Course title:
Ecological Film Theory

Teachers:
Prof. Joseph D. Anderson (Director, Center for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image)
Prof. Barbara Fisher Anderson (Department of Communication George State University, Atlanta)

Course description:
The course addresses the foundations of ecological film theory, with special emphasis on the basic concepts of ecological psychology (invariants, affordances, optical flow, ambient optic array), how the ecological approach is based upon the evolutionary development of the human perceptual systems, and how the approach might offer insight into the process of film viewing.

Assessment:
Final examination

PROGRAM

Assignments:

• Chapter 1 "Introduction" (pp. 1-15) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Assignments:

• Chapter 2, "Toward an Ecology of Cinema" (pp. 16-35) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Chapter 3, "Capacities and Strategies" (pp. 36-53) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Mayr, Ernst. "Evolution." Scientific American, September 1978, 239, no. 3, pp. 46-56.

Supplemental readings:

• Chapter 1, "Just What Kind of Science is Psychology?" (pp. 1-35) in Plotkin, Henry. Evolution in Mind: An Introudction to Evolutionary Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998.
• Chapter 4, "The Natural Sciences" (pp. 45-65) in Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998

Assignments:

• Chapter 14, "The Theory of Information Pickup and its Condequences" (pp. 238-263) in Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996. Paperback edition. (Originally published Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979).

Supplemental readings:

• Fodor, J. A. and Pylyshyn, Z. W. "How Direct is Visual Perception: Some Reflections on Gibson's 'Ecological Approach,' " Cogniton, 9 (1981): 139-196.
• Turvey, M.T.; Shaw, R. E.; Reed, E.S.; and Mace, W. M. "Ecological Laws of Perceiving and Acting: In Reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn," Cognition, 9 (1981): 237-304.
• Gardner, Howard, "The Gibsonian View of Perception," "Contrasting Perspectives," and "Possible Reconciliations," in Gardner, Howard. The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Paperback edition. (Originally published 1985).
• Chapter 1, "Regulations vs. Construction," in Reed, Edward S. Encountering the World: Toward an Ecological Psychology. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Assignments:

• Chapter 4, "Some Problems Reconsidered" (pp. 54-79) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Chapter 5, "Sound and Image" (pp. 80-90) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Chapter 16, "Motion Pictures and Visual Awareness" (pp. 292-306) in Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996. Paperback edition. (Originally published Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979).
• Bregman, Albert S. Auditory Scene Analysis. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990.

Supplemental readings:

• "Autobiography" in Gibson, James J. Reasons for Realism. Edward Reed and Rebecca Jones, eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982. [Originally published in History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. 5), E. G. Boring & G. Lindzey (Eds.). Copyright 1967 by Irvington Publishers, Inc.]
• "Hearing Shape" by Michael T. Turvey and Andre J. Kunkler-Peck, a presentation by M.Turvey, Symposium: "Everyday listening: perception of object properties by sound," at the Tenth International Conference on Perception and Action, August 13, 1999, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Assignments:

• Chapter XII, "The Pickup of Ambient Informaiton: Scanning" (pp. 250- 265) in Gibson, James J. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
• Chapter 6, "Continuity" (pp. 90-110) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Assignments:

• Chapter 7, "Diegesis" (pp. 111-126) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Tan, Ed S. "The Diegetic Effect" (pp. 52-56) in Tan, Ed S. Emotions and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.

Assignments:

• Chapter 8, "Character" (pp. 127-143) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Plantinga, Carl. "The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film" in Passionate Views: Thinking About Film and Emotion, Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, eds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 239-255.

Suggested reading:

• Eitzen, Dirk. "The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy," in Passionate Views: Thinking About Film and Emotion, Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, eds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.

Assignments:

• Chapter 9, "Narrative," (pp. 144-159) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Chapter 10, "Conclusion" (pp. 160-170) in Anderson, Joseph D. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.
• Neisser, Ulric. "What is Ordinary Memory the Memory of?" in Remembering Reconsidered. Ulric Neisser and Eugene Winograd, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Supplemental readings:

