Читать книгу Infants and Children in Context - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 241

We have seen that individuals are embedded in and interact dynamically with their context. James and Eleanor Gibson studied perceptual development from an ecological perspective, emphasizing that perception arises through interactions with the environment (Adolph & Kretch, 2015). Rather than collecting small pieces of sensory information and building a representation of the world, the Gibsons argued that the environment itself provides all the information needed and we perceive the environment directly, without constructing or manipulating sensory information.

Perception arises from action. Infants actively explore their environment with their eyes, moving their heads and, later, reaching their hands and, eventually, crawling. Perception provides the information infants need to traverse their environment. Through their exploration, infants perceive affordances—the nature, opportunities, and limits of objects (Gibson & Pick, 2000). The features of objects tell infants about their affordances and their possibilities for action, such as whether an object is squeezable, mouthable, catchable, or reachable. Infants explore their environment, not randomly but rather systematically searching to discover the properties of the things around them (Savelsbergh, van der Kamp, & van Wermeskerken, 2013). From this perspective, perception arises from action, just as it influences action (Gibson, 1979). Exploration and discovery of affordances depends on infants’ capacities for action, which is influenced by their development, genetics, and motivation. For example, a large pot might offer a 10-year-old the possibility of cooking because the child has developed this capacity and can perceive this affordance of the pot. An 18-month-old infant may perceive very different affordances from the pot based on her capacities, such as a drum to bang or a bucket to fill. We naturally perceive affordances, such as knowing when a surface is safe for walking, by sensing information from the environment and coordinating it with our body sensations, such as our sense of balance (Kretch, Franchak, & Adolph, 2014). In this way, our perception of affordances, the opportunities for exploration, influences how we move and interact within our environments (Adolph & Kretch, 2015).