Ecological Psychology

I would often sticking out because I had to look around people to lip read, look over people to lip read, or stick my ear in the direction of someone.

I got odd looks all the time.

group conversations are also a pain because isolating the voice and paying attention to the right person is challenging.

with the many, don't worry about it, comments where I missed something.

or the laughing and pointing from people on my deaf side where they have tested if I can hear them or not.

the joke insults that people would say to test my hearing.

It all got to me when I was younger. I was far from confident.

I was the half deaf kid. Alongside other things but it made me keep to myself.

No social media presence. No parties cos well I struggle to communicate. Sport was get my out.

But even there coaches shouting at me from the sideline but me not hearing. I got the blame. I should have listened, or been listening.

You should have paid more attention.

team mates talking to me and me not hearing. I got the blame.

Yes sometimes it was fault, but a lot of the time I had no idea what they were talking about.

I hadn't heard them but they assumed I had.

My childhood was like most peoples, riddled with challenges, albiet different challenges.

and when I went to uni I hit a huge low.

I was confident in 2 things sport and academics.

Not top in the year by any means but I was in top set for most subjects and got a solid B in pretty much everything. A couple As and Cs but a B student.

Failure wasn't something I was used in school.

Go to uni, now they want me to write, something I was bad at.

Want me to read. Something I hated doing because I was bad at it.

and I was expected to go out with the others.

alchol + dark room and flashing lights, with load music for someone that struggles to hear is not fun.

I tried it, and hated it.

doing a sports coaching degree my plan was to live in sport. The place I felt most confident.

but I was repeadely told, your doing it wrong.

thats not right.

You shouldn't do that.

I don't know what your degree is teaching you but its full of rubbish.

Your degree is a waste of time.

in my second year at uni I sturggled with serious mental health issues because my confidence was shot.

social life didn't have one.
sports life filled with failure.
uni life filled with failure.

but I remember this one lesson soon after one of my semi-regular hospital visits.

we were in a room next to the sport hall.

my head of course, favourate lecturer, was doing his normal thing.

not what the uni wanted which was to help us pass and get the degree.

Follow the curriculum and get good student satisfaction scores.

no he did what he thought was best for learning which was to discuss ideas.

and he pointed at a table in the room and said was is that?

obviously we all looked around kinda confused.

after a couple of seconds I said a table.

and he said, but what else is that.

and I remember being so confused. like it's a table what else do you want me to say.

and that was the point. I was trying to find the answer he wanted me to say.

he said, well it could a fort. it could be house. it could be stool.

and as he was listing of all these things I am like, well yeah they could be it's not.

which is when he said the table has affordances.

something I will explain more later but that lecture introduced me ecological dynamics.

these ideas he had been talking about all of first year and up to that point were about ecological dynamics.

the more I explored the ideas the more I became competent enough to coach other sport more effectively yes, but also coach myself.

and that ability helped me through all my mental health issues.

I saw countless therapists, none of which worked for me, but I managed to coach myself with these ideas

helped me do things I never would have thought possible.

working with people like Ali Abdaal and James Jani, massive YouTube creators would have been impossible before ecological dynamics.

I was to scared to get on a video call let alone travel to London and speak with people.

during the pandemic and unrelated to covid I woke up one morning and couldn't see out of my right eye.

it was like I had tears all over my eye blurring my vision to the point it was just smudges.

long story short, I have had multiple surgeries and am now on life long medication for my right eye.

still can't see much so I am partially sighted, and hard of hearing on my right side.

I am not saying ecological dynamics is the solution.

but without the ideas and my shift in language and explanations of learning, I don't think I would be making this video.

ecological dynamics relies on ecological psychology which is radically different from psychology you are likely familiar with.

This video will go deep as a reference point to future videos.

How is it different

Hanks crash course was based of off a psychology curriculum, which is very similar to most school curriculums. [3]

Biological mechanisms covered in great detail, but underneath all the explanations lies assumptions.

I spoke with Jeff and Julia before publishing this video,

their book, introduction to ecological psychology, is a good template to discuss many of the areas so that is what I am going to use in this video.

the base assumptions are where the approaches differ.

we group every perspective that is not ecological into one category (which we label for convenience, the traditional approach) - page 4

Most psychology courses, conversations, and normal people use the traditional assumptions.

There is variation, but all the traditional approaches fall into unsolvable mysteries.

This all starts with the nature of knowledge.

Assumptions of knowledge

how do I know I am seeing my screen, it is obvious it is there.

I believe it is there because I trust my senses.

but what I if I can't trust my senses.

The existence of my screen is now in doubt because the source of my knowledge is in doubt.

Descartes in 1637 considered this, not the screen bit but the existence of objects, and reasoned the saying

cogito ergo sum

I think therefore I am.

Not saying thinking made him exist, rather the doubt he had must have come from somewhere

Learning about senses, nervous systems is great, but we still think the same

knowledge of the world comes from (or through) our nervous system - page 4

However

The notion that only my mind exists and the rest of the world is a trick being played on my senses is called solipsism - page 4

So we either believe the world exists, realism, or not, solipsism.

Both possible. But no logical proof either way.

however, we need to pick one, so we make an assumption.

Sometimes we accept an assumption because the evidence cannot be had - page 4

and sometimes

because we have been - explicitly or implicitly - operating under that assumption for so long - page 5

All science uses assumptions, so realism or solipsism

Hank, and most if not all psychologists will assume realism.

So where does knowledge come from?

So empiricists believe knowledge comes from experience but with 2 principles

First, we begin with no knowledge. Locke (1690) called this the tabula rasa, or "blank slate". Second, knowledge can only be gained from the senses (because experience is entirely sensory).

Which is the second assumption of traditional approaches.

But if we gain knowledge through experience, senses,

Just like Descartes asked, how do we know we can trust our senses?

How do we know our understanding of the world inside our heads, is the same with the outside world?

This leads to the 3rd traditional assumption

our senses (somehow) inform us about the world - page 5

The somehow is what science looks to explore.

Science makes hypothesis to find causes.

We accept or reject hypothesis depending on the results.

the traditional approaches - and most of modern science - assume local causality. Local causality suggests that in order for thing A to be the cause of thing B, A must be in direct contact with B. - page 7

The 4th assumption.

But if your like me you immediately see an issue with that.

I am not touching my screen so I am not in direct contact.

Me moving my mouse to click on a button, is an action, arguably caused by my screen.

This is the action at a distance problem.

Maybe it is mediated or there is indirect contact

The 5th assumption

There is something in between me and the screen which causes my actions

There are a handful of options here, but they all boil down to the same idea. There is a copy of the world - page 8

So the screen is copied somehow, and the copy is in direct contact with me.

The copy then informs my actions with the mouse.

But how does a copy get into my head.

Well light travels in straight lines and we have light sensitive cells at the back of our eyes.

However, this retinal image we get from the light is back to front and upside down.

Also 2D, the back of our eye is curved but flat.

I have the copy in my head but that doesn't represent my experience, I see in 3D with the left of my screen on my left and top at the top.

Leading to assumption 6

The copy delivered to the brain is bad and needs to be fixed. - page 10

To stress the importance of the image needing to be fixed, think about depth.

If the stimulation, retinal image, is 2D how do I know what is in front or behind.

What about when objects stop or start.

Colour contrast wouldn't be enough.

Helmholtz [2]

suggested that the flat retinal image was not completely meaningless. It provided data - imperfect data - but data nonetheless. - page 13

We could then infer form from patterns called cues.

