting.
Section Two, comprising four volumes, covers the perceiving or
ganism, taking up the wider view and generally ignoring specialty bound
aries. The major areas include (7) language and speech, (8) perceptual
coding of space, time, and objects, including sensory memory systems
and the relations between verbal and perceptual codes, (9) perceptual
processing mechanisms, such as attention, search, selection, pattern rec
ognition, and perceptual learning, (10) perceptual ecology, which consid
ers the perceiving organism in cultural context, and so includes aes
thetics, art, music, architecture, cinema, gastronomy, perfumery, and
the special perceptual worlds of the blind and of the deaf.
The "Handbook of Perception" should serve as a basic source and
reference work for all in the arts of sciences, indeed for all who are
interested in human perception.
EDWARD C. CARTERETTE
MORTON P. FRIEDMAN
xiii
PREFACE
Perceptual Ecology means to convey the idea that Volume X deals with
perceptual aspects of the study of interaction of persons with their envi
ronment. The lead chapter on the ecological nature of perceptual systems
takes as an axiom: We perceive so that we may act. But getting and using
information implies activity. Therefore: We act so that we may perceive.
With a Gibsonian impetus it is argued by Rik Warren in Chapter 1, The
Ecological Nature of Perceptual Systems, that an ecological approach to
the perceptual systems, one not restricted to the laboratory, broadens the
domain of perception and seeks a unified theory of perception and action.
That there are nontrivial problems of theory and method in going beyond
the laboratory is made clear by Pick and Pick's Culture and Perception
(Chapter 2). If cultural differences in perception can be attributed to
physiological or anatomical differences among people, they may afford
insights for studying perceptual mechanisms. Cultural differences arising
from experience are " natural experiments demonstrating the flexibility of
perception/' Perception of color may fit the first category, speech the
second. Can the reader categorize the other areas considered: pictures,
visual illusions, constancies, and spatial orientation?
Three chapters are devoted to impaired perception and action. Paradox
ically, perceptual studies of the deaf are rare, as Hoemann shows in
Chapter 3, Perception by the Deaf Deficiency in English contrasts
markedly with fluency in ASL (American Sign Language) acquired
spontaneously by the deaf, which suggests that studying the acquisition of
ASL will illuminate related perceptual systems. But, as for studies of the
perceptual abilities of the blind, we are told by D. H. Warren (Chapter 4)
that the research literature "is so varied as to almost defy organization
and inclusion in a single chapter/' The selective review of Chapter 4,
Perception by the Blind, singles out audition, touch, space perception,
and (very briefly) illusions. We are reminded that perceptual research on
the blind is hampered by sampling limitations and by problems of method
(being blind and being blindfolded are not the same). While offering some
basic information about sensory aids, Kennedy, Klein, and Magee in their
XV
XVI PREFACE
brief overview (Chapter 5) of Prosthetics of Perceptual Systems aim at
outlining intellectual principles necessary for understanding these sensory
aids.
A set of six chapters on aesthetic forms begins with Irvin L. Child's
discussion of the central problem of Aesthetic Theories (Chapter 6),
namely: Why do people enjoy or seem to enjoy the perceptual experience
itself! Not perception of art but hedonic value of the perceiver's experi
ence and acts is addressed in a threefold classification of aesthetic
theories. A general theory of art must go beyond response to art and also
deal with its creation. In Generating and Measuring Aesthetic Forms
(Chapter 7) Stiny attempts both by means of formal, algorithmic proce
dures. It is intensely interesting to see how far an algorithmic approach
succeeds in generating, describing, evaluating, and criticizing aesthetic
objects.
4'And, inquiring more deeply, he discovered that in truth it was not
simply a matter of form expressing function, but the vital idea was this:
That the function created or organized its form," said Louis H. Sullivan,
in his Autobiography of an Idea. Chapter 8, Perceptual Aspects of Ar
chitecture , by Kristina Hooper takes a line akin to Sullivan's in saying that
architecture follows perception and perception follows architecture,
thus what is livable comes from their effective interaction.
