M T Turvey
Biographic Data
| ID | 2750367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M T Turvey |
| GIVEN NAMES | M T |
| FAMILY NAME | Turvey |
| SIGNATURE | TURVEY M T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Connecticut |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-0675-3735 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 56 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Tensegrity Haptic Perception Hypothesis
What Are Nervous Systems For
An underlying bias of contemporary cognitive science is that the brain and nervous system are in the business of carrying out computations and building representations. Gibson’s ecological approach, in contrast, is decidedly noncomputational and nonrepresentational. How, then, are we to construe the role of brain and nervous system? We consider this question against the backdrop of evidence for rich achievements in perception and action by agents…
Von Uexküll’s Theory of Meaning and Gibson’s Organism–Environment Reciprocity
Jakob von Uexküll is mostly known for his concept of Umwelt—the meaningful surrounding of animals. von Uexküll insisted vehemently on the fact that Umwelt vindicated Kant’s subjectivist epistemology in the biological domain. However, we argue that a crucial yet widely overlooked development in von Uexküll’s theory of meaning implies a more radical vision strikingly germane to J. J. Gibson’s own direct realist epistemology-ontology and in tension …
Useful Dimensions of Haptic Perception
In addressing the character of the haptic system, James Gibson (1966) noted, “The study of useful sensitivity, as distinguished from theoretically basic sensitivities, is only just beginning” (p. 116). Whereas the preceding 150 years had gotten mired in an inventory of isolated sensations, the ensuing 50 years have revealed a good deal about the capabilities of a perceptual system that detects information about the self, the environment, and self…
Carol A. Fowler
An overview is given of Carol Fowler's contributions, both empirical and conceptual, to the conjoint perspectives of speech production as synergy based and speech perception as noncomputational. Collectively, the contributions constitute spadework for a Direct Realism Theory of linguistic ability at the gestural level
The Muddle of Anticipation
In J. J. Gibson's classic paper “The Problem of Temporal Order in Stimulation and Perception” (1966a Gibson, J. J. (1966a). The problem of temporal order in stimulation and perception. Journal of Psychology, 62, 141–149.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), he referred to the difficulties encountered when attempting a sharp distinction between memory and perception as “the muddle of memory.” Resolution of the muddle b…
The Surprising Nature of the Reaction Time Task
At one level, the scientific enterprise engaged in by Guy Van Orden was about how to analyze reaction time data. At another level it was an attempt to understand the kind of system that one is dealing with in a reaction time (RT) experiment—the system that accords with the instructions that the experimenter gives, produces the responses to the particular class of stimuli that the experimenter presents, at latencies that the experimenter measures …
Do Phonological Constraints on the Spoken Word Affect Visual Lexical Decision
On Intelligence From First Principles
Gibson's (1966, 1979/1986) ecological approach to perception, action, and cognition is patently non-representational and non-computational. In the place of these commonly assumed neural endowments, ecological psychology seeks to expose the laws that underlie intelligent capabilities. It is argued that this is the goal for understanding the directed behavior of not just humans, not just animals, and not just the living. We argue that an approach t…
On the Distinctive Features of Ecological Laws
Ecological psychology is grounded in the assumption of the availability of lawlike regularities in the world as the basis of reliable information for perceiving-acting systems. This article aims to articulate some of the necessary conditions for an account of lawfulness that accommodates ecological theories of perceiving and acting. This attempt considers historically influential accounts of laws but offers modifications of the notions of law and…
Is Perceptual Learning Unimodal
Two experiments evaluated change in the perception of an environmental property (object length) in each of 3 perceptual modalities (vision, audition, and haptics) when perceivers were provided with the opportunity to experience the same environmental property by means of an additional perceptual modality (e.g., haptics followed by vision, vision followed by audition, or audition followed by haptics). Experiment 1 found that (a) posttest improveme…
Lessons for Dynamic Touch From a Case of Stroke-Induced Motor Impairment
LW, an individual with a stroke-related motor impairment, was asked to perceive the lengths of rods of different mass distributions by dynamic touch. His impairment dictated that wielding was primarily about the shoulder rather than the wrist. Although perceived rod lengths were in the range of actual rod lengths, scaling to the objects' mass moments was atypical for both the affected and unaffected limbs. A group of healthy young adults asked to…
On the Notion and Implications of Organism-Environment System
The 5 papers in this special section examine the hypothesis that organism and environment constitute a single system. Timo Järvilehto and Barry Smith focus on the status of the hypothesis from the perspectives of experimental psychology and philosophy. Järvilehto addresses the precursors of the hypothesis and the reasons for adopting its implied methodology. Smith addresses the epistemological and ontological issues, historical and contemporary, …
Dispersion of response times reveals cognitive dynamics
Trial-to-trial variation in word-pronunciation times exhibits 1/f scaling. One explanation is that human performances are consequent on multiplicative interactions among interdependent processes-interaction dominant dynamics. This article describes simulated distributions of pronunciation times in a further test for multiplicative interactions and interdependence. Individual participant distributions of approximately 1,100 word-pronunciation time…
Philosophical Issues in Self-organization as a Framework for Ecological Psychology
In his autobiography, James Gibson (1967/1982) made two telling remarks, one in respect to himself and one in respect to the field of psychology. “[I] prefer radical solutions to scientific problem
The motor theory of speech perception reviewed
Phonological Assimilation and Visual Word Recognition
Introduction
Introduction
Space (and Its Perception)
Self-organization of cognitive performance.