Looking out my window I can see one house is farther away than another because it is higher up in my field of view.

Or when I look out at see, the boat closer to the horizon, higher in my field of view, is farther away.

Helmholtz's suggests we are not consciously aware of this interpretation.

But that means I am not aware or have any control of these interpretations.

Cue + rule + unconscious inference = understanding - page 14

However, what if a stimulation created the same retinal image?

Helmhotlz's argued that the inference was aided by an understanding of the most likely situation. - page 14

Which is the principle of maximum likelihood

unconscious inference and maximum likelihood resulting in a mental representation

a cleaned up copy of the world

now this assumption creates a dualism or separation of the organism and environment.

I don't have access to the world, only my unconscious interpretations.

This means my experience is based on my internal representations, not the stimulation that lead to the representation

Leading to assumption 8

Once the copy is fixed, the representation of the world is your experience of the world. - Page 16

and when putting the assumptions together the traditional approach suggests I make a copy of the world,

The copy is bad so needs fixing,

using a series of cues and rules and likelihoods I compute a representation.

but that computation needs to be done by an entity,

and the most common name in cognitive science is the central executive.

Hank in the psychology course often refers to brain processing. Computation. And the guy in the brain. Central executive.

Central executive

central executive not an explanation

however, the central executive is completely cut off from the world

Pretending I am a central executive for a second

If I get a stimulation in my room, why would I assume it came from outside.

Although the 3rd assumption states we start with no knowledge

we could assume that we have at least one critical bit of information to get us started: the stimulation on our senses comes from a distant source. - page 17

so as the central executive all I need to do is figure out what the source is

I get a retinal image from outside, but how do I know it needs fixing?

How do I know the world isn't upside down, inverted and 2D?

I can't go outside to check because I am a central executive, I am completely cut off from the world.

Somehow I need to know the sky is up, the ground is down, and the world is 3D

Next I need to use cues, rules and most likely situations to interpret this bad retinal image.

But where do the correct interpretations come from?

Even if I do have a correct interpretation of an object,

when I get a new image that is different, how do I know what parts of the images are important?

an apple tree and orange tree are different, but the retinal image could be very similar,

how do I find out as the central executive which is which?

Helmholtz's attempted to get out of this puzzle by suggesting that the central executive uses the principle of maximum likelihood to interpret the stimulation when it is ambiguous. - Page 19

Like a tally.

If I get a new retinal image of a tree.

It has been an apple tree 3 times before and an orange only once, that tree is most likely an apple tree.

Modern-day Bayesian modelling of perception is just a more complex version of the same idea. - Page 19

But if we are using a tally of sorts there must be correct interpretations to start with

Before we can do bayesian modelling we need some information to know what is likely

How do you know what's likely if you don't already know what's likely?

This suggests we must start with a lot of information. A loan of intelligence.

Programmers loan intelligence, information, for robots to function and then use prediction algorithms.

Who loans our central executive the information?

Robots also get accurate feedback from programmers.

They can then use that to correct errors

this is what is proposed to occur in connectionist accounts of perception - Page 20

but with our presumed bad senses that needs fixing by the central executive,

where do we get our accurate feedback to help our central executive?

If the central executive has accurate information about the world

Troubling assumptions

Traditional approaches lead to somewhat unsolvable mysteries.

The ecological approach challenges the base assumptions.

Assumption 1 is safe to keep. The world actually exists.

Assumption 2 has 2 parts.

Empiricism or knowledge comes from experience also seems safe to keep.

However the tabula rasa, starting with no knowledge has some flaws.

Many assume learning starts at birth but

The experience of developing a human-shaped body in a womb is fundamentally different from the experience of developing a hawk-shaped body in an egg. - Page 23

Information available to the human is different to the hawk

Once born there are need based behaviours, like eating.

Also capabilities like a hand that can grasp things.

these inherited constraints are different from instincts.

An instinct is a fully formed behaviour that is assumed to be coded (somehow) into the DNA of the organism. - Page 24

But this is, as Jeff and Julia say, unsupportable.

This also means

a small change in the environment could result in a species being unable to survive in the new environment. Page 24

If behaviours are instinctual and coded into their DNA.

A tall person will duck under a low barrier. That does not mean that ducking needs to be coded into the DNA. - Page 24

It could be the constraints of the body and environment that results in ducking.

The ecological approach brings different meanings to familiar words, which does add complexity.

In this case the same space is not always the same environment.

Here talking about an ecological niche.

An ecological niche is a specific way an organism relates to the environment it inhabits, how it survives, how it finds shelter, and so on. - Page 24

so the assumption can be modified slightly away from the tabula rasa.

experience begins before birth and is shaped by the constraints of the niche and the organism. Page 25

Take note of the terms constraint and organism environment relationship.

They will come up a lot.

Assumption 3 was about senses informing us about the world.

But the how, was always in question.

There is also a hidden assumption here that the senses just drop of a stimulation and say here do something with that

But we don't happen to sense things, we are behaving, acting in the world.

So a shift from passive to active wording.

organisms use their perceptual systems to inform themselves about the world. - Page 25

For assumption 4. local causality.

I think it is safe to say there is more than one cause for some things so there is multicausality.

Past experience and future possibilities potentially causing behaviour.

But instead of linear causality, a line, A causes B causes C and so on

the ecological approach uses nonlinear causality,

Instead of a line, 4 table leg causes holding up the result

that removes the linear sequences of causes

but there could also be non local causality
non obvious causes
birds exiting an egg at bird twisting left or right determines if they are right or left footed - no local linear causality there [72]

In complex systems [...] nonlinear patterns are far more common. That means that linear causality is an oversimplification. Page 27

Assumption 5 is that we make a copy of the world

The copy is what leads to many of the unsolvable problems mentioned.

So what if we don't need the copy to mediate or go between us and the world.

What if we, directly perceive?

This is one of the foundational differences, which will be explored extensively later on.

But this means assumption 6 about the copy being bad, is redundant as we assume there is no copy.

However, senses give us bad stimulations, right?

Looking at the Beuchet chair illusion

Traditionalists take this as evidence that the flat retinal image is interpreted via cues because the "chair" is specifically designed to make the cues contradict reality - Page 30

But if you move slightly the right or left you can see the illusion, so it only works from a specific perspective

When we move

the illusion is revealed as a conspiracy of geometry - Page 30 [4]

Even if we did assume we have a copy of the world, it wouldn't be exactly the same.

We would need to preserve some variables to use

Objective properties like size, distance, dimensionality and shape were looked for when originally looking into this

which of course were found to be ambiguous, subject to interpretation, leading to claims the stimulation is bad.

Instead, we need properties that include the organism and the activity of that organism. - Page 32

Relational properties not objective properties

James Gibson, a name worth remembering, suggested the stimulation was good

provided we describe it at the level of the organism environment relationship using relational properties.

These ideas tie in with direct perception and the latter parts of this video.

Assumption 7. Using unconscious inference to fix the bad copy is another assumption that can be rejected as we don't assume we make a copy.

Assumption 8. Our mental representation is our experience of the world, can also be rejected.

If there is no copy to fix, to create the representation, then we just have our experience.

However, this assumption does allude to the mind-body problem.

The idea that the body is a machine of sorts, being operated by the mind but

If the mind has no mass, occupies no physical space, and is completely nonphysical in every way, how could it possibly affect the body? - Page 34

With no obvious answers, to many of these problems and the changes in assumptions, we need to start over.

Ecological assumptions

Instead of separating senses, perceiving through the eyes, the ears, skin which is attached to a brain

The ecological approach looks at the embodied organism, the ears, the eyes, the skin together as a perceiving organism.

