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James Jerome Gibson (; January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979) was an American psychologist and is considered to be one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception. Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system actively constructs conscious visual perception, and instead promoted ecological psychology, in which the mind directly perceives environmental stimuli without additional cognitive construction or processing. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked him as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth. Biography Early life James Jerome Gibson was born in McConnelsville, Ohio, on January 27, 1904, to Thomas and Gertrude Gibson. He was the oldest of three children and had two younger brothers, Thomas and William. Gibson's father worked for Wisconsin Central Railroad, and his mother was a schoolteacher. Because his father worked on the railroad, Gibson and his family had to travel and relocate quite frequently, moving throughout the Dakotas and Wisconsin until they finally settled down in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette. When Gibson was a boy, his father would take him out on train rides. Gibson recalled being absolutely fascinated by the way the visual world would appear when in motion. In the direction of the train, the visual world would appear to flow in the same direction and expand. When Gibson looked behind the train, the visual world would seem to contract. These experiences sparked Gibson's interest in optic flow and the visual information generated from different modes of transportation. Later in life, Gibson would apply this fascination to the study of visual perception of landing and flying planes. Education and career Gibson began his undergraduate career at Northwestern University, but transferred after his freshman year to Princeton University, where he majored in philosophy. While enrolled at Princeton, Gibson had many influential professors including Edwin B. Holt who advocated new realism, and Herbert S. Langfeld who had taught Gibson's experimental psychology course. After taking Langfeld's course, Gibson decided to stay at Princeton as a graduate student and pursued his Ph.D. in psychology with Langfeld serving as his doctoral adviser. His doctoral dissertation focused on memory of visual forms, and he received his Ph.D. in 1928. E. B. Holt, who was taught by William James, inspired Gibson to be a radical empiricist. Holt was a mentor to Gibson. While Gibson may not have directly read William James' work, E. B. Holt was the connecting factor between the two. Holt's theory of molar behaviorism brought James's philosophy of radical empiricism into psychology. Heft argues that Gibson's work was an application of William James'. Gibson believed that perception is direct and meaningful. He discussed the meaning of perception through his theory of affordances. Gibson also was influenced by James' neutral monism, which posits that nothing is solely mental or physical. Gibson started his career at Smith College as a psychology teacher. While at Smith, Gibson encountered two influential figures in his life, one of which was the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka. Although Gibson did not agree with Gestalt psychology, he nevertheless agreed with Koffka's belief that the primary investigations of psychology should be problems related to perception. The other important figure Gibson met during his time at Smith College was his wife, Eleanor Jack, who became a prominent psychologist known for her investigations such as the "visual cliff." The two were married on September 17, 1932, and later had two children, James Jerome Jr. in 1940 and Jean Grier in 1943. In 1941, Gibson entered the U.S. Army, where he became the director of a unit for the Army Air Forces' Aviation Psychology Program during World War II. Of particular interest to him was the effect flying an aircraft had on visual perception. He used his findings to help develop visual aptitude tests for screening out pilot applicants. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1946. After the war ended, he returned to Smith College for a short period during which he began writing his first book, The Perception of the Visual World, in which he discussed visual phenomena such as retinal texture gradient and retinal motion gradient. Before the book was published in 1950, Gibson moved to Cornell University where he continued to teach and conduct research for the rest of his life. Honors and awards After publication of his book in 1950, Gibson won the Warren Medal as a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 1952. He also became a division president for the American Psychological Association (APA) and for the Eastern Psychological Association. Among many of Gibson's other honors were receiving the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1961, becoming a Fulbright fellow at Oxford University, a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Gibson was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 1967. Gibson received honorary doctorates by Edinburgh and Uppsala Universities. Gibson died in Ithaca, New York on December 11, 1979. He was 75 years old. Major contributions and works Gibson's approach to visual perception The question driving Gibson's research on perception was "how do we see the world as we do?". This instigated his empirical research, the environment, and how the individual experiences said environment. There were two primary ways in which James J. Gibson reformed the way psychology views perception. The first is that the templates of our stimulation are affected by a moving organism. This was shown through his research on optic arrays. Secondly, he formulated the idea of three-dimensional space being conceptual. To Gibson, perception is a compilation of the person's environment and how the person interacts with it. James Gibson's major contributions throughout his career were published in three of his major works: The Perception of the Visual World (1950), The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966), and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979). Much of Gibson's work on perception derives from his time spent in the U.S. Army Air Force. Here, he delved into thoughts on how imperative perception is on daily functions. His work may be the first to show a distinct difference between types of perception. Form perception, on one hand, is a display of two static displays, whereas object perception, involves one of the displays to be in motion. Gibson laid down the base for empirical perception research throughout his lifetime. He did work on adaptation and inspection of curved lines, which became a precursor for perceptual research later. His basic work rejected .... Discover the E J Gibson popular books. Find the top 100 most popular E J Gibson books.