Alan Costall
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 210153 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Alan Costall |
| NOMBRES | Alan |
| APELLIDO | Costall |
| FIRMA | COSTALL A |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Portsmouth |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0969-4673 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 46 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 45 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1983 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Contrary imaginations
James Gibson was not exactly helpful about explaining where he was coming from. He was puzzlingly, sometimes shockingly, unwilling to explain his sources, such as Harvey Carr's “ground theory” and (perhaps) Grindley in relation to optic flow. Harry Heft makes a strong case in his book, Ecological Psychology in Context, for placing Gibson in the tradition of radical realism. In this chapter, however, I want to argue that Gibson can also be regarde…
Playful teasing and the emergence of pretence
The study of the emergence of pretend play in developmental psychology has generally been restricted to analyses of children’s play with toys and everyday objects. The widely accepted criteria for establishing pretence are the child’s manipulation of object identities, attributes or existence. In this paper we argue that there is another arena for pretending—playful pretend teasing—which arises earlier than pretend play with objects and is theref…
The serial reproduction of an urban myth
Recall was also better for a strict (as opposed to a lenient) audience, in line with another prediction from Bartlett's social theory of remembering. Notwithstanding this, we conclude with some critical remarks on the serial reproduction method as an approach to cultural memory
A manifesto for a transformational science
Autism and Triadic Play
Children's relations to objects are often seen as operating in a physical, asocial realm distinct from the sociocultural realm of other people. The most influential theories of autism exemplify this assumption, emphasizing problems in relating to other people alongside relatively intact dealings with objects. This article challenges the notion of a rigid social-material divide. It examines evidence of widespread disruption in the object use of ch…
And All That
The “later” James Gibson is widely misrepresented as an extreme stimulus–response theorist. In fact, Gibson's 1966 book presents a radical alternative to stimulus–response theory. “Perceptual systems” are not passive and receptive but “organs of active attention” (1966/1968, p. 58). Perceivers “reach out” into the world. This commentary examines some of the implications of Gibson's systems-cum-functionalist-cum-ecological approach, including the …
The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems
This editorial introduces the first part of a 2-part special issue of Ecological Psychology dedicated to James J. Gibson's 1966 book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, which presents many revolutionary ideas that are important not only for the study of perception but also for the science of psychology in general including the rejection of the mechanistic and dualistic stimulus-response formula (cf. Dewey, 1896), the rejection of sensat…
The Ecological Revolution
This editorial presents the second of a 2-part special issue honoring the publication of James J. Gibson's 1966 book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. As was pointed out by several reviews of this book written just after its publication (i.e., between 1967 and 1969), Gibson's 1966 book represents a revolution not only for the psychological science but also for domains beyond that of psychology. This second part of the special issue is…
The “textbook Gibson”
We examine how the textbooks have dealt with one of psychology's most eminent dissidents, James Gibson (1904-1979). Our review of more than a hundred textbooks, dating from the 1950s to the present, reveals fundamental and systematic misrepresentations of Gibson. Although Gibson continues to figure in most of the textbooks, his work is routinely assimilated to theoretical positions he emphatically rejected: cue theory, stimulus-response psycholog…
A Personal Approach
This study explored the process of taking a personal approach to my son's problems with computer games. As a psychology student, I should have been in a good position to explore the paradoxical emotions and this situation of conflict. Yet I was also aware that relating closely to the people we are studying has long been a taboo even in qualitative research. I nevertheless adopted a collaborative methodology in which I balanced a dual role of pare…
Toward a second-person neuroscience
In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be studied and could – paradoxically – be seen as representing the “dark matter” of social neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for investigations that allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner. Th…
Gaze Patterns in a Steering-Into-Lane Task on a Straight Road
Recently, dynamical systems theory has become popular in describing visual control of locomotion. Nevertheless, traditional geometric cues (e.g., egocentric directions of current heading and target) are still often used (Land & Lee, 1994 Land, M. F., Horwood, J. and Cornwell, T. S. 1994. Fast driving reduces eye movement amplitude and frequency. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 35(4): 2033 [Google Scholar]; Rushton & Salvucci, 2001 R…
In Sight, Out of Mind’
Contents, Vol. 40, No. 3, 1997
Innocence and Corruption