• Branigan, Edward. "Fiction as Partially Determined Reference" and "Psychologically real theories of Fiction," (pp. 192-198) in Branigan, Edward. Narrative Comprehension and Film. New York: Chapman and Hall, Inc., 1992.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Anderson, Joseph D., et. al. "Binocular Integration in Line Rivalry," Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 11:6 (1978): 399-402.
• Anderson, Joseph and Barbara Anderson. "Motion Perception in Motion Pictures." In The Cinematic Apparatus. Edited by Teresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.
• ________. "The Case for An Ecological Metatheory" in Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Edited by David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
• ________. "The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited," Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring 1993): 3-12. Anderson, Joseph and Barbara Fisher. "The Myth of Persistence of Vision." Journal of the University Film Association XXX:4 (Fall 1978): 3-8.
• Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972.
• Bickhard, Mark H. and D. Michael Richie. On the Nature of Representation. New York: Praeger, 1983.
• Bregman, Albert S. Auditory Scene Analysis. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990.
• Bruce, Vicki and Young, Andrew. In the Eye of the Beholder: The Science of Face Perception. New York : Oxford University Press,
• Bruce, Vicki; Green, Patrick R. and Georgrsons, Mark. Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology, & Ecology . Mahwah : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.
• Carello, Claudia; Anderson, Krista L.; and Kunkler-Peck, Andrew J. "Perception of object length by sound." Psychological Science, Vol 9(3), May 1998, 211-214.
• Carroll, Noel. "Toward a Theory of Point of View Editing." Poetics Today 14:1 (Spring 1993): 123.-141.
• Chan, Tin-Cheung; and Shaw, Robert E. "What is ecological psychology?" Psychologia: An International Journal of Psychology in the Orient, Vol 39(1), Mar 1996, 1-16.
• Costall, Alan. "The myth of the sensory core: The traditional versus the ecological approach to children's drawings." In Lange-Kuettner, Christiane (Ed); Thomas, Glyn V. (Ed); et al. Drawing and looking: Theoretical approaches to pictorial representation in children. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995. pp. 16-26.
• _________. "Innocence and corruption: Conflicting images of child art." Human Development, Vol 40(3), Jul 1997(Special Issue: Artistic Development ):133-144.
• Costall, Alan; and Leudar, Ivan. "Situating Action I: Truth in the situation" Ecological Psychology, Vol 8(2), 1996, 101-110. Costall, Alan; and Leudar, Ivan. "On how we can act.." Theory & Psychology, Vol 8(2), Apr 1998, 165-171.
• Cutting, James W. "Human heading judgments and object-based motion information" Vision Research. Vol 39(6), Mar 1999, 1079-1105.
• _________. "Where we go with a little good information" Psychological Science. Vol 10(1), Jan 1999, 71-75.
• _________. "Pictures and their special status in perceptual and cognitive inquiry." In Hochberg, Julian; et al (Eds) Perception and cognition at century's end. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc, 1998: 137-168.
• _________. "Information from the world around us" ." In Hochberg, Julian; et al (Eds) Perception and cognition at century's end. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc, 1998: pp. 69-93.
• _________. "How the eye measures reality and virtual reality." Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers. Year: Vol 29(1), Feb 1997, 27-36.
• _________. "Heading and path information from retinal flow in naturalistic environments." Perception & Psychophysics. Vol 59(3), Apr 1997, 426-441.
• _________. "Wayfinding from multiple sources of local information in retinal flow." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance. Year:Vol 22(5), Oct 1996: 1299-1313.
• _________. "Perceptual Artifacts and Phenomena: Gibson's Role in the 20th Century." In Foundations of Perceptual Theory (Advances in Psychology, Vol. 99), edited by Sergio C. Masin, 231-260. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1993.
• ________. "Rigidity in Cinema Seen from the Front Row, Side Aisle." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 13:3 (1987): 323-333.
• ________. Perception with an Eye for Motion. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.
• Davies, Mark N. and Green, Patrick R. Perception & Motor Control in Birds: An Ecological Approach. New York : Springer-Verlag New York, 1994.
• Dent-Read, Cathy ; Zukow-Goldring, Patricia ; et al (eds), Evolving explanations of development: Ecological approaches to organism- environment systems. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1997 xv, 601
• Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1958. Gardner, Howard. The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
• Gazzaniga, Michael S. Mind Matters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989.
• Gazzaniga, Michael S. Nature's Mind: The Biological Roots of Thinking, Emotions, Sexuality, Language and Intelligence. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
• Gibson, Eleanor J. Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969.
• Gibson, Eleanor J., ed. An Odyssey in Learning and Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.
• Gibson, Eleanor J. and Pick, Anne D. An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development. Oxford University Press, ISBN: 0195118251, expected March 2000.
• Gibson, James J. "The Purple Perils"
• Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
• ________. "Perception as a function of stimulation." in Psychology: A Study of Science. Vol. 1. S. Koch, ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.
• ________. Perception of the Visual World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
• ________. Reasons for Realism. Edited by Edward Reed and Rebecca Jones. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982.
