ABSTRACT
Ecological psychology recognizes that organisms have evolved to be responsive to very specific aspects of the total information available in the environment: They can perceive primarily those aspects of the environment that carry biologically useful information. Perceptual mechanisms "pick up" such information directly, without the need for mediation via higher-order cognitive processes. In the words of E.J. Gibson, the perceptual process "is not one of construction but of extraction of structured information that is present in the light, in the air, on the skin, in short, in the world" (quoted in Gibbs, I985, p. II4). The organism and its ecological niche are in effect mutually tuned to one another, and in this sense cannot be considered to be independent entities (Alley, I985). Part of this mutual attunement is produced when organisms learn to attend to some aspects of the total information that is perceptually available, and to ignore other aspects. This "education of attention" is the basis on which skilled and unskilled perceivers differ (J .J. Gibson & E.J. Gibson, I955).