That is embedded in an environment, not abstractly floating in a void.

Organisms are not just a collection of independent organs. Organisms are complex, embodied, perceiving-acting systems. - Page 37

Think about vision. We use light to see.

Light is electromagnetic radiation, the part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see.

It is energy that radiates or is emitted from a source.

Light emitted from the sun.

Kintetic or potential energy are not emitted so are different types of energy.

The different wavelengths are the different colours we see.

Light can then be mirrored.

So bounce off a surface at the same angle.

90 degrees if I look in the mirror.

It could be scattered, bouncing at different angles, maybe due to a rough surface

or it could be absorbed, usually turning into heat energy.

So as unstructured light from a source, like the sun, interacts with surfaces it becomes structured.

Reflected in all kinds of ways making it unique, not like any other light.

We as organisms that perceive the light are also unique.

We have our own location to the surfaces in the environment.

The stimulation encountered [...] is not ambiguous - Page 40

We don't interpret the stimulation.

This shifts the starting point for studying visual perception from the retinal image to the structured light.

Ecology studies the relationship between animals and their environment, which is where the name ecological psychology comes form.

So as organisms we perceive for action, we see so we can move without walking into things.

Traditional approaches look for objective properties distance, height or angle,

coming from Newtonian physics or Euclidean geometry

but those properties are ambiguous. Open to interpretation.

So movement becomes a big problem for studying visual perception.

However, the ecological approach couples action with perception

movement reveals specifying information

the unique structured light as I get closer to my screen occludes or covers my wall in the background

my movement revealed invariants in the relationship between me and my environment, in this case my screen

There is a special term in science to describe something that happens the same way regardless of circumstances or contexts - a law. - Page 42

There was a lawfully structured pattern that emerged from my movement.

Each time I move forwards and backwards I have a unique experience that is lawfully structured.

This idea comes from James Gibson.

the stimulation is not bad, not impoverished. [...] the stimulation is good, and the stimulation is rich and unambiguous. Page - 43

If this is right, and the ecological approach assumes it is, then the assumptions about computation wouldn't be needed.

This is direct perception.

When talking about perception it has traditionally been done through language from Newtonian physics and Eculidean mathematics.

Lower order variables like wavelength and amplitude.

But we don't measure those things, there must be higher order variables

The Polar Planimeter is a completely mechanical device that measures area

It can't measure length or width, but can measure area.

So the lower order variables we would normally use to calculate the area, isn't used by the Polar Planimeter.

It directly measures the area. The higher order variable.

So what are higher order variables we measure?

The ecological approach maintains that the variables should be rooted in activity - which is what perception is for. - Page 45

Instead of asking, what is the length, the width, the distance.

We should ask is it reachable? Is it graspable?

Gibson called these words affordances.

Another term worth remembering, but also the medium is not the message.

what we perceive is not light; it is whether the apple can be grasped. What we perceive is not sound; it is the layout of surfaces. What we perceive is not pressure on the skin or muscles; it is the usability of a tool. - Page 46

We don't see light as such, but illuminated surfaces.

In old cinemas or when using projectors, you could see the light source, and the light on the screen

but if you look in between you wouldn't see light, unless it is bouncing of floating dust

the medium is not the message.

to contrast the 8 traditional assumption, the ecological approach have their own with varying degrees of difference.

The world actually exists - Page 47

The same.

All knowledge is gained from experience - Page 47

Including experiences before birth and knowledge gained from the change in the organism environment relationship.

Organisms are active not passive - Page 48

Allowing for a distinction between variants and invariants,

importantly emphasizing perception is for action

Causality is complex and nonlinear - Page 49

Moving away from local direct causality which adds lots of complexity making predicting behaviour very difficult.

Or impossible, which I will expand on later

The animal-environment system is the fundamental unit of analysis - Page 49

Conscious mind v unconscious central executive and mind v body dualisms are both rejected.

Instead of separating the animal from the environment, niche, this approach keeps them together.

perception is direct - Page 50

No mental interpretations. None.

The animal-environment relationship lawfully structures information - Page 51

We are not processing information but detecting it from our experiences

Variables of perception should be action-based, not physics-based - Page 51

Psychology and specifically the study of perception action should have its own variables and language.

Not borrowing from other sciences.

Then the big one for psychology.

There is no central executive - Page 52

This is an assumption ingrained in so many parts of psychology but if we directly perceive we don't need to unconsciously process anything making the central executive unnecessary.

Organisms as systems

An approach like this can be applied not only to perception, but all other areas of psychology.

I was introduced to the approach through sports coaching which covers most areas of psychology as it relates to human performance.

With the central executive being so ingrained, it seems radical to say there isn't one.

But an explanation of something, shouldn't then require an explanation, that is just pushing back the problem.

If I push my keyboard I get a letter on my screen.

the key going down caused the letter to appear.

me pushing my finger caused the key to go down.

I decided to push my finger.

But did my central executive cause me to move?

I have described a situation, and pushed back an explanation of the cause to what, my central executive.

There isn't an explanation for that. Yet at least

The ecological approach looks at the organism environment relationship

Environment isn't added on as a contributing factor, it is a fundamental part of the explanation.

Not separated lower-order variables, the macroscopic whole.

As the Gestaltist psychologists pointed out the whole is different from the sum of its parts. - Page 58

Just like looking at pointillistic paintings, if you are too close you can't see the art.

But even with this shift in language the dualism proposed by Descartes of mind and body goes further.

Descartes proposed the body is like a machine.

A metaphor that has lead to loads of medical developments, but it doesn't mean the machine metaphor is correct.

Only that it is sometimes useful. [...] all models are wrong; some are useful - Page 61

changing a car tire is not the same as changing a heart.

even with extreme care a heart can still be rejected.

I don't think a car rejects a tire.

Instead of a machine, a system.

A system is a collection of small, simple elements performing small, simple tasks in response to local constraints and stimuli - and from this collection, sometimes incredibly elaborate and complex (and nonobvious) behaviour will emerge. - Page 61

starting metronomes at different times can be synchronised, without touching anything

The system is self organized, in this case synchronized
video example 4:58 - 5:12 [5]

Metronome behaviour organized by the system, the cans, wood and other metronomes

A different example of self organization might be a music lesson.

With a teacher in a classroom they conduct the students to play music.

Someone walking past would then hear the song.

If however, the teacher wasn't there, the students with appropriate conditions and constraints could produce the same song.

That person walking past wouldn't be able to tell the teacher wasn't there.

In the book, that person is called Claudia

What the ecological perspective suggests is that Claudia should consider the possibility that there is no conductor in the room. - Page 63

The conductor representing the central executive.

But as all of these explanations are through action, we need to explain through processes, not things.

Andrew Wilson wrote a blog post about verbing your nouns. [6]

The noun, thing of memory or the verb, process of remembering.

The noun, thing of attention or the verb, process of attending.

The noun, thing of perception or the verb, process of perceiving.

That is where the word cognizing, in the books subtitle comes from.

The noun, thing of cognition to the verb, process of cognizing or thinking, but cognizing sounds cooler.

So how do we explain perception?

Affordances

I mentioned earlier my screen as graspable or reachable.

Well when I look at the pen on my desk I see lot of things I could do, lots of opportunities for behaviour.

These are affordances, what James Gibson was known for.

This term is an invented noun form of the verb "to afford" - meaning "to provide opportunity for". - Page 73

So we perceive affordances to whether the behaviour is possible and when and how we should do it.

