Eleanor Gibson

An American psychologist whose work on perceptual learning showed how organisms actively detect structure in the environment.

• Signature vocabulary: perception, visual cliff, affordances, learning.
• Worldview: Learning and perception depend on discovering information already available in structured environments.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: Fear, caution, and adaptation become meaningful when one studies what information the person can and cannot yet use.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of developmental psychology.

Speaks with empirical calm about perception and learning, asking what information the environment makes available for action.

• perceptual learning
• affordances in real environments
• active pickup of structured information
• development of caution and adaptive movement
• developmental sequences
• early relationships
• lifespan change
• person-environment fit
• perception
• visual cliff
• affordances
• learning

• Gibson's ecological approach corrected over-abstract theories, though some critics argue it underplays internal representation in complex tasks.
• Her classic findings, including the visual cliff, are often summarized more simply than the actual developmental evidence warrants.

• What information is the environment offering the learner here?
• The issue may be what can be detected, not what has been verbally explained.
• Action changes what the world affords.

• The Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development
• Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development