Background noise is the irregular variation across repeated measurements of human performance. Background noise remains after task and treatment effects are minimized. Background noise refers to intrinsic sources of variability, the intrinsic dynamics of mind and body, and the internal workings of a living being. Two experiments demonstrate 1/f scaling (pink noise) in simple reaction times and speeded word naming times, which round out a catalog …
Silent Letters and Phonological Priming
Explaining Metamers
Eye Movements and a Rule for Perceiving Direction of Heading
(1999). Eye Movements and a Rule for Perceiving Direction of Heading. Ecological Psychology: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 233-248
Evaluation of Context Effects in Dynamic Touch
Coordination
Dynamic touch
Dispersion of response times reveals cognitive dynamics
Trial-to-trial variation in word-pronunciation times exhibits 1/f scaling. One explanation is that human performances are consequent on multiplicative interactions among interdependent processes-interaction dominant dynamics. This article describes simulated distributions of pronunciation times in a further test for multiplicative interactions and interdependence. Individual participant distributions of approximately 1,100 word-pronunciation time…
Silent Letters and Phonological Priming
Bi-Alphabetical Lexical Decision
The Serbo-Croatian language is written in two alphabets, Roman and Cyrillic. The majority of the total number of alphabet characters are unique to one or the other alphabet. There are, however, a number of shared characters, some of which receive the same reading in the two alphabets, and some of which receive a different reading in the two alphabets. Letter-strings were constructed, all of which could be given a phonological interpretation in Ro…
Words Written in Kana Are Named Faster Than the Same Words Written in Kanji
Two adult Japanese named colors written in Kanji, a logographic orthography, and in Kana, a syllabary. Although colors are more frequently written in the Kanji form and although Kanji are more compact graphic representations of words in general, latency to vocalization was consistently less for the Kana. This superiority is attributed to the closer relation of Kana to phonology and, therefore, to speech. The demonstrated greater facility for nami…
On the Relation Between Processing the Roman and the Cyrillic Alphabets
Serbo-Croatian is read, to a greater or lesser degree depending on locale, in two alphabets, the Roman and the Cyrillic. While most letters are solely members of one or the other alphabet, some letters are shared and of these, some are ambiguous in that they are read differently in the two alphabets. The order in which the alphabets are acquired depends on geography: in the eastern part of the country the order is Cyrillic then Roman; in the west…
Phonetic Activity in Reading
Reading seems to require phonetic short-term storage even if the writing system is logographic. A short-term memory probe paradigm was used to test the ability of Japanese subjects to recall kanji characters. When pairs of characters in a silently read list were homophonous, recall was significantly poorer than when the silently read list included no such pairs, presumably because of confusion in phonetic short-term storage. Since the kanji have …
Phonological Assimilation and Visual Word Recognition
Phonemic, Associative, and Grammatical Context Effects with Identified and Unidentified Primes
Six experiments are reported that assess priming effects on lexical decision (in Serbo-Croatian) when the context is identifiable (unmasked conditions) and when it is unidentifiable due to forward masking (masked conditions). Word acceptance is slowed by a phone-mically similar context that is not masked but hastened by a phonemically similar context that is masked. Word acceptance is hastened by an associatively related context that is not maske…
Analysis of Augmented Recall in Short‐term Memory Following a Shift in Connotation
The effect of connotative history upon a critical triad of connotatively defined words was studied in short‐term memory. The critical triad was presented subsequent to a build‐up in proactive interference. A release from proaction was obtained only when the history was one of homogeneous items connotatively different from the critical items; heterogeneous items connotatively different from the critical items did not produce the effect. This obser…
Temporal Course of Proactive Interference in Short‐term Memory
In each of three experiments, each subject in each condition received five successive short‐term memory (STM) tests with phonemically similar consonant trigrams as the items to be remembered. The retention interval for tests 1–4 of all conditions in the three experiments was held constant at 16·5 sec. On test 5 the retention interval was varied across conditions with the three experiments exploring retention intervals in the range 1–21·5 sec. In …
Phonetic Activity in Reading
Reading seems to require phonetic short-term storage even if the writing system is logographic. A short-term memory probe paradigm was used to test the ability of Japanese subjects to recall kanji characters. When pairs of characters in a silently read list were homophonous, recall was significantly poorer than when the silently read list included no such pairs, presumably because of confusion in phonetic short-term storage. Since the kanji have …
