Harry Heft
Biographic Data
| ID | 381642 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Harry Heft |
| GIVEN NAMES | Harry |
| FAMILY NAME | Heft |
| SIGNATURE | HEFT H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Denison University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5298-5364 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 116 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Developmental Affordances
This paper identifies eco-psychological resources in everyday urban environments that were available to a sample of adolescent girls in Germany between 1918-1932. Drawing on diary entries collected by the pioneering researcher Martha Muchow, three interrelated concepts based on an ecological approach to psychological development were employed: developmental affordances—environmental possibilities for action and self-reflection; developmental open…
The Ecological Approach to Perceiving and the Dynamics of Environmental Esthetics
Research attempting to identify the perceptual basis for environmental preference began four decades ago, but advances have been limited in ensuing years as the research focus shifted without critically revisiting its initial assumptions. This paper does that by reconsidering the basis for environmental preference and psychological well-being from the perspective of the ecological approach to perceiving. With its emphasis on perception-action and…
Visual art history and the psychology of perception
The development of linear perspective in the early 15th century and the discovery of the retinal image two centuries later became cornerstones of an approach to visual perception theory that eventually took shape primarily in the hands of British Empiricist philosophers. Even as this approach has dominated perceptual theory to the present day, the perspectivist influence on pictorial representation within the visual arts steadily diminished over …
Grasping What? Ecological Anchors for Abstract Thought
Ecological psychology as social psychology
Several articles published in this journal over a number of years have examined the social dimensions of Gibsonian ecological psychology. The present paper picks up several of their themes, with an emphasis on the social developmental consequences of individuals participating in community structures and engaging the affordances that support them. From this perspective, the situated nature of activity in everyday settings is examined, which in tur…
Places
An animal's habitat is filled with places that support activities in daily life. There are places, for example, that afford sleeping, eating, hiding, and gathering with others. Most places reflect the environment's nested structure. Even as perception–action is coupled to structure at the level of affordances, it is also coupled especially in human societies to dynamic structures at the level of places within which affordances are nested. These p…
Perceptual Information of “An Entirely Different Order”
James Gibson's final book, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979/1986) may have had the unintended effect of overshadowing his prior, seminal work, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966). This circumstance is unfortunate because in many ways the final book has a narrower focus. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems not only considers other perceptual systems in addition to vision but also it is in this work where Gi…
Introduction to “Why 25 Years?”
The spring 2015 meeting of Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences was held at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The program organizer
Human Cognition, Evolution of
Ecological psychology and religious meaning
Children and their Environments
This fascinating book examines theories of children's perceptions of space and place and explores how these theories are applied to the world of children. The focus is on children in large real world spaces; places that children live in, explore and learn from. These include classrooms, playgrounds, homes and yards, towns, communities, countryside, natural environments, and the wider world. An international team of authors compare the experiences…
A Psychologically Meaningful Description of Environments Requires a Relational Approach
We firmly agree with Coolen that a significant contribution the ecological approach (Gibson, 1979) can make to environment‐behavior studies concerns the central but vexing question of meaning. It i
Affordances, Dynamic Experience, and the Challenge of Reification
Why is it that affordances have received attention within psychology only in recent decades if they are supposedly what individuals perceive most fundamentally? This paradoxcanbeexplained,inpart,bythefactthatpsychologistshaveusuallyconsidered the character of perceiving from a detached stance, and then reified the results of this analysis—an error that William James called the psychologist’s fallacy—rather than attending to the immediate flow of …
Children's Competence and the Ecology of Communities
Ecological Psychology in Context
In this book Harry Heft examines the historical and theoretical foundations of James J. Gibson's ecological psychology in 20th century thought, and in turn, integrates ecological psychology and analyses of sociocultural processes. A thesis of the book is that knowing is rooted in the direct experience of meaningful environmental objects and events present in individual-environment processes and at the level of collective, social settings. Ecologi…