Musical Acoustics in Volume IV of this Handbook is generally com
plementary to Diana Deutsch's present The Psychology of Music (Chap
ter 9) which deals with the more strictly perceptual aspects of music. A
rich area for the study of recognition, attention, memory, and abstract
cognition (and an area that is often free of problems of verbal codes), work
in musical perception has been enormously enhanced by the confluence of
ideas from information processing, psychoacoustics, and computing.
One of the most celebrated fields of visual perception is art in pure and
applied form. The task of Hochberg in Chapter 10, Art and Perception, is
dual: (a) to bring up-to-date the nature of perceptual theory as it is
important to an understanding of pictorial and nonpictorial art; and (b) to
consider how perceptual theory is affected by what we learn about art. Of
all the art forms the cinema surely has the greatest potential. And cinema
uses more of the established principles of perception and sets more
challenges to perceptual theory than any other art form. In Chapter 11 it is
said that
An understanding of the processes that initiate and sustain the succession of
glimpses by which we sample the world, and the mechanisms by which we integrate
the informative content of such sequences, is fundamental to any general theory of
perceptual organization and attention.
Julian Hochberg and Virginia Brooks' The Perception of Motion Pictures
PREFACE XV11
(Chapter 11) is an important, major attempt to integrate perceptual and
cinematic mechanisms.
Olfactory hedonics play an important role in the two primary areas
surveyed by Moskowitz in Chapter 12, perfumery and the assessment and
abatement of noxious odors. The two are related almost as thesis and
antithesis: We blend fragrant chemicals in order to please; we seek to
destroy or mask noxious odors. Moskowitz points out in Food and Food
Technology : Food Habits, Gastronomy, Flavors, and Sensory Evaluation
(Chapter 13) that the main role of psychology in the study of food habits,
gastronomy, flavors, and sensory evaluation of foods has been as a
resource science that offered procedures to other experimenters such as
chemists, quartermasters and connoisseurs. But surely it is astonishing
that psychologists have been so little involved with indispensable food
and its basic ecological, ethnic, economic, dietary, and acceptance prob
lems?
Perceptual psychologists are often asked about psychic research and
the validity of its reported findings. Some useful and interesting answers
are given by Chapter 14, Parapsychology. There Girden reviews the
experimental evidence on telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psy
chokinesis. The aim is to assess the status of parapsychology and show
why it is paradoxy, outside of accepted opinion, after some 100 years of
psychic research.
Financial support has come, in part, from the National Institute of
Mental Health (Grant MH-07809), The Ford Motor Company, and The
University of California.
Editors of Academic Press both in New York and in San Francisco
have been extremely helpful in smoothing our way.
Chapter 1
THE ECOLOGICAL NATURE OF
PERCEPTUAL SYSTEMS*
RIK WARREN
I. Why Perception? 3
II. What Is There To Be Perceived? 4
A. Toward an Ecological Theory of Perceivables 4
B. The Layout and Material Composition of the Environment 5
C. Events 8
D. Egomotion 10
E. AfFordances 11
III. The Physical Bases for Perception 11
IV. Adaptation of Perceptual Systems to the Environment 13
V. The Environmental Reach of Perceptual Systems 15
VI. The Environment, Perception, and Action 16
VII. Conclusion 16
References 17
We regard the objects that environ us in proportion as they are
adapted to benefit or injure our own bodies. . . . And for this end
the visive sense seems to have been bestowed on animals, to wit,
that . . . they may be able to foresee . . . the damage or benefit
which is like to ensue upon the application of their own bodies to
this or that body which is at a distance.
—BERKELEY, 1709, SEC. 59
I. WHY PERCEPTION?
What is the purpose of perceptual ability? Why can some forms of life
perceive and others not? Why do perceptual system characteristics and
capabilities differ from species to species?
* Preparation of this chapter was supported, in part, by grants to the University of Min­
nesota, Center for Research in Human Learning, from the National Science Foundation
BMS72-02353 A03, The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-
01136), and the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota.
HANDBOOK OF PERCEPTION, VOL. X Copyright © 1978 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISBN 0-12-161910-9