ABSTRACT

Ecological perception, per James Gibson's theory, avows that perception depends on informative structure in stimulus arrays, where information is defined as stimulus array invariants. Gibson, however, was somewhat vague about the nature of such structure. Consequently, ecological perceptual research—even acknowledging some remarkable successes—has generally been ad hoc: Lacking principled heuristics, researchers examine array structure, which, by some means, they have come to discover as (or believe to be) informative. Here, I propose a series of heuristic principles potentially useful for the discovery of informative structure in stimulus arrays, with examples to suggest how those principles might apply. The major benefit of principled search for stimulus array invariants is more efficient elaboration of their function in perception. While admittedly preliminary, the principles outlined may both guide perceptual investigations and prompt additional consideration of how to approach the search for stimulus array invariants.

摘要

根据詹姆斯·吉布森（James Gibson）的理论，生态知觉认为知觉取决于刺激阵列中的信息结构，其中信息被定义为刺激阵列不变式。但是，吉布森对这种结构的性质有些含糊。因此，生态感知研究（甚至承认取得了一些显著成功）通常是临时的：缺乏原理启发式方法，研究人员研究了数组结构，通过某种方式，他们发现了数组（或认为具有启发性）。在这里，我提出了一系列启发式原理，可能对发现刺激阵列中的信息结构很有用，并举例说明了这些原理如何适用。原则上搜索刺激数组不变式的主要好处是可以更有效地阐述它们在感知中的功能。