Traditionally perception is understood as originating from a stimulus in the environment about which various informational media carry messages to the sensory organs. Further processing of stimulus features takes place in the human organism and perception is said to occur when a perceptual object that is outside in the environment is created in the observer that reflects the properties of the external world. This process when specific to apprehending the features of the environment is known as environmental perception. When apprehension of features of the environment involves questions related to identity, pattern, form and movement, they are related to environmental perception. Environmental cognition involves formulating hypotheses, making further decisions, and working on goals based on information obtained through environmental perception. An example of a question related to environmental perception would be ‘Did I just hear a tyre burst? Or was this a gunshot?’ Perceptual cognition would involve goal related questions like ‘Should I get out of the car and check? Should I flee as soon as possible?’
Environmental perception has immense value for human survival as well as for human social life. Historically, however, the study of environmental perception and cognition has been a somewhat marginalised topic. Most early studies have been carried out within the experimental stimulus-response model. With the growth of environmental psychology there has been increasing attention to the spatio-physical characteristics of the environment in which behaviour occurs rather than treating the environment only as an extraneous variable. There have been two main traditions of research: the psychology of perception where the environment is conceptualised in physical-perceptual terms, and social psychological tradition which has a relatively molar stance. In the next few sections, we will give a broad overview of some major thinkers within each of these two traditions and trace the movement of theorising in environmental psychology from narrow, physical terms to broader social terms.
PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION
1. Ontogenetic perspective
One of the earliest research in Psychology about spatial perception was by Jean Piaget and Inhelder (1947). According to Piaget, children’s environmental knowledge is acquired through opportunities for action/ exploration which are provided during early childhood. Given an appropriate combination of a child’s physical maturation and exposure to environmental stimulation, cognitive potentials including the capacity for spatial perception unfolds in a stage-appropriate manner. This is an ontogenetic perspective. Qualitative changes in spatial perception can be seen as the child passes through different stages of cognitive development. According to Piaget, a child reaches adult level of competence in spatial understanding only when s/he attains the age of 9 or 10 years.
Piaget used the famous three-mountain task to show that in early life the child’s understanding of space is limited and disorganised. In the three-mountain task, a child is presented with a display of three model mountains and a doll is placed at different points around the mountain. The child is required to reorganise the display of mountains to form what they think the mountains look like from the doll’s standpoint. To control for the difference that may arise between “spatial storage” and “spatial products” (Liben, 1981) Piaget and Inhelder also gave the children the option of selecting from a set of pictures the picture they think matched the doll’s perspective, and also allowed the children to reposition the doll in such a way so as to create a match with viewpoint presented in a particular picture. It was found that children of around four years of age assumed that the doll sees the three mountains in exactly the same way as the child herself sees. In other words, there was evidence of “egocentrism” or the inability to distinguish one’s own view from the view of the doll.
According to Piaget in early life young children have a sensorimotor understanding as opposed to a metric understanding of the spatial world. Children hence are able to understand topological concepts: which objects are closer in proximity, which are enclosed by one another, the sequence or separation of objects, etc. However, there is no Euclidean understanding of space at an early age. According to Piaget, children begin to understand space and environment only after object permanence or the idea that objects continue to exist even if they may not be in sight - has been attained.
Following the same ontogenetic logic of Piaget, Siegel and White (1975) proposed a five-stage model of the development of cognitive mapping ability. With overall cognitive development the child develops capacity for symbolic abstraction and logical thinking, and parallel to this process, development of spatial perceptual skills also takes place. In the first stage the child develops (a) ‘photographic knowledge’ or memory of single and isolated points of reference in environmental space, that is, develops photographic memory of landmarks. In the second stage (b) the child is able to make use of the single points of space/ landmarks as references for organising routes. In the third stage (c) distinct and limited parts of the environment can be integrated to form (d) route knowledge. At this stage children learn the sequence of direction choices at intersections and are able to mentalize where in the route they have to turn left, right or go straight. The last ability that is developed is (e) the ability to coordinate routes in the area of this system to form a ‘cognitive map’ of the environment. This cognitive map is holistic, based on survey knowledge. It is independent of the way finder’s own position and enables the way finder to develop shortcuts, find alternative routes to the destination and generally navigate the whole environment successfully.
