You may wish to start here: The Ecological Approach, Explained to an 8 Year Old
We have posted on a variety of topics at various points in time; here is a somewhat organised list of key posts, arranged (within topic) in the order you might like to read them.
Feel free to comment on anything, even old posts; we monitor the comment RSS feed and will see them. We always like interacting with our readers!
Categories:
Theory in Psychology: These posts about about developing a coherent theoretical grounding for psychological science.
Research Blogging: These posts are about identifying projects we would like to do with other scientists. If you're interested, please let us know!
Reading Groups: We have worked our way through a few books on embodied cognition and ecological psychology and will continue to do so.
Review of Empirical Research: We work our way through research literature as a way to think the various problems through and identify ways forward. We've covered coordinated rhythmic movement, long distance throwing and the issue of specification in perception.
Theory in Psychology
Embodied cognitionEmbodied cognition is not what you think it is
Theory, and why it's time psychology got one
Some ground rules for a theory of psychology
A field spotter's guide to embodied cognition
'Embodied Cognition Is Not What You Think It Is' - the paper!
Embodied cognition in practice - some thoughts and an open invitation
The embodied cognition of Tesco's gendered toys
Grounded vs. embodied cognition: a (hopefully uncontentious) note on terminology
Is embodied cognition a no brainer?
Connecting the conceptual dots in embodied cognition
What Would It Take to Refute Radical Embodied Cognition?
On "The poverty of embodied cognition" (Goldinger et al, in press)
Is the Ecological Approach Radical Enough?
General Ecological Information Does Not Support the Perception of Anything
Embodied cognitive neuroscience
There's more to us than our brains - So what does the brain do?
What Does The Brain Do, Pt 2: The Fast Response System
Mirror Neurons, or, What's the Matter with Neuroscience?
There's More Than One Way to Rhythmically Move a Lobster
Embodied solutions to neural delays: Information and Network Motifs
On why fMRI is bullshit, even when you're doing it right
Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience - A Frontiers Research Topic
Why don't giraffes fall over more often?
Are we Information-Processers?
It's Time to Relabel the Brain
Brains learn to perceive, not predict, the world
Free Energy: How the F*ck Does That Work, Ecologically?
Brains learn to perceive, not predict, the world
Free Energy: How the F*ck Does That Work, Ecologically?
Ecological Psychology
There is no poverty of stimulus
Poverty of stimulus and ecological laws
"Smart" perceptual mechanisms
Runeson, the Ames Room and the Irrelevance of Equivalent Configurations
Gibson vs Physics: Gibson Wins, at the Ecological Scale
Task Specific Devices and the Perceptual Bottleneck
Task Dynamics And The Information They Create
The ecological approach to sporting performance
Ecological Representations
Purple Perils (Link to Introduction)
Specification and Some of Its Consequences
Function vs Structure
Brains Don't Have to be Computers
From Specification to Convention
Oh crap. Re-thinking van Gelder
Tasks from the First Person Perspective
Information is typically dense and continuous
Relational Theories of Affordances are Functional, Not Mechanistic
The Affordances of Natural vs Designed Environments
Language, thought and the ecological approach
You Cannot Perceive a Relational Affordance
The Accidental Textbook
The Ecological Approach - The Accidental Textbook
The Nature of Ecological Perceptual Information
Evidence for the Kinematic Specification of Dynamics
Information
There's No Prospective Information About Friction, or, Why I Fell Over on the Ice
Mirrors are Literally Windows to Another World
Prospective Control I: The Outfielder Problem
A Taxonomy of Information
A new direction for psychology
Ecological indirect perception
Visual Illusions and Direct Perception
What Kind of Thing is an Information Variable? The (Annoying) Case of Tau
Information use is shaped by bodily dynamics
The Information for Progressive Occlusion
The medium for direct perception (Notes on Van Dijk & Kiverstein, 2020)
The Information in Pictures
The affordances of objects and pictures of those objects
The information available in pictures
Limits on action Priming by Picture of Objects
Affordances
Affordances, Part 1: Affordances are real dispositions of the environment
Affordances, Part 2: Affordances are relations between organism and environment
Affordances, Part 3: Dispositions or relations - which is it?