For more than a century, theoretical discussion of child art within psychology, education, and art history has been largely structured by two schemas of innocence and corruption. Each appeals to a conception of a pure mode of vision, yet in two contrasting ways. The visionary schema dismisses linear perspective as a perversion by the adult culture of the child’s imaginative vision. The perceptual schema regards perspectival art as the one natural…
Darwin and Developmental Psychology
The presence of Darwin’s theory in the biological sciences has paralleled developmental psychology’s first century of existence as a scientific discipline. Darwin had an effect on leading figures in child psychology but it appears to have been more superficial or misleading than first thought. The precise manner in which his ideas influenced or failed to influence developmental psychology and the reasons behind it are still only vaguely understoo…
Against Theory of Mind
The 'theory of mind' framework has been the fastest growing body of empirical research in contemporary psychology. It has given rise to a range of positions on what it takes to relate to others as int
Bringing the body back to life
Thinking with Animals New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism
2007). Thinking with Animals New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. Anthrozoos: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 85-87
‘Introspectionism’ and the mythical origins of scientific psychology
Failing to See the Irony in ‘Mind-Reading’
We are puzzled by Szilvia Papp's response to the recent Special Issue of Theory & Psychology devoted to critiques of and alternatives to Theory of Mind. Although Papp is a linguist with a special interest not only in Theory of Mind but also in ‘Relevance Theory’, we can find no reference in her response to the critical issues raised in the Special Issue, nor any defence of the dualist metaphysics behind Theory of Mind. Instead, she presents us wi…
Gaze Patterns in the Visual Control of Straight-Road Driving and Braking as a Function of Speed and Expertise
Despite decades of research, the role of gaze in car driving is still poorly understood, but racing simulators provide a suitable experimental platform to examine drivers' gaze patterns across driving tasks of increasing complexity, including driving at high speeds. In this article, we report the findings of our baseline study: gaze as a function of speed and expertise in straight-road driving and braking. In straight-road driving, gaze was incre…
Drivers' Gaze Patterns in Braking From Three Different Approaches to a Crash Barrier
In our previous research, we found that drivers when engaged in straight-road driving, and also braking, tend to look in the direction of their intended movement regardless of speed or expertise (Rogers, Kadar, & Costall, this issue). Furthermore, gaze direction is highly constrained in braking, suggesting that speed control might be based on global optic flow. This study further investigates gaze when drivers are braking in front of a vertical b…
Group differences in the mutual gaze of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
A comparative developmental framework was used to determine whether mutual gaze is unique to humans and, if not, whether common mechanisms support the development of mutual gaze in chimpanzees and humans. Mother-infant chimpanzees engaged in approximately 17 instances of mutual gaze per hour. Mutual gaze occurred in positive, nonagonistic contexts. Mother-infant chimpanzees at a Japanese center exhibited significantly more mutual gaze than those …
Theory of Mind
The ‘Theory of Mind’ approach has been associated with probably the fastest-growing body of empirical research in psychology over the last 25 years, and has given rise to a range of different theoretical positions and elaborations within those positions. The basic idea is that understanding other people involves bridging a gulf between observed ‘behaviour’ and hidden mental states by means of a theory. The articles in this Special Issue subject ‘…
Describing Dog Behavior Psychologically
This paper is concerned with the interpretation of the behavior of dogs in mentalistic or psychological terms, and questions whether previous experience with pets influences the extent to which such terminology is used. Forty undergraduate psychology students viewed and produced written descriptions of five videotaped episodes showing dogs interacting with their owners. Twenty of the students had had at least two years of experience with a dog or…
Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception and the Problem of Cultural Relativism
"Lloyd Morgan, and the Rise and Fall of "Animal Psychology
Whereas Darwin insisted upon the continuity of human and nonhuman animals, more recent students of animal behavior have largely assumed discontinuity. Lloyd Morgan was a pivotal figure in this transformation. His "canon, " although intended to underpin a psychological approach to animals, has been persistently misunderstood to be a stark prohibition of anthropomorphic description. His extension to animals of the terms "behavior" and "trial-and-er…
Group differences in the mutual gaze of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
A comparative developmental framework was used to determine whether mutual gaze is unique to humans and, if not, whether common mechanisms support the development of mutual gaze in chimpanzees and humans. Mother-infant chimpanzees engaged in approximately 17 instances of mutual gaze per hour. Mutual gaze occurred in positive, nonagonistic contexts. Mother-infant chimpanzees at a Japanese center exhibited significantly more mutual gaze than those …
The “textbook Gibson”
