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Perceptual Ecology PDF

438 Pages·1978·11.509 MB·English
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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

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