F*cking affordances - how do they work?
The affordances of everyday things
The affordances of objects and pictures of those objects
Misperceiving the affordances in anorexia nervosa
Embodiment and design; the affordances of pedestrian crossings
Affordances are not probabilistic functions
Affordance-based control (Fajen 2005, 2007)
The Field is Full, Just Not of Affordances - A Reply to Rietveld & Kiverstein
Scarantino (2003) “Affordances Explained”
Language
An Ecological Approach to Language
Language isn't magical (but it is special)
Language: A task analysis (kind of)
Why does linguistic information mean what it does?
A Taxonomy of Information
A Gibsonian analysis of linguistic information
Mechanisms
Dynamic Mechanistic Explanations in Radical Embodied Cognitive Science
Thinking about representations in relation to mechanisms
#MechanismWeek (a week of posts commencing June 20th 2016)
Whose representation?
In which I finish talking about discrete computational representations
What else could it be? The case of the centrifugal governor
Internal representation or behavioural dynamics?
A selection of problems with representation
Life and other vague categories
What's the difference between perception and conception?
Is it time to abandon the cognitive / non-cognitive distinction?
Are we Information-Processers?
How Worried Are You By The Symbol Grounding Problem?
Dynamical Systems
Perception, Action & Dynamical Systems
Robots, Representation, & Dynamical Systems
Problems in Psychology
The Small Effect Size Effect - Why Do We Put Up With Small Effects?
Psychological Science...meet me at camera 3
The affordances of objects and pictures of those objects
A new direction for psychology
Social priming - of course it only kind of works
Replication will not save psychology
Psychology's real replication problem: our Methods Sections
The Perturbation Experiment as a Way to Study Perception
Theory in General
Assume the Cow is a Sphere
Is Cognition Extended?
Specification & Its Discontents
Specification: What It Is, and Why We Need It
How Information Gets Its Meaning
Non-Specifying Variables in the Perception of Collisions
Individual Variation in the Use of Perceptual Information
Evolution vs.Specification
A Way Forward on Specification
Non-representational neuroscience
Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience - A Frontiers Research Topic
Handwriting
Some Thoughts on Handwriting
Exploring Some Handwriting Data (Experiment 1)
Other Research Topics
Embodiment and design; the affordances of pedestrian crossings
Review: Louise Barrett's "Beyond the Brain"
Tony Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science
Chapter 1: Hegelian Arguments in Cognitive Science
Chapter 2: Embodied Cognition
Chapter 3: Theories of Representation
Chapter 4: The Dynamical Stance
Chapter 5: Guides to Discovery
Chapter 6: Information and Direct Perception
Chapter 7: Affordances, etc (Pt 1)
Chapter 7: Affordances, etc (Pt 2)
A Brief Pause to See Where I'm At
Chapter 8: Neurophilosophy Meets RECS
Chapter 9: The Metaphysics of Radical Embodiment
James J Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 Part 2
Chapter 5 Part 3
Chapter 6 Part 1
Chapter 6 Part 2
Harry Heft, Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism
Chapter 1: Intro + Prologue
Chapter 2: William James and Radical Empiricism
Chapter 3: EB Holt
A Note on Holt on Visual Illusions
Chapter 4: Gibson
Gibson (Pt IIa)
The Problem of Two Minds
The Problem of Time
Lawrence Shapiro, Embodied Cognition
Review: 'Embodied Cognition', by Lawrence Shapiro
What Does Coordinated Rhythmic Movement Have To Do With Anything?
