Week 6 - Ecological Psychology

Question 1

Principles of Ecological Psychology:

What is Ecological Validility?

Answer 1

Humans have evolved perception-action systems to deal with real stimuli

Question 2

Principles of Ecological Psychology:

What is direct perception?

Answer 2

Humans perceive relevant details about the world without an internal model (tap into relevant enviromental info)

Question 3

Principles of Ecological Psychology:

What are affordances

Answer 3

What humans perceive is ‘reachable’ can happen.

Question 4

Principles of Ecological Psychology:

What is Kinetic theory

Answer 4

Lawlike mapping from perceptual variables to action

Question 5

Which of the proposed strategies for controlling locomotion is consistent with ecological psychology?

Answer 5

Optic Flow

Question 6

What are the two proposed strategies for controlling locomotion?

Answer 6

Optic flow and egocentric direction

Question 7

What information does Tau provide?

Answer 7

Time to reach target

Question 8

What information does optic flow provide?

Answer 8

Direction of movement

Question 9

What is the difference between direct perception and information processing approach?

Answer 9

In ecological psychology, we use features in the environment to control movements without representing those features in our brain. Information processing, on the other hand, suggests that we form a model of the world in our head and use that model to control movements.

Question 10

Why is ecological validity important to ecological psychology?

Answer 10

Our perceptual-action systems use natural environment and movements, so ecological validity means we test these movements in ‘natural’ tasks

Question 11

What is dynamic touch?

Answer 11

We can perceive the properties of objects by holding them, can determine length, mass and volume.