On the Relation Between Processing the Roman and the Cyrillic Alphabets
Serbo-Croatian is read, to a greater or lesser degree depending on locale, in two alphabets, the Roman and the Cyrillic. While most letters are solely members of one or the other alphabet, some letters are shared and of these, some are ambiguous in that they are read differently in the two alphabets. The order in which the alphabets are acquired depends on geography: in the eastern part of the country the order is Cyrillic then Roman; in the west…
Bi-Alphabetical Lexical Decision
The Serbo-Croatian language is written in two alphabets, Roman and Cyrillic. The majority of the total number of alphabet characters are unique to one or the other alphabet. There are, however, a number of shared characters, some of which receive the same reading in the two alphabets, and some of which receive a different reading in the two alphabets. Letter-strings were constructed, all of which could be given a phonological interpretation in Ro…
Lexical Decision for Inflected Nouns
Lexical decision times were measured for three grammatical cases of inflected Serbo-Croatian nouns. The grammatical cases occur with different frequencies. Decision times were not related by a unique constant multiplier to the logarithms of the respective case frequencies. The result suggests that a principle of organization in addition to frequency of occurrence is involved in the lexical memory of inflected nouns
Words Written in Kana Are Named Faster Than the Same Words Written in Kanji
Two adult Japanese named colors written in Kanji, a logographic orthography, and in Kana, a syllabary. Although colors are more frequently written in the Kanji form and although Kanji are more compact graphic representations of words in general, latency to vocalization was consistently less for the Kana. This superiority is attributed to the closer relation of Kana to phonology and, therefore, to speech. The demonstrated greater facility for nami…
Ecological laws of perceiving and acting
A Word Superiority Effect in a Phonetically Precise Orthography
Other things being equal, a letter is identified more accurately and rapidly in the context of a word than in the context of a nonword. This word-superiority effect has been demonstrated many times with materials conforming to English orthography. The present experiment, using the probe letter-recognition procedure, demonstrates the effect in the Serbo-Croatian orthography. In that the English and Serbo-Croatian orthographies distinguish markedly…
Some Word-Order Effects in Serbo-Croat
In the Serbo-Croatian language, the relative order of subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) is flexible. All six of the permutations of those elements have identical words, meaning, and voice, and all six are grammatically acceptable. Nonetheless, SVO is the dominant form. The psychological reality of this dominance was assessed in three tasks. SVO was associated with the shortest latencies (and SO forms in general were faster than OS forms) when…
Visually Perceiving What is Reachable
Four experiments designed to assess observers' ability to perceive whether or not something is within reach, under a variety of circumstances, are reported. Actual reaching ability is influenced by the posture in which reaching is to be done (e.g., with the arm alone, extending the arm while bending from the hip, and main- taining balance while bending from an upright standing position) and by the surface layout that confronts the reacher (e.g., …
Gravitational and Muscular Variables in Perceiving Rod Extent by Wielding
Three experiments are reported, which examined the relation between the percep- tion of the distance reachable with a hand-held rod that can be wielded but not seen and the rod's resistance to having its rotational speed changed by application of a torque. In these experiments, subjects wielded any given rod about an axis intermediate between its endpoints. The subject's task was to adjust a visible, movable surface to coincide with where he or s…
Perceiving the Lengths of Rods That are Held But Not Wielded
The ambiguity inherent in the act of experimental abstraction is discussed particularly with respect to experiments that seem to prove the superfluity of active exploration in perception. For example, in the case of haptic perception of the extent of hand-held rods, the variable of the second moment of mass distribution-the moment of inertia-has been shown to predict perceived length; this variable is inherently active, identifying a system's res…
Investigating a Nonconservative Invariant of Motion in Coordinated Rhythmic Movements
The dimensions of an animal's limbs are fixed, but in locomotion and other rhythmic activities, they oscillated at a number of different frequencies. How might the physical conditions for this frequency variation be characterized? Kugler and Turvey (1987) hypothesized that the conditions might be adiabatic. A rhythmic system undergoes an adiabatic transformation of frequency when the stiffness is changed without a transfer of energy by heating. B…
Perceiving Object Width by Grasping
