Ecological Psychology
Related Terms
Description
Ecological psychology is a term that has been applied by three different psychologists to their distinct, independent theoretical approaches and associated research programs: the perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson (1903–1979), the child/social psychologist Roger G. Barker (1903–1990), and the child psychologist, Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005). Roughly contemporaries, all three developed their individual approaches over the second half of the twentieth century. Because of their different research interests and approaches, there was little overlap, or even cross citing, among them. Still, the three share some common historical antecedents. The thematic thread linking all of them, however, is a careful and systematic consideration of the environmental context for psychological processes. All concur that the environmental context for...
References
- Barker, R. G. (1968). Ecological psychology: concepts and methods for studying the environment of human behavior. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
- Bronfenbrenner, U. (1978). The ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
- Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
- Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
- Gibson, E. J., & Pick, A. D. (2000). An ecological approach to perceptual learning and development. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
- Heft, H. (2001). Ecological psychology in context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the legacy of William James’s radical empiricism. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
- Reed, E. S. (1988). James J. Gibson and the psychology of perception. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
- Reed, E. S. (1996). Encountering the world: toward an ecological psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
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- Schoggen, P. (1989). Behavior settings: a revision and extension of Roger G. Barker’s ecological psychology. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar