The Perception & Action Podcast 551 – Turvey, Lectures on Perception: An Ecological Perspective, Chapters 15 and 16 (JC53)
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Sep 30, 2025 Andrew Wilson, a researcher in ecological psychology, and Marianne Davies, a keen critic of perception theories, delve into Turvey's unconventional perspective on Gestalt theory. They discuss the nuances of stimulus ambiguity and critique the tendency to ascribe perceptual order to neural processes rather than environmental information. The conversation explores the implications of Gibson's ideas on action and control, contrasts affordances with categorization, and examines the limitations of computational theories in understanding perception. A thought-provoking dissection of perception theory awaits!
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Gestalt Versus Direct Perception
- Turvey shows Gestalt theory got closer to behaviorally relevant perception but still assumed the brain imposed order on ambiguous stimuli.
- Gibson later rejected that imposition and proposed direct perception from richer information in the environment.
Fields Without Information Fall Short
- Gestaltists adopted field concepts from modern physics but retained neural-centric explanations.
- That left them short of Gibson's affordance and information-based breakthrough.
Perception's Purpose Is Action
- Gibson's radical break was treating perception as for action, not for internal experience.
- That shift lets affordances and information become primary rather than neural representations.
