James J. Gibson

Who was James J. Gibson?

James Jerome Gibson, was an American psychologist, born in McConnelsville, Ohio, who received his Ph.D. from Princeton University's Department of Psychology, and is considered one of the most important 20th century psychologists in the field of visual perception. In his classic work The Perception of the Visual World he rejected the then fashionable theory of behaviorism for a view based on his own experimental work, which pioneered the idea that animals 'sampled' information from the 'ambient' outside world. He studied the concept of optical flow. According to Gibson, one determines the optical flow using the pattern of light on the retina. The term 'affordance' refers to the opportunities for action provided by a particular object or environment. This concept has been extremely influential in the field of design and ergonomics: see for example the work of Donald Norman who worked with Gibson, and has adapted many of his ideas for his own theories.

In his later work, Gibson became more philosophical and criticised cognitivism in the same way he had attacked behaviorism before.