But these are possibilities, so we are perceiving a possible future, not predicting.

When catching my pen I am perceiving whether, when and how I do it.

The definition of affordances has been debated between ecological psychologists for years,

I thought of them as opportunities for behaviour when learning about them at Uni,

which luckily for me is the same way Jeff and Julia explain them in the book so I didn't need any reframing.

Given the organism environment relationship, an affordance emerges within the relationship.

Take away either the organism or environment, and the affordance is no longer perceived.

Given we are all different, different size, strength, shape etc

we all have different action capabilities.

So an affordance for me is not necessarily the same for everyone else

Which implies, we can perceive affordances for others

But also means it relies on loads of variables to be right for the organism and environment.

A flat surface doesn't mean I can walk on it.

There are loads of other things to consider.

Each one is necessary, but none of them alone is sufficient. - Page 77

What does that mean?

Traditionally we would say meaning is subjective and internal

well in the ecological approach

meanings are neither subjective nor internal. Nor are they objective or external. Rather, meanings emerge from relations between animals and environments. - Page 78

sounds just like affordances.

Affordances I perceive, is what it means to me

Others may perceive something else, giving them a different meaning

so meanings can be perceived, not created or represented inside us.

But how do we measure that? This is science right.

When looking at whether something is climbable we can look at loads of variables

Bill Warren in 1984 chose stair height and leg length to look a type of climbing. [7]

Climbing without assistance like rope.

He used critical pi as a ratio value for a biomechanical model

to signal when stepping moved from possible to impossible without aid.

This ratio turned out to be 0.88, meaning that when the stair height is taller than 88% of a person's leg length, a person would no longer be able to climb that stair by stepping. - Page 79

Taller people can step on taller stairs

But the ratio was in a model.

To test this, he showed photos to a tall group and small group, of stairs that could be adjusted to 5 heights.

After randomly showing each person the 5 positions twice,

they said yes or no to what they thought they would be able to step on.

• Figure 5.8 Page 80

Looking at the figures, we see the taller group saying yes more, because they are taller and can step on taller stairs,

But when we divide the step height by leg length, both groups become extremely similar

This means both groups perceive the stair as step-on-able in very similar ways.

That 0.88 value from the biomechanical model, after this study, was confirmed for each group.

First this confirms it is both the leg length and step height that matters. Organism environment relationship

Also, the matching value means

perceivers are sensitive to the biomechanical limits on their ability to climbs stairs. - Page 80

but every action requires effort,

what about perceiving efficient climbing options

Can we see which stairs afford the most efficient climbing?

Two additional experiments were done.

about 0.25 was the optimal pie value calculated this time, and for both studies 0.25 was found.

perception of whether steps can be climbed (by stepping) is action-scaled. - Page 81

taking this further, when we move there are dynamic constraints.

our head moves as we walk, maybe sway side to side.

but as affordances are body and action scaled we can adjust our behaviour

affordances are activity-specific meanings for a given animal. And a given affordance is perceived by detecting the structured energy pattern at a given point of observation that provides information about that affordance. - page 87

we detect structured energy patterns, that provides information about the affordances we perceive

But we have difference senses. How does affordances work with all the senses?

Ecological optics

To make language clearer I am going to put ecological in front of words.

Hopefully that will prevent misinterpretations.

Vision as ecological optics.

Being surrounded by different types energy allows us to perceive affordances through different modes.

Our eyes detecting light being pretty important.

But as mentioned earlier, structured light is reflected of surfaces

and the light will be unique in how its distributed bouncing of different, potentially lots of, surfaces.

If I move, the point of observation also moves with me, making it once again different

smooth and rough surfaces will affect the structing of light,

reflecting at different angle or just being absorbed

The totality of structured light at each and every possible location in the room is called the ambient (meaning surrounding) optic (meaning light) array (meaning distribution). - Page 93

the ambient optical array being all the light reflecting around in my room.

depth perception using traditional terms from newtonian physics and euclidean geometry is looking for depth and space.

which only appears with the lack of objects.

But objects don't have a depth or have a space, they exist in depth and space

Instead of looking for a lack of objects,

we perceive

how distances are perceived across surfaces - or more generally, how surface layout is perceived. - Page 94

Looking at the chess board straight on, the squares are squares.

As I tilt it the squares gets flatter, the optical texture of the surface changes.

When I put my hand over the surface, it is occluding, blocking, the chess board.

There is a drop-off between surfaces.

The chess board dropping off my hand.

But we or objects are often moving so the pattern of structured light changes.

that is called optic flow.

So structured light reflects in ambient optical arrays

and we perceive distances by the changes in optical texture and drop-off's between surfaces,

which when we or the object are in motion is in optic flow.

When i drop my pen the localized optic flow exposed changes.

As the pen goes down the bottom occludes, hides, different part of my wall.

but also reveals parts of my wall at the top. drop-off between surfaces.

If someone throws a juggling ball at my face the optical texture will expand,

the outer parts of the object occluding my wall and the ball will appear bigger, symmetrically, at the same time.

parts of the ball will also be progressively deleted, as it gets closer.

It will go out of view because It will be too close for me to see

If the ball was missing me, the optical flow will be different.

one side would expand faster than the other and progressive deletion of the ball will be asymmetric. Uneven.

the part of the ball farthar away going out of view, the part closing coming in view

That indicates it is not hitting me straight in the face

If I wanted to catch the ball you might think I need to guess, predict or calculate distance.

but the information is in the optic flow.

the rate at which objects are occluded. This rate is called tau.

it is information about time to arrival - assuming that current conditions continue. - Page 100

optical texture of the ball will expand slowly at first but speed up as it gets closer

If, however, I move towards the ball, that is global optic flow.

Not localized.

As I move forwards, things behind me go out of sight

So at the edge of my eyes structured light is occluded and that rate, tau, increases as I go faster.

If I throw and catch the juggling ball it could be explained through newtonian physics and euclidean geometry.

likely unconsciously calculating where the ball will land and calculating what, when, and how to move for me to catch it.

possible

but if the information is detectable in the optic array we don't need all that unconscious calculation.

This can also explain how other animals perceive distances.

Rather than human unconscious calculation with a central executive.

Studies on dogs, birds, insects and a really interesting one about bees have shown how the optic array could be used to explain perception of distance.

Bees do a little dance when they have found pollen, and signal other bees how far away it is from the hive.

It could be done by measuring energy expenditure, calculation, or the optic array.

In a study they looked at bees travelling through 2 different tunnels. [8]

One white with a straight black line going down it

The other white, with black rings every few centimetres.

Bees going down the straight tunnel signalled the pollen to be closer, more often than the bees going down the circled tunnel.

why

Flying through the ring tunnel generated more optic flow than did flying through the line tunnel. - Page 104

remember optic flow being the changes in structured light patterns

suggesting more changes could increase distance perceived.

Ecological acoustics

Ecological acoustics is very similar, except addresses a different type of energy.

Unlike light, sounds don't start as unstructured, as it is structured by vibrations.

Each vibration changing the structure of the information.

Just like with light, some information will be directly from a source.

Other information indirectly from other surface interaction.

The reflection and absorption impacted by surfaces, creates the lawfully structured unique patterns.

As you could have worked out, the surrounding information is the ambient acoustic array.

Many of the studies into this were done in the late 90s and early 2000s

One study blindfolded participants and hit different shaped metal rectangles with a pendulum. [9]

They were able to hear the approximate relative dimensions of each object when it was struck with the pendulum. - Page 110

Another study looked at objects occluding, blocking, sound.