Essay review
A Methodological Note on Overestimates of Reaching Distance
Previous research has shown that perceivers tend to overestimate whether an object is within reach. This exploratory study examined the hypothesis that this overestimate is a result of transforming what is typically a perception-action process into an analytical, reflective judgment. It was hypothesized that reaching estimates would be more accurate as analytical processes became less implicated in the judgment. The results indicate that when the…
Perceiving Affordances in Context
Affordances and the Body
Way -finding as the perception of information over time
Incommensurability and the “Omission” in Gibson's Theory
An examination of constructivist and gibsonian approaches to environmental psychology
What Heil is Missing in Gibson
The Semiology of Orientation in Urban Space [and Comments and Reply]
According to the author, a semiology of orientation is not an examination of urbanism aimed at exposing the links between the "structure" ofhe city under discussion and the professional, economic, social, and cultural activities of its population. Nor is it a sociological study of urban space which examines how the city organizes, perceives, imposes, or inhibits its functions and social relations. It is even less a psychological or psychosociolog…
A Comparative Study of User Attitudes Towards Development and Facilities in Two Contrasting Natural Recreation Areas
Two natural-recreation areas in the state of Pennsylvania that differ in the amount of development that each has undergone, the Pine Creek and the Poconos areas, were the subject of comparative study of users of these areas. The research was designed to explore the hypothesis that attitudes towards development, and towards the provision of facilities and amenities, will be more favorable among users of the more highly developed area. Two studies …
Affordances and the Body
Children's Competence and the Ecology of Communities
A Psychologically Meaningful Description of Environments Requires a Relational Approach
We firmly agree with Coolen that a significant contribution the ecological approach (Gibson, 1979) can make to environment‐behavior studies concerns the central but vexing question of meaning. It i
What Heil is Missing in Gibson
The Semiology of Orientation in Urban Space [and Comments and Reply]
According to the author, a semiology of orientation is not an examination of urbanism aimed at exposing the links between the "structure" ofhe city under discussion and the professional, economic, social, and cultural activities of its population. Nor is it a sociological study of urban space which examines how the city organizes, perceives, imposes, or inhibits its functions and social relations. It is even less a psychological or psychosociolog…
Perceiving Affordances in Context
An examination of constructivist and gibsonian approaches to environmental psychology
Incommensurability and the “Omission” in Gibson's Theory
A Comparative Study of User Attitudes Towards Development and Facilities in Two Contrasting Natural Recreation Areas
Two natural-recreation areas in the state of Pennsylvania that differ in the amount of development that each has undergone, the Pine Creek and the Poconos areas, were the subject of comparative study of users of these areas. The research was designed to explore the hypothesis that attitudes towards development, and towards the provision of facilities and amenities, will be more favorable among users of the more highly developed area. Two studies …
A Comparative Study of User Attitudes Towards Development and Facilities in Two Contrasting Natural Recreation Areas
Two natural-recreation areas in the state of Pennsylvania that differ in the amount of development that each has undergone, the Pine Creek and the Poconos areas, were the subject of comparative study of users of these areas. The research was designed to explore the hypothesis that attitudes towards development, and towards the provision of facilities and amenities, will be more favorable among users of the more highly developed area. Two studies …
What Heil is Missing in Gibson
The Semiology of Orientation in Urban Space [and Comments and Reply]
According to the author, a semiology of orientation is not an examination of urbanism aimed at exposing the links between the "structure" ofhe city under discussion and the professional, economic, social, and cultural activities of its population. Nor is it a sociological study of urban space which examines how the city organizes, perceives, imposes, or inhibits its functions and social relations. It is even less a psychological or psychosociolog…
An examination of constructivist and gibsonian approaches to environmental psychology
Incommensurability and the “Omission” in Gibson's Theory
Way -finding as the perception of information over time
Affordances and the Body
Perceiving Affordances in Context
A Methodological Note on Overestimates of Reaching Distance
Previous research has shown that perceivers tend to overestimate whether an object is within reach. This exploratory study examined the hypothesis that this overestimate is a result of transforming what is typically a perception-action process into an analytical, reflective judgment. It was hypothesized that reaching estimates would be more accurate as analytical processes became less implicated in the judgment. The results indicate that when the…