Ordinarily when an object is grasped between the thumb and finger, the linear extent of the object and finger span covary and match in size. Six experiments examined perceived size by grasping when this contingency was broken. Perceived size was indicated by producing a span with the left hand to match the width of a presented object. Under ordinary circumstances of grasping with the bare fingers, haptically perceived width did not differ from vi…
Phonemic, Associative, and Grammatical Context Effects with Identified and Unidentified Primes
Six experiments are reported that assess priming effects on lexical decision (in Serbo-Croatian) when the context is identifiable (unmasked conditions) and when it is unidentifiable due to forward masking (masked conditions). Word acceptance is slowed by a phone-mically similar context that is not masked but hastened by a phonemically similar context that is masked. Word acceptance is hastened by an associatively related context that is not maske…
Coordination
Thermodynamic Reasons for Perception--Action Cycles
is to study of the relation between knower and known. Because every other discipline, by definition, begins with an epistemic agent (the knower), and an intentional object of knowledge (the known) as well as explicitly or implicitly held epistemological or ontological assumptions, ecological psychology, which is just the study of these things, can appropriately be thought of as the most fundamental of all disciplines. In this role it forms a fund…
An Acoustic Variable Specifying Time-to-Contact
The acoustic intensity structure generated by the rectilinear convergence of a compact sound source and a point of observation is analyzed. It is shown that an acoustic variable specifying the time-to-contact with the source is available at the point of observation, given certain assumptions about the source, the distance between the source and observation point, and the environment. This variable is T = 2I/(dI/dt), where I is the time-averaged i…
Perceiving 'Walk-on-able' Slopes
Prospective control of walking and running requires perceiving sloping surfaces that can and cannot support these activities. Two experiments on slant perception were conducted, motivated by the notion of geographical slant rather than optical slant, and by an affordance based description of surface layout. In Experiment 1, participants standing on a horizontal surface (the ground) adjusted the inclination in the frontal plane of a large wooden p…
Autonomous and Nonautonomous Dynamics of Coordinated Rhythmic Movements
Recently, accounts of human rhythmic movement have been given in terms of nonlinear dissipative dynamics with special emphasis on the autonomous dynamics that characterize self-organizing systems. In this article, an argument is made for a modeling strategy that allows for and, when possible, attempts to capitalize on the incorporation of nonautonomous dynamics in models of human rhythmic move- ment, that is, dynamics that characterize systems th…
Affordances and Prospective Control
Actions must be controlled prospectively. This requires that the behavioral possibilities of surface layouts and events be perceived. In this article, the ontolog- ical basis for an understanding of prospective control in realist terms is outlined. The foundational idea is that of affordances and the promoted ontology is materialist and dynamicist. It is argued that research in the ecological approach to prospective control is ultimately the sear…
Perceiving by Dynamic Touch the Distances Reachable With Irregular Objects
Observers wielded occluded objects and reported the distances reachable with the distal tips of the objects. Each object consisted of a cylindrical stem with two branches attached perpendicularly along its length; stem and branch lengths varied across objects. In Experiment 1, the branches were 180 deg. apart, both attached halfway along the stem. In Experiment 2, the branches were 180 deg. apart, one at one fourth and the other at three fourths …
Haptically Perceiving the Length of One Rod by Means of Another
Two experiments examined perception of the extent of a target rod that is contacted and wielded by a second probe rod. The equations that define the dynamics of the probe-target system suggest a higher order moment of inertia as the relevant perceptual variable. The particular inertial term implicates parameters of both the target and probe rod. Experiment 1 manipulated the inertia of the target rod and Experiment 2 manipulated the inertia of the…
A Parallel Between Visual and Haptic Perception of Size at a Distance
In the haptic perception of the size of frontoparallel intervals achieved by probing between two objects with a handheld stick, perceived size decreases with distance, with the rate of decrease greater for greater sizes. Analysis and experimentation have shown that these perceptual results are predicted by a quantity that is invariant over probing and specific to the physical conditions defined by the spatial layout and the probe. In this article…
Psychology (44 works) · Computer Science (38 works) · Cognitive psychology (26 works) · Mathematics (26 works) · Linguistics (20 works) · Artificial Intelligence (19 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Perception (16 works) · Physics (16 works) · Cognition (13 works)