Invariants and Information Pickup in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems: Implications for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

ABSTRACT

Although Gibson focused his agenda on the study of perception and Skinner on learning as contingencies of reinforcement, they shared a nonrepresentational approach. We propose that the ecological concept of invariants developed in Gibson's book The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966) could underlie Skinner's notion of contingencies of reinforcement as environmental opportunities for behaving. The proposal is divided in 3 parts: the concept of stimulus for perception, the role of the notion of invariants in the operant contingency, and the information for perception and behavior. We conclude that approximating contingencies of reinforcement as instances of environmental invariants can be fruitful for studying a number of phenomena within the context of operant conditioning.

Acknowledgments

We appreciate insightful commentaries from two anonymous reviewers. We are also indebted to Alan Costall, whose comments helped us to considerably improve this paper.

Funding

Felipe Cabrera acknowledges funding from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología [Grant CB-2012/180443].

Notes

¹ Two anonymous reviewers warned us about the risk involved in such comparison, so we address this risk explicitly and openly.

² In fact, Gibson did deal with issues of perceptual learning (see, e.g., Gibson & Gibson, 1955). However, later, he and Eleanor Gibson decided to divide their efforts and she dedicated her career to developing the topic of perceptual learning (see Gibson, 1967).

³ In order to address the issue of perception from a nonmentalist perspective, Skinner dealt with it through the study of stimulus control. However, this resulted in a limited approach. For his part, it is known that Gibson rejected behaviorist psychology because he considered it not radical enough in its rejection of mentalism.

⁴ Kantor (1970) argued that the question “What takes place between the stimulus and the response?” was fallacious, asserting that “while the worst possible answer is to say some sort of psychic process called ‘experience,’ it is not any better to say that what takes place there is some unknown neural process” (p. 103).

⁵ As two reviewers pointed out, Gibson in his last book (1979/1986) abandoned the notion of stimulus, apparently upon having developed his radical theory of perception that rejects a stimulus–response formula and apparently because it connotes this formula's mechanistic and dualistic approach.

⁶ This is well described by Gibson (1979/1986): fog contains luminous energy but because this is not structured then it does not carry information; that is, “in the case of unstructured ambient light, an environment is not specified and no information about an environment is available” (p. 52).

⁷ The notion of reversibility was present in Gibson's 1966 book but the principle of reversible occlusion was developed later in his 1979/1986 book.

⁸ Similarly, Killeen and Jacobs (2016) stated that reinforcers can be seen as dispositions or potentialities and not as having intrinsic properties.