Essay review
Ecological Psychology in Context
In this book Harry Heft examines the historical and theoretical foundations of James J. Gibson's ecological psychology in 20th century thought, and in turn, integrates ecological psychology and analyses of sociocultural processes. A thesis of the book is that knowing is rooted in the direct experience of meaningful environmental objects and events present in individual-environment processes and at the level of collective, social settings. Ecologi…
Children's Competence and the Ecology of Communities
Affordances, Dynamic Experience, and the Challenge of Reification
Why is it that affordances have received attention within psychology only in recent decades if they are supposedly what individuals perceive most fundamentally? This paradoxcanbeexplained,inpart,bythefactthatpsychologistshaveusuallyconsidered the character of perceiving from a detached stance, and then reified the results of this analysis—an error that William James called the psychologist’s fallacy—rather than attending to the immediate flow of …
Children and their Environments
This fascinating book examines theories of children's perceptions of space and place and explores how these theories are applied to the world of children. The focus is on children in large real world spaces; places that children live in, explore and learn from. These include classrooms, playgrounds, homes and yards, towns, communities, countryside, natural environments, and the wider world. An international team of authors compare the experiences…
A Psychologically Meaningful Description of Environments Requires a Relational Approach
We firmly agree with Coolen that a significant contribution the ecological approach (Gibson, 1979) can make to environment‐behavior studies concerns the central but vexing question of meaning. It i
Ecological psychology and religious meaning
Human Cognition, Evolution of
Introduction to “Why 25 Years?”
The spring 2015 meeting of Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences was held at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The program organizer
Perceptual Information of “An Entirely Different Order”
James Gibson's final book, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979/1986) may have had the unintended effect of overshadowing his prior, seminal work, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966). This circumstance is unfortunate because in many ways the final book has a narrower focus. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems not only considers other perceptual systems in addition to vision but also it is in this work where Gi…
Places
An animal's habitat is filled with places that support activities in daily life. There are places, for example, that afford sleeping, eating, hiding, and gathering with others. Most places reflect the environment's nested structure. Even as perception–action is coupled to structure at the level of affordances, it is also coupled especially in human societies to dynamic structures at the level of places within which affordances are nested. These p…
Ecological psychology as social psychology
Several articles published in this journal over a number of years have examined the social dimensions of Gibsonian ecological psychology. The present paper picks up several of their themes, with an emphasis on the social developmental consequences of individuals participating in community structures and engaging the affordances that support them. From this perspective, the situated nature of activity in everyday settings is examined, which in tur…
Grasping What? Ecological Anchors for Abstract Thought
Visual art history and the psychology of perception
The development of linear perspective in the early 15th century and the discovery of the retinal image two centuries later became cornerstones of an approach to visual perception theory that eventually took shape primarily in the hands of British Empiricist philosophers. Even as this approach has dominated perceptual theory to the present day, the perspectivist influence on pictorial representation within the visual arts steadily diminished over …
The Ecological Approach to Perceiving and the Dynamics of Environmental Esthetics
Research attempting to identify the perceptual basis for environmental preference began four decades ago, but advances have been limited in ensuing years as the research focus shifted without critically revisiting its initial assumptions. This paper does that by reconsidering the basis for environmental preference and psychological well-being from the perspective of the ecological approach to perceiving. With its emphasis on perception-action and…
Developmental Affordances
This paper identifies eco-psychological resources in everyday urban environments that were available to a sample of adolescent girls in Germany between 1918-1932. Drawing on diary entries collected by the pioneering researcher Martha Muchow, three interrelated concepts based on an ecological approach to psychological development were employed: developmental affordances—environmental possibilities for action and self-reflection; developmental open…
Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Cognitive science (8 works) · Perception (8 works) · Affordance (7 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Ecological psychology (6 works)