Book Reviews 81

JAMES J. GIBSON AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERCEPTION. Edward S. Reed. New

Edward Reed has written a thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of one of the twentieth
centurys most innovative and influential perceptual psychologists, James J. Gibson (1904-
1979). Reeds rich examination of Gibsons long and productive career is based on a careful
study of published and unpublished writings, professional correspondence, notes, and book
annotations. This information is supplemented by interviews with many of Gibsons closest
colleagues and students. The result is both a first-rate intellectual biography and a significant
study of revolutionary science.
Early in his career Gibsons investigation of particular perceptual phenomena led him to
question several central tenets of perceptual and cognitive psychology. He gradually came
to the conclusion that many of these assumptions needed to be abandoned for psychology
to advance. In their place Gibson began gradually to fashion an alternative framework for
the analysis of perception and cognition, an alternative that he eventually called the ecological
approach. Reeds narrative recounts in detail this notable and fascinating intellectual journey.
Beginning with Gibsons formative undergraduate and graduate years at Princeton, Reed
delineates the lasting impact of several early intellectual influences and, in so doing, provides
valuable insight into some of the foundations of Gibsons ecological approach. Among these
early influences were E. B. Holt, who helped to initiate the post-Jamesian philosophical school
of new realism; H. S . Langfeld, who brought to Princeton the phenomenological perspective
of European experimental psychology; and later Kurt Koffka, Gibsons colleague for many
years at Smith College, whose seemingly simple question Why do things look as they do?
had a profound impact on Gibson. As Reed points out, through these intellectual influences
Gibson came to understand the deep problems which any acceptable theory of mind has
to solve (p. 22).
Reed demonstrates that many of Gibsons innovative theoretical proposals were derived
from his empirical work. As a result of his landmark research of perceptual adaptation to
curvature, Gibson began to question the time-honoured distinction between sensation and
perception. Gibsons rejection of this distinction in its traditional form ultimately contributed
to his proposal of a direct realist epistemology. During the war years Gibsons research for
the Army Air Force of the perceptual skills required for flying led him to recognize a significant
inadequacy of standard perceptual theories. In these formulations a static stimulus display
is almost always assumed, and this type of presentation can cause one to overlook a critical,
and perhaps a most basic, type of stimulus information; namely, the information produced
by a perceiver moving through the environment. This insight led directly to Gibsons important
work on optical flow fields and the visual control of movement, issues which are still very
much in evidence in the research literature. The theoretical significance of this shift in focus
from a stationary to a moving perceiver was most fully realized nearly two decades later
in Gibsons radical reformulation of the senses considered as perceptual systems.
Reed shows that in the years following publication of the highly influential The Perception
of the Visual World (1950), Gibson initiated a research programme that produced several
anomalous findings and, as a result, eventually rejected the psychophysical view he presented
in that book. Gibson came to recognize the inadequacy of the view that visual perception
is based on the projection of stimulation from a distal surface in the environment to the
proximal surface of the retina. Instead, he saw the need for an account of how environmental
surfaces structure reflected light, thereby producing an ambient array of stimulus information-
a project he called ecological optics.
The revised view of stimulus information that emerges from Gibsons analysis of ecological
optics has radical implications for perceptual theroy. Gibson presented these ideas in his
intellectually exciting and revolutionary book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems
(1966). As Reed explains, with the view of perception offered in this book, sense modalities
could no longer be defined by the sensory modes or qualities to which they give rise, but
only by the modes of exploratory activity and informative stimulation on which they are
based (p. 197). With his conceptualization of the perceptual systems as modes of activity
for the pick-up of stimulus information, Gibson is not amending the received perceptual
82 Book Reviews
theory; he is overthrowing it. The consequences of this revolt lay the foundation for a very
different psychological approach to perception and cognition-the ecological approach.
In The Ecological Approach to Visuai Perception (1979), Gibson offers a way of conceptualiz-
ing the relationship between perceivers and environment that tries to avoid many of the
difficulties inextricably bound up with traditional dualistic formulations of perception. Con-
sequently, it presents a new avenue for the possible resolution of several seemingly intractable
epistemological problems. Environmental information and perceiving are to be understood
rationally, rather than defined independently, and what is perceived are the functionally signifi-
cant properties of the environment, its affordances. Moreover, Gibson felt that his alternative
formulation of perceiving provides the basis for a fresh approach to cognition. Gibson reso-
lutely rejected the claim that perceiving depends on supplemental cognitive processes. Instead,
as Reed explains, Gibson posited different modes of knowing, including perceiving and various
types of non-perceptual awareness such as remembering, imagining, expecting, and dreaming.
In the final years of his career Gibson was exploring the implications of the ecological approach
for a general theory of cognition.
Examined from a broader vantage point, what Reed offers is a case study of the nature
of revolutionary thinking in science. Through Reeds account we see that Gibson developed
his ecological position by gradually transforming his ideas. Reed argues that this process
of the slow transformation of ideas, rather than that of a sudden creative insight or an abrupt
paradigm shift, best characterizes scientific revolutions. He suggests that the gradual creative
process revealed in his study of Gibsons work is characteristic of the life work of other
revolutionary thinkers in science.
Reeds biography is a most significant contribution to the growing literature concerning
Gibsons ecological approach. Those readers with little prior knowledge of Gibsons work
will find this book to be an invaluable guide to a position that is a distinctive departure
from traditional approaches to perception and cognition; those already familiar with it will
find that Reeds excellent study provides new insights and a heightened appreciation for the
life work of this remarkable psychologist.

HARRY HEFT
Denison University

REMEMBERING RECONSIDERED: ECOLOGICAL AND TRADITlONAL

In October 1985 the Second Emory Cognition Project Conference reviewed ecological
memory research; a body of results and theory in no small way stimulated by Ulric Neissers
eloquent challenge to experimental psychologists in 1978. The conference was organized, and
the I5 participants contributions were assembled, by Ulric Neisser and Eugene Winograd.
The book was not published until late 1988. As a result, for cognitive psychologists working
within the field ofecological memory, the book chapters will not consistently provide previously
unseen data or theoretical discussion. Nonetheless, conferences often provide greater empirical
detail and more provocative theories and reaction to them than are found in journal articles.
Fortunately, despite the books slow public appearance, it has these qualities in spades. More-
over, it provides a representative look at memory research in the mid-1980s by its examination
of recurring themes and concepts and of both traditional and ecological data collection pro-
cedures. Consequently the book could easily be used within a seminar-based course.
Neisser contributed a useful introductory chapter to alert,the reader as to what is to be
served by way of cogent summaries of the presentations. To aid in their digestion and to