Surfaces occluding vibrations, impacts the acoustic array, and is therefore perceivable.

Hearing the object from the structured vibrations. [10]

We can also hear the difference between bouncing and breaking objects. [11]

A 1980s study created artificial breaking and bouncing sounds.

It put synced or out of sync sounds together mimicking breaking or bouncing acoustic arrays.

We could tell the difference.

Another study looked to see if we can hear if something is reachable.

Again using blindfolded participants they tested this with a rattle box.

In short, participants could hear whether an object was within reach for two different styles of reaching - Page 115

If we can hear distance, the question would be can we hear if we can fit through a gap.

A study used a duck call with blindfolded participants who needed to walk between the wall and duck call.

Which they did.

With motion, tau is required. Like light, distance is perceived with tau.

Closer objects sounding louder and clearer.

We also hear the time it takes to fill a glass of water.

They could differentiate the two levels of fullness just by listening - Page 118

Talking about hearing, echolocation sounds like a bat thing, which it is, but it is just creating new structures in the acoustic array, which we can do.

One study tested how effective our echolocation is. [12]

They got blindfolded participants to echolocate a wall, making a noise or saying a word repeatedly.

Their accuracy was off but they moved further away when the wall was further, and closer when the wall was closer.

Human echolocation is possible.

And we can't talk about acoustics without talking about voices.

But again, like light, the medium is not the message

the sound itself is not what is perceived. The movements of the vocal tract are what is perceived by means of the sound. - Page 120

Vibrations being structured by all the body parts involved in making sound, which is why it's perceived differently between people.

And when your ill.

Ecological haptics

You might think that touch is different because it's physical forces.

the medium being embedded in the animal or organism but remember that

understanding perception as a lawful process requires uncovering how properties of surfaces and relationships between animals and those surfaces unambiguously structure energy patterns. - Page 122

If I pick up an object without looking at it I am only touching a small part.

but I perceive other properties width, length, shape swing-ability, much like vision.

we don't see entire objects but perceive affordances of the whole object.

instead of structured light being used, it is structured forces.

not from a point of observation, but position or grasp of an object.

there were optical or acoustic arrays and for forces there is still an energy array

think about fish in the sea.

each position has different forces which is structured by other forces

when I pick up my pen and hold it vertically my effort is different from when I hold it horizontally.

and when I move it I need to accelerate it.

so I need to overcome the inertia of the object, or resistance to remain still.

that inertia, I, is an array of forces that is dynamic around the object.

While holding the pen it is never truly still, there are always forces and movement corrections.

but those forces happen at the same time in different directions which in called inertia tensor

If a quantity varies in multiple ways simultaneously, like simultaneous differences in speed in different directions - or simultaneously stretching an elastic sheet in multiple directions at the same time - then you need a more complex value, called a tensor. - Page 125

I am not going to pretend to understand the differences between tensor and vector mathematics but they did lots of rod experiments [13]

essentially getting participants to pick up rods without looking at them

different lengths, widths, weights to see if they could perceive the objects without looking

and it turns out the participants were pretty good.

but the perceived shape wasn't the same as the actual shape.

comparing rods we could work out what was longer or wider

but when changing the position of the weight, our perception changed

the inertia tensor creates an ellipsoid shape around objects

they used a tensor object where you could shift the weight forwards, backwards and side to side to test all of this.

which when manipulated changed how we perceived the object

as Ixx increased (as the length of the ellipsoid changed), participants perceived the objects to be taller, and as Izz increased (as the width of the ellipsoid changed) participants perceived the objects to be wider - even though the actual heights, widths, and masses of the objects were unchanged. - Page 130

so moving the weight closer to the end made it feel longer.

moving the weights out to the side made it feel wider.

but does all this apply to our limbs?

this ability is known as proprioception which at first glance relies on the central executive.

an internal representation of our body, sometimes called a body schema, to help us know where our limbs are.

from an ecological perspective, proprioception is also lawful.

one experiment was done were participants held a rod, much like the last experiment, but weight was added on one side without them knowing. [14]

participants pointed to the left or right of where there arm was, which matched the asymmetric weights.

This pattern showed that participants were pointing with the mass distribution of the point tool and arm rather than with the arm itself. - Page 133

so it is mass orientation at a limb, not just the limb.

Supporting the idea of the inertial ellipsoid.

this idea is taken even further.

The touch system including the entire body, skin, muscles, tendons so touch is a continuous system meaning

the stimulation of relevance to perception by touch is the macro-scale pattern of physical forces on the bodily tissue and not the micro-scale activity of receptor cells. - Page 134

considering this when gauging how heavy something feels.

mass obviously plays a role right.

but if 2 objects have the same mass one could feel heavier.

traditional explanations would say something is happening in the representation and computation.

from the ecological perspective it would be the I values.

I xx,yy and zz.

Objects feeling harder to control will feel heavier and in fact,

research has shown that when people report how heavy an object is, they are really reporting how movable that object is - Page 135

movable being an affordance perceived for moving the object.

that is why a potato or tennis racket may have the same mass but one feel heavier than another.

That's the example used in the book.

Optics, acoustics and haptics. Sight, sound and touch.

But how does this work when we are moving if perception is for action?

Action and coordination

When it comes to movement, traditional approaches differ, but are built from the same assumptions

Our brain tells our body what to do.

Our central executive gives commands, to our body.

Our frontal lobe plans and thinks through the commands, accounting for remembered consequences, then the motor cortex sends the commands for the body to move.

My central executive needing to figure out what muscles, forces and sequences of contractions to execute a movement. Like a wave.

however, Some say the commands are broad and the body specifies how to execute them.

The commands like programs to follow which the body changes for the context.

Image from page 140

So the central executive planning but not executing movement.

However, both these approaches need a, loan of intelligence.

How does the central executive know how to make, plan, monitor, manage or implement these programs, without knowing before hand.

Remember the central executive is isolated, so where does it get the information from?

If the body is implementing the programs, then where does it learn how to execute movement in the first place.

This again is using linear causality. From the brain to the muscles. Higher order to lower order.

But as the ecological approach builds on different assumptions, these programs from the central executive, wouldn't be needed.

The interpretations and computations from the body, or central executive, wouldn't be needed either.

the ecological approach seeks a lawful explanation of goal-directed action at the macro scale of the relationship between animal and environment without the need for mediating process or loans of intelligence. page - 141

Think Pinocchio. A puppet and its puppet master.

Each joint has degrees of freedom the puppet master can control.

The shoulder can go up and down, left to right, rotation so 3 degrees of freedom.

At the elbow there is only 1 degree of freedom

The forearm 1 degree of freedom

Wrist 2 degrees of freedom

So to control all the arms possible movements the puppet master would need to control 7 degrees of freedom at the same time.

A body has 250 - 350 joints, depending on how you count them.

Then each muscle adds complexity with multiple muscles controlling one joint.

so there is a huge amount of degrees of freedom.

That's a lot of intelligence that needs to be loaned to the central executive.

Bernstein looked at this problem and tried to reduce the degrees to a manageable number. [15]

He suggested some forces are provided for free, without decision.

When we walk, we raise our foot contracting muscles, but to put our foot down we rely on gravity.

and as our body is connected, we don't need to bring our the body with us, our limbs will follow

so not all degrees of freedom need to be explicitly controlled.

Learning which degrees of freedom need to be explicitly controlled and which do not is part of learning how to perform a coordinated goal-directed behaviour. - page 144

Beginners often reducing the degrees of freedom, making things simpler.