• ________. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
• Gombrich, Ernst H. Art And Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960.
• ________. The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
• ________. "Illusion and Art." In Illusion in Nature and Art. Edited by R. L. Gregory and E. H. Gombrich. London: Duckworth, 1973.
• ________. "Representation and Misrepresentation." Critical Inquiry 11(2) (1984): 195-201.
• ________. "The What and the How: Perspective Representation and the Phenomenal World." In Logic and Art: Essays in Honor of Nelson Goodman. Edited by Richard Rudner and Israel Scheffler. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1972.
• Gregory, R. L. and E. H. Gombrich, eds. Illusion in Nature and Art. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973.
• Jansson, Gunnar; Sten Stuere Bergstr"m and William Epstein, Eds. Perceiving events and objects. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc, 1994.
• Land, Edwin H. "The Retinex Theory of Color Vision." Scientific American 237:6 (December 1977): 108-129.
• ________. "Our 'Polar Partnership' with the World Around Us." Harvard Magazine 80:3 (January-February, 1978): 23-26.
• ________. "Recent Advances in Retinex Theory." Vision Research 26, no.1 (1986): 7-21.
• Leudar, Ivan; and Costall, Alan. "Situating Action IV: Planning as situated action." Ecological Psychology, Vol 8(2), 1996, 153-170.
• MacLeod, Robert B., and Herbert L. Pick, Jr., eds. Perception: Essays in Honor of James J. Gibson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974.
• Marr, David. Vision. San Francisco: Freeman, 1982.
• Masin, Sergio C., ed. Foundations of Perceptual Theory (Advances in Psychology, Vol. 99). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1993.
• Michaels, Claire F., and Claudia Carello. Direct Perception. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1981.
• Narmour, Eugene. The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic Structures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
• Neisser, Ulric. Cognition and Reality. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1976.
• ________."The future of cognitive science: An ecological analysis" in Johnson, David Martel (Ed); Erneling, Christina E. (Ed); et al; The future of the cognitive revolution. : New York: Oxford University Press, 1997: pp. 247-260.
• ________. "The roots of self-knowledge: Perceiving self, it, and thou." In Snodgrass, Joan Gay (Ed); Thompson, Robert L. (Ed); et al; The self across psychology: Self-recognition, self-awareness, and the self concept. (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 818) NY: New York Academy of Sciences, 1997: pp. 19-33.
• ________. "From Direct Perception to Conceptual Structure." In Ulric Neisser, ed. Concepts and Conceptual Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
• ________. "What is Ordinary Memory the Memory Of?" In Remembering Reconsidered, edited by Ulric Neisser and Eugene Winograd, 368-369. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• ________.ed. Concepts and Conceptual Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
• ________.Fivush, Robin and Hirst, William (Eds) Ecological Approaches to Cognition: Essays in Honor of Ulric Neisser (Emory Symposia in Cognition) Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc, 1999
• Neisser, Ulric, and Eugene Winograd, eds. Remembering Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• O'Connor, Kieron. "Psychology and mime." Psychologist, Vol 9(3), Mar 1996, 110-113.
• Pick Anne D., ed. Perception and its Development: A Tribute to Eleanor J. Gibson. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1979.
• Pick, Herbert L. and Acredolo, Linda (Eds) Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research, & Application. New York: Plenum Publishing, 1983.
• Proffitt, Dennis R. "A Hierarchical Approach to Perception." In Foundations of Perceptual Theory (Advances in Psychology, Vol. 99), edited by Sergio C. Masin, 75-112. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers, 1993.
• Proffitt, Dennis R. and Kaiser, Mary K., "The internalization of perceptual processing constraints." Hochberg, Julian; et al (Eds) Perception and cognition at century's end. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc, 1998.
• Reed, Edward S. From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology, from Erasmus Darwin to William James. Yale University Press, 1997 .
• ____________. The Necessity of Experience. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1996.
• ____________. Encountering the World: Toward an Ecological Psychology New York : Oxford University Press, 1996 .
• _____________. Revolution in Perception: The Ecological Psychology of James J. Gibson . Yale University Press, 1988 .
• Spelke, Elizabeth S. "Exploring Audible and Visible Events in Infancy." In Perception and its Development, edited by Anne D. Pick, 221-235. Hilldale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1979.
• Thinflorins ,Georges, Alan Costall and George Butterworth, Eds. Michotte's experimental phenomenology of perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 1991.
• Tudge, Jonathan; Gray, Jacquelyn T.; and Hogan, Diane M. "Ecological perspectives in human development: A comparison of Gibson and Bronfenbrenner." In Comparisons in human development: Understanding time and context. (Cambridge studies in social and emotional development.) New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997. 72-105.
• Turvey, Michael T. and Kugler, Peter, (Eds) Information, Natural Law & the Self-Assembly of Rhythmic Movement Hillsdale:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987.
• Walk, Richard D. and Herbert L. Pick, Jr., eds. Intersensory Perception and Sensory Integration. New York: Plenum Press, 1981.
• Zebrowitz, Leslie A.; and Collins, Mary Ann. "Accurate social perception at zero acquaintance: The affordances of a Gibsonian approach." Personality & Social Psychology Review, Vol 1(3), 1997, 204-223.