Coordinated rhythmic movement. - an introduction to an experimental paradigm
How to Build a Valid Measure of Behaviour
Coordination and the Haken-Kelso-Bunz Model
Learning a Novel Coordination - The Dynamic Pattern Hypothesis
Rates of learning and the dynamic pattern approach
Learning a Novel Coordination; Things Get Interesting
Visual perception of coordinated rhythmic movements
Establishing the Role of Perception in Coordination: Proprioception and Action Measures
A Perception/Action Model of Coordination
Perceptual Learning Stabilises Action: A Test of the Bingham Model
Identifying the Visual Information for Relative Phase
Visual feedback for training novel coordinations
Lissajous feedback and coordination stability
Coordination dynamics and relative speed
Using coordination to study learning across the lifespan
Muscle homology in coordinated rhythmic movements
The Information in Pictures
The affordances of objects and pictures of those objects
The information available in pictures
Limits on action Priming by Picture of Objects
Affordances
Affordances, Part 1: Affordances are real dispositions of the environment
Affordances, Part 2: Affordances are relations between organism and environment
Affordances, Part 3: Dispositions or relations - which is it?
F*cking affordances - how do they work?
The affordances of everyday things
The affordances of objects and pictures of those objects
Misperceiving the affordances in anorexia nervosa
Embodiment and design; the affordances of pedestrian crossings
Affordances are not probabilistic functions
Affordance-based control (Fajen 2005, 2007)
The Field is Full, Just Not of Affordances - A Reply to Rietveld & Kiverstein
Scarantino (2003) “Affordances Explained”
Language
An Ecological Approach to Language
Language isn't magical (but it is special)
Language: A task analysis (kind of)
Why does linguistic information mean what it does?
A Taxonomy of Information
A Gibsonian analysis of linguistic information
Mechanisms
Dynamic Mechanistic Explanations in Radical Embodied Cognitive Science
Thinking about representations in relation to mechanisms
#MechanismWeek (a week of posts commencing June 20th 2016)
- Mechanisms and Models of Mechanisms
- Cognitive Models Are Not Mechanistic
- Do Dynamic Models Explain?
- Ecological Mechanisms and Models of Mechanisms
- Mechanisms for Cognitive and Behavioural Science
Whose representation?
In which I finish talking about discrete computational representations
What else could it be? The case of the centrifugal governor
Internal representation or behavioural dynamics?
A selection of problems with representation
Life and other vague categories
What's the difference between perception and conception?
Is it time to abandon the cognitive / non-cognitive distinction?
Are we Information-Processers?
How Worried Are You By The Symbol Grounding Problem?
Dynamical Systems
Perception, Action & Dynamical Systems
Robots, Representation, & Dynamical Systems
Problems in Psychology
The Small Effect Size Effect - Why Do We Put Up With Small Effects?
Psychological Science...meet me at camera 3
The affordances of objects and pictures of those objects
A new direction for psychology
Social priming - of course it only kind of works
Replication will not save psychology
Psychology's real replication problem: our Methods Sections
The Perturbation Experiment as a Way to Study Perception
Theory in General
Assume the Cow is a Sphere
Is Cognition Extended?
Research Blogging
How Information Gets Its Meaning Specification & Its Discontents
Specification: What It Is, and Why We Need It
How Information Gets Its Meaning
Non-Specifying Variables in the Perception of Collisions
Individual Variation in the Use of Perceptual Information
Evolution vs.Specification
A Way Forward on Specification
Non-representational neuroscience
Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience - A Frontiers Research Topic
Handwriting
Some Thoughts on Handwriting
Exploring Some Handwriting Data (Experiment 1)
Other Research Topics
Embodiment and design; the affordances of pedestrian crossings
Reading Groups
Louise Barrett, Beyond the BrainReview: Louise Barrett's "Beyond the Brain"
Tony Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science
Chapter 1: Hegelian Arguments in Cognitive Science
Chapter 2: Embodied Cognition
Chapter 3: Theories of Representation
Chapter 4: The Dynamical Stance
Chapter 5: Guides to Discovery
Chapter 6: Information and Direct Perception
Chapter 7: Affordances, etc (Pt 1)
Chapter 7: Affordances, etc (Pt 2)
A Brief Pause to See Where I'm At
Chapter 8: Neurophilosophy Meets RECS
Chapter 9: The Metaphysics of Radical Embodiment
James J Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 Part 2
Chapter 5 Part 3
Chapter 6 Part 1
Chapter 6 Part 2
Harry Heft, Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism
Chapter 1: Intro + Prologue
Chapter 2: William James and Radical Empiricism
Chapter 3: EB Holt
A Note on Holt on Visual Illusions
Chapter 4: Gibson
Gibson (Pt IIa)
The Problem of Two Minds
The Problem of Time
Lawrence Shapiro, Embodied Cognition
Review: 'Embodied Cognition', by Lawrence Shapiro
Michael Turvey, Lectures on Perception
Reviews of Empirical Research
Coordinated Rhythmic Movement/Coordination Dynamics What Does Coordinated Rhythmic Movement Have To Do With Anything?