We examine how the textbooks have dealt with one of psychology's most eminent dissidents, James Gibson (1904-1979). Our review of more than a hundred textbooks, dating from the 1950s to the present, reveals fundamental and systematic misrepresentations of Gibson. Although Gibson continues to figure in most of the textbooks, his work is routinely assimilated to theoretical positions he emphatically rejected: cue theory, stimulus-response psycholog…
Beyond Anecdotes
The status of "anthropomorphic" descriptions of animals in terms of intentions and emotions has been generally regarded as a prescriptive methodological concern. In contrast, in the study of human social psychology the nature of psychological descriptions of other people has been approached as a substantive empirical issue. Following this lead, the present study investigated the nature of people's descriptions of short videotaped episodes of anim…
Thinking with Animals New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism
2007). Thinking with Animals New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. Anthrozoos: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 85-87
Misremembering Bartlett
According to much of the recent psychological literature on memory, Bartlett should be credited with the insight that remembering can never be accurate but is, instead, more or less of a distortion (a view to which many modern authors themselves seem to subscribe). In the present paper, we argue that Bartlett did not himself provide such an unqualified account of remembering. Although he sought to challenge the idea that remembering is largely an…
A Personal Approach
This study explored the process of taking a personal approach to my son's problems with computer games. As a psychology student, I should have been in a good position to explore the paradoxical emotions and this situation of conflict. Yet I was also aware that relating closely to the people we are studying has long been a taboo even in qualitative research. I nevertheless adopted a collaborative methodology in which I balanced a dual role of pare…
On the Horizon
Gibson claimed that the perception of spatial relationships does not depend upon the inherently ambiguous depth cues of traditional theory but that more global informational structures exist in the light surrounding a moving perceiver. This paper examines Gibson’s further suggestion that such informational structures can be ‘frozen’ upon the surface of a picture to be directly detected by the viewer. Sedgwick has proposed that the horizon may pro…
On the Horizon
Gibson claimed that the perception of spatial relationships does not depend upon the inherently ambiguous depth cues of traditional theory but that more global informational structures exist in the light surrounding a moving perceiver. This paper examines Gibson’s further suggestion that such informational structures can be ‘frozen’ upon the surface of a picture to be directly detected by the viewer. Sedgwick has proposed that the horizon may pro…
Gibson's Theory of Direct Perception and the Problem of Cultural Relativism
The 'Meme' Meme
How Lloyd Morgan's canon backfired
Lloyd Morgan's Canon is usually represented as a brave step towards mechanistic behaviourism. Morgan himself, however, was convinced that the behaviour of animals and humans could only be treated in intentionalist terms. In fact, not only the spirit but the details of his Canon have been consistently misunderstood. It was turned around by Neo-Cartesians within psychology and evolutionary biology to attack the very ground that Morgan shared with D…
Socializing Affordances
Modern disciplines both reflect and perpetuate a basic dualism. The natural sciences deal with a `material world', abstracted from human concerns, while the social sciences have, in their turn, constructed a world of `agents' disconnected from material things. James Gibson's theory of affordances was an attempt to counter this deep schism in modern thought by emphasizing the material conditions of human activity. He came to see that psychology, a…
Situating Action IV
(1996). Situating Action IV: Planning As Situated Action. Ecological Psychology: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 153-170
Situating Action I
Describing Dog Behavior Psychologically
This paper is concerned with the interpretation of the behavior of dogs in mentalistic or psychological terms, and questions whether previous experience with pets influences the extent to which such terminology is used. Forty undergraduate psychology students viewed and produced written descriptions of five videotaped episodes showing dogs interacting with their owners. Twenty of the students had had at least two years of experience with a dog or…
On How We Can Act
This paper focuses on two of the points raised in Sharrock and Coulter's (1998) critique of James Gibson's later theorizing. They argue that Gibson limited himself to an overly abstracted and unified notion of `perception', and that his theory of affordances involved an overly restrictive claim about the `objects' of perception. We suggest an alternative reading of the theory of affordances, namely as a challenge to the traditional theoretical sc…
"Lloyd Morgan, and the Rise and Fall of "Animal Psychology
Whereas Darwin insisted upon the continuity of human and nonhuman animals, more recent students of animal behavior have largely assumed discontinuity. Lloyd Morgan was a pivotal figure in this transformation. His "canon, " although intended to underpin a psychological approach to animals, has been persistently misunderstood to be a stark prohibition of anthropomorphic description. His extension to animals of the terms "behavior" and "trial-and-er…
Visual explanations
An Iconoclast's Triptych
Edward Reed (1954-1997) is best known for his work commenting upon and developing James Gibson's ecological approach to psychology. The three books reviewed in this article set out what Reed termed his ecological philosophy. Encountering the World has the appearance of an introduction to ecological psychology, but makes little reference to the work of other researchers in this field. Rather, it is a statement of Reed's own perspective, and a crit…
