Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development

The essential nature of learning is primarily thought of as a verbal process or function, but this notion conveys that pre-linguistic infants do not learn. Far from being "blank slates" that passively absorb environmental stimuli, infants are active learners who perceptually engage their environments and extract information from them before language is available. The ecological approach to perceiving--defined as "a theory about perceiving by active creatures who look and listen and move around"--was spearheaded by Eleanor and James Gibson in the 1950s and culminated in James Gibson''s last book in 1979. Until now, no comprehensive theoretical statement of ecological development has been published since Eleanor Gibson''s Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (1969). In An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development, distinguished experimental psychologists Eleanor J. Gibson and Anne D. Pick provide a unique theoretical framework for the