Stiff body. Jittery movements. Thus less skillful.

As they learn, they loosen up.

But all these body parts need to work together to create a movement right?

Well, ideas around synergy suggests components work together to achieve a goal.

Slightly different but significant.

Bernstein in the early 1920s and 30s studied movement, one particular study was on blacksmith hammering.

The hypothesis was that the experts would able to produce the same movement over and over again. However,

he found that when there was more variability in the position of the joints, there was less variability in the trajectory of the hammer - page 145

in other words, the more fluid or varied the arm joints were the more accurate they swung the hammer.

so not about producing the same movements but achieving the same goal, hitting the hammer right

Bernstein called this 'repetition without repetition' [15]

A term I became familiar with doing my undergrad in sports coaching.

Yes, repetition, or practice, is important to develop skills, but with variation and using different behaviours.

If we think about speaking, it is actually pretty complicated. Loads of movements and body parts involved just to make a sound.

researchers considering this tested how we might react if one of those movements was unexpectidly altered. [16]

they tugged on participants jaw when participants were saying words like bab.

On the second b when the jaw was tugged the lips compensated to sound out bab.

the synergy of components worked to achieve a goal, not anatomical movements.

when tugging on the z of baz the tongue compensated

A synergy is self-correcting and goal-preserving - page 146

the movement coordination is self organizing, which I will cover in more detail later on

but it is the same for standing still.

There are lots of muscles coordinating to prevent us falling over or collapsing.

It takes effort to stand up with a stable posture.

If the floor was to move sharply we would adjust, move our feet to stay standing.

However, if there was subtle movement we would likely move with the floor.

a boat maybe.

But some people get motion sick. why?

using explanations with the central executive,

there might be confusion between the movements the central executive expected and planned for, and what we experience.

That confusion leading to sickness.

or it could be due to unstable posture.

motion sickness is more likely to occur when people stand than when they sit and more likely to occur when they stand with their feet closer together than with their feet farther apart - page 148

so anything making it harder to be stable can increase the likelihood of motion sickness

so motion sickness could be a movement disorder,

But this might be why a wider stance to help postural patterns can help with motion sickness

It's about posture. But what about the other behaviours, the suprapostural behaviours.

reaching, swinging, cooking and other movements.

if the central executive or puppet master needs to control all of these things, surely adding movements to postural control would make things harder.

They tested it.

To start with, participants were told to search for something in text, or to just look over the text while they monitored their posture. [18]

As you might expect searching for something reduced postural sway over looking at something.

but when they got people to point a laser you might expect them to prevent themselves from swaying to focus on pointing.

what they found was that

suprapostural tasks and postural movements are coooperative, not competitive. Suprapostural tasks and postural movements don't interfere with one another. - page 151

so people swaying didn't impact the lazer accuracy in the study.

to be clear this isn't massive sawying, it is the postural sway you would typically see on a static surface.

and thinking back to Bernsteins repetition without repetition, the variability can be and is helpful

but most movement goes a little further than postural control

walking, running, they are different.

they are completely different.

the movements are completely different from one another

the ecological approach says there is a phase transition between walking and running

not to dissimilar to phase transitions of solid to liquid, or liquid to gas.

Ice is not the same state as water.

walking is not the same state or movement coordination as running.

and when coordinating body parts they could be in, or out of sync.

in-phase or anti-phase patterns.

closing my hands alternatively is an anti-phase pattern but the faster I do it the harder it is to keep it stable.

sometimes even going to an in-phase pattern

whereas an in-phase pattern is easier to keep stable as I go faster

the models behind this confuse me because its complicated math.

I went to a conference in Berlin last year and this was spoken about for a couple of hours and although I get the gist, my explanation wouldn't be great.

At this point I will point you to the book linked in the description.

Of course those watching that know more than me, comment below so I can pin it for explanation.

But now we can explain actions and coordination through the ecological approach, how do we develop those abilites?

Developing abilities

A quick reminder.

The traditional approaches assume local causality, indirectly perceiving using interpretation and computation happening in the organism, person, and the stimulation is meaningless or ambiguous so needs fixing.

The ecological approach assumes nonlocal nonlinear causality, directly perceiving in the organism environment relationship, and the stimulation is lawfully structured.

So. Developing motor skills or the ability to think, remember, or reason about the world.

Lets test babies.

The visual cliff studies are well known in perception research. [19]

Side not here, one of the main researchers Eleanor Gibson was married to James Gibson, the guy suggesting direct perception. So there is a link there.

But Babies were put on a plexglass surface with a chessboard pattern underneath them, one side shallow and one side deep.

The older infants don't go over the deep side and this is used as evidence of depth perception.

But as discussed earlier, the ecological approach suggests that is done through surface layout.

So ecological psychologists propose

infants with more crawling experience are better able to perceive what a steep drop-off does or does not afford than are infants with less experience crawling. page 159

but as the plexiglass lets babies crawl on either side, the game is up when the experienced crawlers realise they wont fall.

so to test for affordances, it needs to be not possible in some situations.

Yes that meant testing babies on edges they could fall off.

I feel like I should say 'no babies were harmed while making this' but I don't actually know.

I do know Julia and Jeff said lots of baby catching was done, so hopefully everything worked out ok.

As you would expect, more experienced babies could tell what they could crawl down or not.

but once they were taken back weeks later once they could walk, they couldn't tell what they could walk down or not

they had to start from zero again when learning the new motor skill

perceiving affordances for crawling didn't help them when walking

with traditional approaches you would think past experience would help the central executive, at least a little bit.

Maybe the unique schema or motor programs weren't related for some reason.

But the babies kept falling, and being caught.

ecologically this would be explained by the change in the relationship between the organism and environment

different coordination patterns are required, and there are different points of observation for the optic array

the babies needed to (re)learn to perceive affordances in each case

now when thinking about those babies that didn't crawl over the drop offs, did they learn to be afraid of heights?

if the babies did learn to fear heights, surely they would have avoided the steep drop offs second time around, but they didn't. [20]

It seems that rather than leading to a fear of heights, crawling and walking and falling leads to learning how to perceive affordances. - page 161

If you remember the study with the steps and the pie ratio, well that was done again with older participants.

And as you may expect, development changes as we age.

The ratio decreasing with age.

older participants stepping lower. Which I think makes sense.

Something else to consider with age is that our point of observation changes.

As children grow, their point of observation changes in the short term, but also in the longer term.

Not just moment to moment, but day to day, and more significantly, week to week or month to month.

Similar to developing different action capabilities.

When crawling babies see more of the floor and its hard to see far away

one-quarter of the time, crawling infants see nothing but the floor - page 164

But the infants that can walk can see farther away. Potentially a reason they more interested in farther away objects.

However, babies need to experience the lawful relationships by observing objects.

They are not born with the information, it is gained through experience. Empiricism.

Developing sensitivity to lawful relationships and tau.

But babies close their eyes when you throw something at them. How do they know it is going to hit them?

Early on they seem to use visual angles. [21]

But as they grow and become more sensitive to tau and specifying variables, acceleration is used. [22]

So children, or organisms, become sensitive to information as we develop.

Variability in experiences, or practice, being a good thing as we can make mistakes and learn to attune to more useful information.

But how does that work with others?

perceiving and acting with others

Broadly looking at traditional approaches to explain perceiving and acting with others.

As we have internal representations of oursevles, we must have internal representations of others as well.

so our central executive must have programs of some sort to predict how other act

Some research to support this is around mirror neurons.