Following the same ontogenetic logic of Piaget, Siegel and White (1975) proposed a five-stage model of the development of cognitive mapping ability. With overall cognitive development the child develops capacity for symbolic abstraction and logical thinking, and parallel to this process, development of spatial perceptual skills also takes place. In the first stage the child develops (a) ‘photographic knowledge’ or memory of single and isolated points of reference in environmental space, that is, develops photographic memory of landmarks. In the second stage (b) the child is able to make use of the single points of space/ landmarks as references for organising routes. In the third stage (c) distinct and limited parts of the environment can be integrated to form (d) route knowledge. At this stage children learn the sequence of direction choices at intersections and are able to mentalize where in the route they have to turn left, right or go straight. The last ability that is developed is (e) the ability to coordinate routes in the area of this system to form a ‘cognitive map’ of the environment. This cognitive map is holistic, based on survey knowledge. It is independent of the wayfinder’s own position and enables the wayfinder to develop shortcuts, find alternative routes to the destination and generally navigate the whole environment successfully.
2. Nativist perspective
According to the nativist position children have an innate capacity for spatial perception which is independent of physical maturation as well as of learning opportunities. Along these lines nativist theorists - Landau, Gleitman, &Spelke (1981) showed that understanding of Euclidean or metric properties of space are not vision dependent, and that even at an early age of 2.5 years a visually impaired child is able to decipher distance and angular relationship among familiar paths, decipher spatial relationship between objects and make further inferences about metric properties to navigate an unfamiliar path. This finding clearly does not agree with Piaget’s maturationcontingent perspective on cognitive and spatial development.
Other researchers from the nativist tradition (Hermer &Spelke, 1994, 1996) have experimentally shown that very young children are able to make use of geometric information to navigate space while not being able to make use of non-geometric information such as colour or odour. Developmental processes enable the child later in life to make use of non-geometric information. This research also clearly does not agree with Piaget’s topological assumptions about spatial understanding in early childhood.
Although the nativist theorists, through their carefully designed experimental studies, have greatly enhanced the understanding of children’s spatial perceptions and have clarified several misconceptions about children’s spatial understanding, the nativist theories have largely failed to pay attention to the role of environmental factors and developmental processes in helping the child attain mastery over skills which may be present in early life only in nascent form. Some researchers (Newcombe, 2002) have also raised doubts about the specific geometric modularity claim made by nativists with respect to space perception.
3. Learning Perspective
In contrast with the nativist theories the learning theory approach emphasises the importance of cultural guidance in spatial learning and spatial thinking. Gauvain (1993) for example described how in everyday problem-solving tasks such as giving directions, planning-executing an action sequence and wayfinding people make use of social and cultural information. Cognitive mapping therefore is influenced by the goals, communication conventions of the cultural context in which it occurs. Through empirical research Gauvain (2001) demonstrated that the understanding of representations, for example, of maps requires understanding first that the map is a depiction of the real world and second, also understanding the meaning behind the representation. Understanding this meaning is facilitated by the process of scaffolding in which experienced cultural members implicitly and explicitly guide and support the younger members through language-based communication. However, all of these processes have a tendency to go unnoticed, unacknowledged as cultural tools have a seamless presence in human cognitive interpretative processes so much so that their mediational role may be largely overlooked.
The learning theory perspective is valuable for drawing attention to sociocultural aspects of the environment. However, by stressing the importance of language, scaffolding and other cultural artefacts this perspective discounts the importance of direct feedback the children receive from their environment as they go about active exploration. The adaptive value of spatial representations and spatial thought is also largely ignored in this perspective.
4. Interactionist Perspective
A middle ground between the nativist and learning perspectives is provided by interactionist theories (Newcombe, 1998; Newcombe & Huttenlocher, 2000). These theories are much more comprehensive in scope and posit that ontogeny, neural maturation, environmental facilitation and cultural guidance - all combine to contribute to spatial development, and none of these can be privileged more than the other.
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