Coordinated rhythmic movement. - an introduction to an experimental paradigm
How to Build a Valid Measure of Behaviour
Coordination and the Haken-Kelso-Bunz Model
Learning a Novel Coordination - The Dynamic Pattern Hypothesis
Rates of learning and the dynamic pattern approach
Learning a Novel Coordination; Things Get Interesting
Visual perception of coordinated rhythmic movements
Establishing the Role of Perception in Coordination: Proprioception and Action Measures
A Perception/Action Model of Coordination
Perceptual Learning Stabilises Action: A Test of the Bingham Model
Identifying the Visual Information for Relative Phase
Visual feedback for training novel coordinations
Lissajous feedback and coordination stability
Coordination dynamics and relative speed
Using coordination to study learning across the lifespan
Muscle homology in coordinated rhythmic movements
Transfer of Learning a Novel Coordinated Rhythmic Movement
Throwing for distance and accuracy
Task Dynamics And The Information They Create
The Task Dynamics of Throwing to a Maximum Distance
What Limits the Accuracy of Human Throwing?
The Evolution of Sex Differences in Throwing
Object Perception
Hefting for a maximum distance throw
Is hefting to perceive the affordance for throwing a smart perceptual mechanism?
Learning the affordances for maximum distance throwing
The Size-Weight Illusion is Functional, and It's About Throwing
How do we perceive which objects afford throwing the farthest?
The Affordances of Prehistoric Objects
Target Perception
Quantifying the Affordances for Throwing for Distance and Accuracy
Space Perception
Perceiving long distances in action scaled units
Throwing & Language
Did language emerge from the neural systems supporting aimed throwing?
Shared neural resources for throwing and language: a whacky idea for an experiment
The Size-Weight Illusion
The Size-Weight Illusion Induced Through Human Echolocation
Expectations and the Size-Weight Illusion
Direct Learning
Direct Learning (Jacobs & Michaels, 2007)
Evaluating 'Direct Learning'
A Test of Direct Learning (Michaels et al, 2008)
Motor Abundance Hypothesis Analyses
Uncontrolled Manifold Analysis
What Can You Do With Uncontrolled Manifold Analysis?
Throwing for distance and accuracy
Task Dynamics And The Information They Create
The Task Dynamics of Throwing to a Maximum Distance
What Limits the Accuracy of Human Throwing?
The Evolution of Sex Differences in Throwing
Object Perception
Hefting for a maximum distance throw
Is hefting to perceive the affordance for throwing a smart perceptual mechanism?
Learning the affordances for maximum distance throwing
The Size-Weight Illusion is Functional, and It's About Throwing
How do we perceive which objects afford throwing the farthest?
The Affordances of Prehistoric Objects
Target Perception
Quantifying the Affordances for Throwing for Distance and Accuracy
Space Perception
Perceiving long distances in action scaled units
Throwing & Language
Did language emerge from the neural systems supporting aimed throwing?
Shared neural resources for throwing and language: a whacky idea for an experiment
The Size-Weight Illusion
The Size-Weight Illusion Induced Through Human Echolocation
Expectations and the Size-Weight Illusion
Direct Learning
Direct Learning (Jacobs & Michaels, 2007)
Evaluating 'Direct Learning'
A Test of Direct Learning (Michaels et al, 2008)
Motor Abundance Hypothesis Analyses
Uncontrolled Manifold Analysis
What Can You Do With Uncontrolled Manifold Analysis?
