An ecological approach to stimulus-response compatibility

The ecological approach charted by J. J. Gibson and extended by others takes as its goal elucidating the natural laws that capture coordination of action with respect to sensory information. A kernel theme is the theory of affordances. Whether an affordance is realized (whether some action occurs) depends on the occasion (incl. the intentions of the actor) and on the availability of information that stabilizes and constrains the emerging action. The goal of our paper is to elaborate the implications of this general theory of perception and action for ''S-R compatibility,'' currently a family of research paradigms, empirical phenomena, and theoretical constructs rooted primarily in the information-processing approach. We make four claims: Theory and research in compatibility would benefit by (I) considering the identification of ''the stimulus,'' both distal and proximal, as one aim of experimental research, and thereby not relying on arbitrary ''stimulus'' properties; (2) identifying the goals and coordination of actions, rather than relying on current characterizations of ''response'' properties, which have little or nothing to do with the action system; (3) considering the task of the perceiver-actor to be detecting information appropriate to constrain those action degrees of freedom left unconstrained by the task situation (instructions, intentions, etc.); and (4) exploiting the advances made by the dynamical systems approach to coordination in rhythmic movement. We summarize research motivated by each of these claims.