When a monkey performed a behaviour another monkey watching had neurons activate in the same place.

The observing monkey neurons mirrored the acting monkey. Monkey see monkey do.

This has been seen to some extent in humans.

watching someone do something, activates the neural stimulation of me doing it.

In theory, know my central executive can figure out what commands to send, so I can perform that behaviour.

but if we are mirroring what others are doing we must be putting effort in, to not do the same thing.

when sharing these programs how do we then coordinate with others, and avoid just copying them?

The ecological approach avoids this problem.

organisms detect specified information about affordances by our perception system

the properties of a dog. Shape, mass, strength lawfully structure the energy patterns I and others encounter. So

structure in patterned energy distributions provides information both about affordances for the self and about affordances for others - page 175

As mentioned earlier, coordination is establishing and controlling synergies.

And each action is in a social context.

The coordination between me and any other organism present.

this means

the same lawful principles that underlie perceiving and acting in animal-environment systems also do so in animal-animal-environment systems - page 176

This means we wouldn't need to share mental representations or transfer motor programs somehow.

That's not to say mirror neurons don't exist. They do.

But what they do, is up for debate.

The brain and nervous system play a role in perceiving and acting, but in the ecological approach it is not as significant.

some organisms perceive and act without a nervous system, so whatever explanation we use, that should be considered.

Resonance is a concept used in the ecological approach here.

Like when a singer makes vibrations it can resonate with a wineglass, making it break.

Resonance happens within the brain and nervous system when detecting information.

It is as if the animal-environment system is the singer and the nervous system is the wineglass - page 177

This is huge.

Instead of going from the brain and nervous system to action, this suggests the action within the animal-environment system, resonates to the brain and nervous system.

It reverses the order.

Neural reuse theory suggests the brain controls action by establishing brain synergies.

Mirror neurons might then be a consequence of detecting information.

Different systems resonating to the same information.

But when you watch other people, some times you can tell they won't be able to do something even if you haven't seen them try.

I knew my mum couldn't jump a puddle in the car park, but how.

Well although affordances aren't identical they are comparable in certain ways.

When I am walking around I experience different points of observation, but I don't experience my mums action capabilities. Or do I.

A study looked at pairs guessing their partners standing reach height and jump height. [23]

They were more accurate of themselves than their partners, somewhat expected.

But were within 8% of their partners numbers.

When they watched their partners walk, their guesses were often a bit low.

When walking with an ankle weight the observer didn't know about, they guessed higher than normal walking.

Making the guess more accurate.

So watching someone walk helps you guess their ability to jump.

Adding resistance helping better gauge a persons ability.

How you explain that with the central executive I don't know. Walking isn't jumping. They are different motor programs.

If we need a schema for each movement walking and running are different.

From the ecological approach, we are observing how an organism produces dynamic vertical force with their legs, which are action capabilities.

To test this theory they looked to see if observing someone twisting would help them estimate jump height. It didn't.

Which confirms that experiencing action capabilities of others, relate to perceiving affordances for others.

Accuracy and how often that occurs brings expertise into the conversation.

But could my previous experience in sport also help me?

I have jumped forwards a lot, and watched loads of others do it.

Optical patterns that provide information about affordances should be invariant. In those contexts.

Watching people jump forward in handball is similar to jumping over a puddle, but jumping straight up. Not so much.

This was confirmed with studies on non-basketball and basketball players guessing jump height and reach height. [24]

Basketball players doing better with jump height guesses, but not better with reach height.

If we then consider coordinating together.

My mum and I walking into the shop together.

We have different shoulder widths.

But when we walk side by side we consider the other person and twist.

Both of us perceiving the affordances for the pair.

Not an additive property of shoulder widths, but an emergent property.

Both giving up a bit of our space to help the other through the door.

Of course some people barge you out the way, but I think that is manors, or lack there of.

I say that as, once again this has been studied and tested. [25]

Social bubbles were also tested. These results I am sure you will relate with. [26]

Walking between configurations of people.

Facing you. Facing a side. Facing each other.

When walking through the gap, participants turned earlier when people were facing them.

Avoiding personal bubble clash.

When turned to one side, we walk away from the face going in, and turn away from the face.

Avoid personal bubble clash.

and the same for all the other configurations.

We coordinated our actions with the social situation.

Trying to avoid the clash.

One study looked at people sitting on rocking chairs next to each other. [27]

when the participants looked at each other's rocking chairs their rocking movements became unintionally coordinated with those of the other person - page 188

They started rocking back and fourth together without trying.

When they couldn't see each other there was no coordination.

This syncing or coordination happens in other activities.

When walking alone, we have our own step distance and walking gaits.

But when we follow someone we coordinate or sync with them. [28]

Acting like a 4 legged animal instead of 2 2 legged animals.

Right side then left side, like elephants or giraffes.

Or right left, left right in a trot like a dog or cat.

In sport it is done through sensitivity to sport specific affordances. [29]

Coordinating with team mates or opponents in sports like football, baseball, handball, hockey, volley ball tennis and many others.

So the interpersonal and intrapersonal coordination have the same explanations.

the coordination in each case is not that each person is getting information from shared or overlapping nervous systems but rather that they each have the ability to detect lawfully structured - optical and mechanical - energy patterns. page - 191

Those thinking about educational theories right now, may start to question how we learn with others if this is how we coordinate.

Not through shared mental models.

Thinking, learning and remembering

Traditional approaches to cognition rely on having and manipulating mental representations [30]

Thinking is having and manipulating mental representations.

Learning is the modification or enrichment of mental representations.

Remembering is storing and accessing the mental representations.

Perception as an input, with movement as the output.

Cognition as a walled off process from the body and environment [31]

cognition is described as a set of mental processes or actions that operate on or with representations and that are somehow removed from both the body and the world. - page 194

This therefore demands a central executive

however the ecological approach suggests thinking is a continuous process with perceiving and acting coupled.

Not one before another.

thinking is also being embodied and embedded, so happens outside the brain and body

counting with your fingers as embodied cognition

thinking happening within the animal-environment relationship

this means there is a trajectory of thinking [32]

a continuous flow of thinking rather than dots or snapshots.

One study looked at this continuous flow asking participants to read 4 or 5 letter words until they reached 1100 words.

they were very accurate but the researchers weren't looking for accuracy.

They were looking for the difference in start time for reading the words.

0.5 to 0.25 second difference.

Doesn't sound significant and could be background noise.

but maybe this is the hum of a perceiving-acting-cognizing system [33]

White noise is random moving along and jumping for different lengths and different rates.

Brown noise is more controlled with similar lengths of the waves.

But pink noise is somewhere in the middle.

Pink noises tends to linger around before moving on.

when looking at the variability in the word reading study, it turned out it mimicked patterns of pink noise.

The researchers proposed that pink noise is a hallmark of a self-organizing and smooth-operating cognitive system - page 201

what about more complex thinking situations?

A different study looked at people solving gear problems. page 202

Trying to work out which way a gear would turn given the directions of other gears in the system.

at some point when solving the problem there would be an aha moment.

going from not knowing to knowing.

Which if we think about perception and action would be a phase transition. [34]

Walking a different state to running.

Knowing a different st ate to not knowing.

Many participants used their hands to trace the gears.

Until they realised, gears alternate. Going from right to left to right.

That realisation was an aha moment.

After 36 gear problems the researchers found 2 3rds of participants within the first 10 trials had this aha moment.

and found the aha moment related to finger movement patterns.