Nonlinear Covariation Analysis (Müller & Sternad, 2003)
'Embodied' cognition
"Moving Through Time" and embodied cognition
Leaning to the left makes you believe odd things about embodied cognition
Does action scaling predict 'the embodiment of culture'? (No.)
Connecting the conceptual dots in embodied cognition
Various bits and pieces
Perception-Action
Patient DF uses haptics, not intact visual perception-for-action to reach for objects
What are the units that perception measures the world in? Firestone vs Proffitt
What miming a steering wheel tells us about what we learn
Misperceiving the affordances in anorexia nervosa
Your Hand is Not a Perceptual Ruler
Information use is shaped by bodily dynamics
Perception
Perceiving causes: why knowledge doesn't trump perception
Do our fingers wrinkle in the wet to improve our grip?
Can’t form a mental image? No big deal
A brief rant about waist-to-hip ratio
How Universal Is The Mind?
The Bliss of Motor Abundance
'Embodied' cognition
"Moving Through Time" and embodied cognition
Leaning to the left makes you believe odd things about embodied cognition
Does action scaling predict 'the embodiment of culture'? (No.)
Connecting the conceptual dots in embodied cognition
Various bits and pieces
Perception-Action
Patient DF uses haptics, not intact visual perception-for-action to reach for objects
What are the units that perception measures the world in? Firestone vs Proffitt
What miming a steering wheel tells us about what we learn
Misperceiving the affordances in anorexia nervosa
Your Hand is Not a Perceptual Ruler
Information use is shaped by bodily dynamics
Perceiving causes: why knowledge doesn't trump perception
Visual Illusions and Direct Perception
The Interface Theory of Perception - The View from Ecological Psychology
A Quick Review and Analysis of Perceptual Control Theory
The Shrunken Finger Illusion
Framing the Debate
Does action scaling predict 'the embodiment of culture'? (No.) & Embodying Culture: My ongoing conversation with Soliman & Glenberg
Does Interface Theory Have Consequences for the Ecological Approach?
Ecological Information Is a Perceptual Mapping That Tracks Evolutionary Fitness
Language
Rhythmic Constraints on Stress Timing In English
Thoughts on Ding et al (2015) "Cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures in connected speech"
The Interface Theory of Perception - The View from Ecological Psychology
A Quick Review and Analysis of Perceptual Control Theory
The Shrunken Finger Illusion
Framing the Debate
Does action scaling predict 'the embodiment of culture'? (No.) & Embodying Culture: My ongoing conversation with Soliman & Glenberg
Does Interface Theory Have Consequences for the Ecological Approach?
Ecological Information Is a Perceptual Mapping That Tracks Evolutionary Fitness
Rhythmic Constraints on Stress Timing In English
Thoughts on Ding et al (2015) "Cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures in connected speech"
Developmental Psychology
Are babies super? Performance, competence and infant habituation
Giving children with movement problems a leg up with robots
Cracking the Tough Nut of Chimp Tool Use Are babies super? Performance, competence and infant habituation
Giving children with movement problems a leg up with robots
Do our fingers wrinkle in the wet to improve our grip?
Can’t form a mental image? No big deal
A brief rant about waist-to-hip ratio
How Universal Is The Mind?
The Bliss of Motor Abundance
Posts
Good post. I appreciate for your efforts. Very useful for people. You cover all most all topics in psychology.
ReplyDeleteHi Andrew and Sabrina,
ReplyDeleteGreat work! I was wondering if there is reading group starting any time soon. And if so where can I sign up?
Hi Wim; nothing is planned but I've just re-read Turvey et al and we're both about to read Hutto's Radicalising Enactivism so stay tuned. Just follow the blog and Twitter feeds for news!
DeleteAfter reading your article titled 'Embodied cognition is not what you think' few months ago which I believe is going to be a seminal work, I just discovered your blog. And your blog is turning out to be inspirational too :)
ReplyDeleteIt is my first year as a doctoral student and I hope to contribute to the conversation on embodied cognition. However, the word 'cognition' keeps unsettling me because thinking through our body is still not the same as our body thinking.