Gibsonian ecological theory of development

The Gibsonian ecological theory of development is a theory of development that was created by American psychologist Eleanor J. Gibson during the 1960s and 1970s. Gibson emphasized the importance of environment and context in learning and, together with husband and fellow psychologist James J. Gibson, argued that perception was crucial as it allowed humans to adapt to their environments. Gibson stated that "children learn to detect information that specifies objects, events, and layouts in the world that they can use for their daily activities". Thus, humans learn out of necessity. Children are information "hunter-gatherers", gathering information in order to survive and navigate in the world.

Gibson asserted that development was driven by a complex interaction between environmental affordances and the motivated humans who perceive them. For example, to an infant, different surfaces "afford" opportunities for walking, crawling, grasping, etc. As children gain motor skills, they discover new opportunities for movement and thus new affordances. The more chances they are given to perceive and interact with their environment, the more affordances they discover, and the more accurate their perceptions become.

Gibson identified four important aspects of human behavior that develop:

Gibson used experimental procedures while also attempting to retain ecological validity by simulating important features of the child's natural environment. In keeping with the idea of affordances, Gibson tried to provide multimodal stimulation for infants in these experiments (multiple kinds of objects, faces, or surfaces, for example) and ways of obtaining feedback through movement and exploration.

One of Gibson's well-known perceptual experiments involved the construction of a "visual cliff," simulating a real cliff. Gibson and Walk placed infants near the cliff and placed mothers on the other side of the cliff. They found that infants perceived depth and were unwilling to crawl over the cliff at approximately 6–7 months. Later experiments showed that 12-month-old infants had learned to use their mothers' facial expressions as signals of potential affordances. If mothers smiled, infants were more likely to crawl over the "dangerous" cliff, but if mothers made a frightened face, infants avoided the cliff.

Gibson's theory has been criticized for its "unclear account of cognition". Gibson's theory pertains to direct perception and does not take into account that behaviors may involve indirect, interpretive cognition. Gibson's methodology involves an expensive and complicated experimental set up, which may prove cost- and time-prohibitive for many researchers. Finally, Gibson's research was almost exclusively confined to infants and very young children, so it is difficult to make generalizations throughout the lifespan.

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