Dire straits
Bartlett's claim that the Cambridge anthropological expedition of 1898 to the Torres Strait "put a social and ethnological stamp upon Cambridge psychology" does not bear close examination. Rivers pursued his interests in both anthropology and psychology but came to regard them as largely independent pursuits. Myers, through the influence of Rivers, came to identify himself primarily as a psychologist. McDougall was very quickly marginalized. Ther…
R.G. Collingwood and the Idea of a Historical Psychology
R.G. Collingwood's antagonism to scientific psychology is notorious. As a philosopher, especially an Oxford philosopher, such antagonism was hardly exceptional. Yet, in fact, Collingwood's attitude to the new science of psychology was remarkably ambivalent. He showed a keen interest in developments in the new science, regarded Freud as one of the greatest living scientists, and indeed himself pursued a full course of analysis. Nevertheless, Colli…
Beyond Anecdotes
The status of "anthropomorphic" descriptions of animals in terms of intentions and emotions has been generally regarded as a prescriptive methodological concern. In contrast, in the study of human social psychology the nature of psychological descriptions of other people has been approached as a substantive empirical issue. Following this lead, the present study investigated the nature of people's descriptions of short videotaped episodes of anim…
Beyond Anecdotes
The status of "anthropomorphic" descriptions of animals in terms of intentions and emotions has been generally regarded as a prescriptive methodological concern. In contrast, in the study of human social psychology the nature of psychological descriptions of other people has been approached as a substantive empirical issue. Following this lead, the present study investigated the nature of people's descriptions of short videotaped episodes of anim…
Rethinking the Development of “Nonbasic” Emotions
Misremembering Bartlett
According to much of the recent psychological literature on memory, Bartlett should be credited with the insight that remembering can never be accurate but is, instead, more or less of a distortion (a view to which many modern authors themselves seem to subscribe). In the present paper, we argue that Bartlett did not himself provide such an unqualified account of remembering. Although he sought to challenge the idea that remembering is largely an…
Ecological psychology in context
Theory of Mind
The ‘Theory of Mind’ approach has been associated with probably the fastest-growing body of empirical research in psychology over the last 25 years, and has given rise to a range of different theoretical positions and elaborations within those positions. The basic idea is that understanding other people involves bridging a gulf between observed ‘behaviour’ and hidden mental states by means of a theory. The articles in this Special Issue subject ‘…
Where is the ‘Theory’ in Theory of Mind
Why did ‘Theory of Mind’ take off when it did, and what, if anything, holds this very diverse approach together? The focus of research within developmental psychology since the 1960s had been the examination of Piaget’s claims about cognitive development. The agenda had quickly become to demonstrate, primarily through experiments, that young children could (contrary to Piaget’s claims) succeed on various ‘cognitive’ tasks given the right context.…
On the Persistence of the ‘Problem of Other Minds’ in Psychology
In this paper we discuss the historical origins and conceptual debts of the Theory of Mind framework (ToM). We investigate its affinities to Chomsky’s psychology, and Paul Grice’s work on meaning. We find that the ToM framework is resourced by the ideas found in Chomsky and Grice, adding very little new to them, and suffering from the same problems of dualism. ToM inherits the traditional dualistic problem of other minds, tries to solve it, and e…
Gaze Patterns in the Visual Control of Straight-Road Driving and Braking as a Function of Speed and Expertise
Despite decades of research, the role of gaze in car driving is still poorly understood, but racing simulators provide a suitable experimental platform to examine drivers' gaze patterns across driving tasks of increasing complexity, including driving at high speeds. In this article, we report the findings of our baseline study: gaze as a function of speed and expertise in straight-road driving and braking. In straight-road driving, gaze was incre…
Drivers' Gaze Patterns in Braking From Three Different Approaches to a Crash Barrier
In our previous research, we found that drivers when engaged in straight-road driving, and also braking, tend to look in the direction of their intended movement regardless of speed or expertise (Rogers, Kadar, & Costall, this issue). Furthermore, gaze direction is highly constrained in braking, suggesting that speed control might be based on global optic flow. This study further investigates gaze when drivers are braking in front of a vertical b…
Group differences in the mutual gaze of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
A comparative developmental framework was used to determine whether mutual gaze is unique to humans and, if not, whether common mechanisms support the development of mutual gaze in chimpanzees and humans. Mother-infant chimpanzees engaged in approximately 17 instances of mutual gaze per hour. Mutual gaze occurred in positive, nonagonistic contexts. Mother-infant chimpanzees at a Japanese center exhibited significantly more mutual gaze than those …
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