Eleanor J. Gibson: Learning to perceive and perceiving to learn.

Abstract

\i Eleanor Gibson essentially defined the domain of perceptual learning, which includes both improvement in perception as a function of experience and learning and acquisition of knowledge as a function of changes in perception. In her view,differentiation, as opposed to association, is the process underlying perceptual development as well as perceptual learning. She considered perceptual development to be an important aspect of cognitive development. To a considerable degree, children's acquisition of knowledge and their increasingly complex conceptual sophistication can be attributed to their ability to detect more and more meaningful aspects of the rich stimulation impinging on them. This theoretical analysis was instantiated in empirical research on a wide range of topics. Imagine yourself a participant in an experiment. You are such confusion errors decreased with trials for participants of shown a complex graphic consisting of a four-coil all ages. spiral. You are then shown successively a series of similar and Why is this experiment considered a classic? Consider the identic~1 drawings. Your ta~k is to pick out the identical ones in time when it was carried out. It was the early mid-fifties, in the ( the senes. The first few scnbbles seem about the same as each heyday of behaviorism with its emphasis on the association of other and the same as what you remember of the original stan- stimuli and responses (e.g., Hull and Spence) or in some cases dard. However, you gradually notice that there is variation in the association of stimuli and stimuli (e.g., Guthrie). Psycholonumber of coils in the spiral, perhaps degree of tightness of the gists interested in learning generally all agreed that learning spiral, and even direction of rotation of the spiral (clockwise vs. was the forming of associations or, at the very least, emphasized counterclockwise). You do not know if you have noticed all the the response side of learning. The scribble experiment was a ways the scribbles differed or all the particular differences simple and vivid demonstration that a change in performance among them, because the experimenter-never tells you specifi- as a function of experience did not have to involve the formacally whether you are right or wrong. However, at the end of the tion of associations between stimuli and responses but could series the experimente~ asks you to repeat the procedure, giving consist of improvement in perception. Moreover, this improveyou another op~rtum~y to l~ok.at the standard, and the~ to go ment in perception occurred without reinforcement in the through the senes again. ThIS tIme you are more certaIn that sense of drive reduction or even reinforcement in the sense of you have noti~ed the types of difference among the scri?bles, extrinsic information about correctness (i.e., knowledge of reand you are fal~ly su:e you have detected most of the scnbbles suIts). What was required was merely the opportunity to examthat were not. IdentIcal to the standard. Once ~ore 7°u ar.e ine and to study the stimuli. What was learned was not a new ~sked to ~xamme the standar? a~d to select t~ose IdentIcal to It association, but rather how the stimuli differed from one anm the senes. At the end of this tnal the expenmenter tells you, other. Besides the quantitative data about errors from the experfinally, that you have now gotten them all correct and thanks . t th t t f th b. t . II

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