Perceptual psychology is a subfield of

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

that concerns the conscious and unconscious innate aspects of the human cognitive system:

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...

. A pioneer of the field was

James J. Gibson James Jerome Gibson (; January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979) was an American psychologist and is considered to be one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception. Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system ...

. One major study was that of

affordance Affordance is what the environment offers the individual. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'', and it occurs in many of his earlier essays. However, his best-know ...

s, i.e. the perceived utility of objects in, or features of, one's surroundings. According to Gibson, such features or objects were perceived as affordances and not as separate or distinct objects in themselves. This view was central to several other fields as software

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

and

usability engineering Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human–computer interaction and specifically with devising human–computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness. It provides structured methods for achieving ...

environmentalism Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seek ...

in psychology, and ultimately to

political economy Political economy is the study of how Macroeconomics, economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and Economy, national economies) and Politics, political systems (e.g. law, Institution, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied ph ...

where the perceptual view was used to explain the omission of key inputs or consequences of economic transactions, i.e. resources and wastes.

Gerard Egan Gerard Egan (born 1930) is Professor Emeritus of Loyola University of Chicago. He later served as Professor of Organization Studies and Psychology and Programme Director for Loyola's Centre for Organization Development. The eleventh edition of ...

and Robert Bolton explored areas of interpersonal interactions based on the premise that people act in accordance with their perception of a given situation. While behaviour is obvious, a person's thoughts and feelings are masked. This gives rise to the idea that the most common problems between people are based on the assumption that we can guess what the other person is feeling and thinking. They also offered methods, within this scope, for effective communications. This includes

reflective listening Reflective listening is a communication strategy involving two key steps: seeking to understand a speaker's idea, then offering the idea back to the speaker, to confirm the idea has been understood correctly. Reflective listening is a more specific ...

, assertion skills,

conflict resolution Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of conflict and retribution. Committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively communicating information abou ...

etc. Perceptual psychology is often used in therapy to help a patient better their problem-solving skills.

Nativism vs. empiricism

Nativist and

empiricist In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...

approaches to perceptual psychology have been researched and debated to find out which is the basis in the development of perception. Nativists believe humans are born with all the perceptual abilities needed. Nativism is the favored theory on perception. Empiricists believe that humans are not born with perceptual abilities, but instead must learn them.

References

{{Authority control Cognitive biases