They found that the discovery of the alternation method by a given participant was predicted by a decrease in the stability of finger movement followed by an increase in the stability of finger movement in the trials that immediately preceded the discovery. - page 202

So thinking is embodied.

What about embedded. Thinking with objects outside of our skin.

Using pink noise as a hallmark of a self-organizing smooth-operating cognitive system.

If there is an interruption of the cognitive system, there would be an interruption of the pink noise.

A video game study had participants move a computer mouse [35]

60 seconds of moving the mouse was interrupted by a 3 second mouse glitch where it became difficult to control.

The researchers found pink noise in the mouse movements before and after the glitch but during the glitch white noise.

The brain-hand-mouse system was a self-organizing smooth-operating cognitive system.

Until the mouse failed and became a disconnected external object.

If thinking can be explained using this approach, what about learning and remembering?

Well if perception is detection and exploitation of information about affordances.

Fine tuning those things would would be learning.

Education of intention [36]

Learning what behaviours to perform.

What affordances to perceive.

How to explore to uncover possible information about affordances.

But also education of attention [37]

what patterns in the structured energy arrays provide information about a given affordance

the relationships between us and our environment could therefore change.

but education of attention and intention doesn't necessarily mean we know how to use the information.

Learning how to use the information about a given affordance to appropriately perceive a given property or perform a given behaviour is called calibration - 206

So when we learn and become more skilled, we could say we've become calibrated [36]

Then continuing with this idea that thinking is continuous perception and action, and that calibration is learning, remembering must therefore be explained in a similar way.

traditional approaches separate perceiving from acting.

Perceive, process or remember things, then act.

But if there is no line or division between perception and action as it is continuous, we never stop remembering either.

There is no beginning or end, there is just remembering.

Remembering as our awareness of perception, over time.

Researchers tested remembered affordances [38]

Remembered affordances scaled to action capabilities in the same way as perceived affordances. - page 208

So thinking, learning, remembering is all continuous with perceiving and acting.

Verbs or processes instead of nouns, things.

Application of ecological psychology

Now we can and have applied Ecological Psychology into the world through design.

Designing with affordances in mind [39]

If you want people to slow down before a bend in the road you could put up signs or lights for people to see.

Following traditional approaches that should be enough.

We process what the sign means and slow down.

But ecological design instead, would suggest we provide the driver with information about affordances.

Much like the bee research with the ringed tunnel, we could manipulate the rate of global optic flow.

Add lines on the road, increasing in frequency as you approach a curve.

This was actually done at Lake Shore Drive in Chicago 2006 [40]

There was a 36% drop in crashes at the curve in the first 6 months of the lines being introduced.

We have all pushed a door that was a pull, or pulled on a door that should have been pushed.

But the sign is enough. If and when you read the sign.

Why not design with affordances in mind.

A flat surface as pushable, a handle is pullable.

Don't put the handle on the push side.

Chair designs and walls could afford sitting or leaning against. [41] (architecture image (the end of sitting art))

Surgery training devices replicating skin and knife interaction helping with developing the feel and usability of a tool.

Maybe stair design.

On holiday I remember missing the last step running down the marble stairs because the stairs and floor looked the same.

There wasn't enough difference in surface texture.

The bottom of flight illusion [42]

Put a carpet down the stairs different from the floor. Edges on the steps different from the floor. Something designed with affordances in mind.

When affordances are hidden it can make life difficult, even dangerous.

Those object designs from the end of sitting art work, was tested.

They tested people working in a traditional office space and a space with more opportunities for leaning and standing. - caljouw 2016

Their reasons related to people sitting down all day being bad for posture, health and related issues.

What they found is that 60% of the time was spent reading and 40% of the time working in both locations.

Somewhat expected.

But the traditional office had everyone sitting down. There was a moment of a person standing up briefly. But mostly sitting down.

The alternative space had 60% standing 20% leaning 20% squatting or lying down and 83% worked in more than one posture.

Work performance wasn't significantly impacted either way, but the alternative environment resulted in people saying they felt more energised after working.

We can also design on a digital interface. Ecological interface design or EID. [43]

Traditionally designed pilot interfaces had loads of information, that people needed to learn what to do with.

They had to memorize, calculate and problem-solve to act.

But instead of showing all the lower order information we could show meaningful higher order relationships.

Show information about affordances.

Yes it still requires skill development to detect and exploit the information but

• Show figure contrasts on screen page 218

Instead of focusing on improving the ability to form, modify, or use mental representations, training focuses on becoming attuned to which patterns - which higher-order variables - provide information about whether, when and how to perform the required behaviours and how to explore to uncover these patterns. - page 218

These same ideas have been used in training surgeons.

Surgeons need to know when to stop pushing a knife, so they don't cut things they don't want to.

Not the same but similar to time to arrival. Remember tau.

The more the surgeon pushes on training devices, the more resistance is added. That change over time is haptic tau.

Feeling how quickly the resistance increases.

When non-surgeons used this training machine they quickly learned time to break point and become fairly accurate. [44]

Surgeons were better but still improved with the device [45]

Training design with affordances in mind.

Stroke patients were looked at and their struggles to walk through a gap compared to those that haven't had a stroke. - uroi hiroi et al 2017

You may think their struggles were due to misperceived affordances. That is what I thought when first reading the research.

But it turns out no. Stroke patients perceived the affordance the same as non-stroke patients.

It was their behaviour that was different.

For stroke patients with a history of falling, it wasn't an issue of misperception or an issue of taking sufficient time. Rather it was an issue of making effective adjustments in their movements - in particular, shoulder rotations. - page 222

Studies like this then allow for refinement of rehabilitation or training to help develop skills to overcome problems.

But that's all very movement specific.

Well. It still applies to more mentally dominated skills as well.

When we consider the mental side, you might think ecological psychologists deny it exists.

Which some do, sort off, but it's not the word mental that is the issue.

It is the assumption of mental entities or processes that mediate perception-action-cognition.

Ecologically inclined researchers still look at mental health conditions.

There is research into ADHD, ASD, OCD, image and eating disorders, developmental and coordination disorders, intellectual disabilities and many other areas. - 221

Current thinking uses ideas about a dynamic field of affordances with 4 dimensions. [46]

Width corresponding to the number of affordances to the person in that situation.

Depth corresponding to affordances that could become available if certain behaviours are performed.

Remembering perception-action-cognition as a continuous process, not a snapshot in time.

Height corresponding to the relevance of affordance to the person. Taking the goal into account.

Then colour corresponding to the feelings associated with affordances. Liking or disliking a behaviour.

This field of affordances varies in all directions.

However, with variation among each person from multi-causal, sometimes non-obvious factors, this field of affordances could be constrained.

Depression may narrow affordances. Making all affordances equally unattractive reducing the width.

OCD may have compulsive elements which are relevant increasing the height for certain affordances, obscuring others.

• figure 13.11 - page 223 [46]

Those with schizophrenia report feeling disembodied. [71]

In the ecological view, perception is the relationship between organism and environment.

Researchers hypothesized that those with schizophrenia would then be less accurate perceiving affordances because they struggle including themselves [58]

When asked to perceive affordances of objects, those with schizophrenia were slower and less accurate with responses than those without schizophrenia.

When asked to perceive colour of a physical property, those with schizophrenia were slower, but had the same accuracy as those without.

people with schizophrenia were impaired when asked to perceive affordances - which requires perceiving the self in relation to the environment - but not when asked to perceive physical or geometric properties - which requires perceiving only the environment. page 224

This impacts the entire field of affordances.

Thinking about communication. The synchronizing and coordination with others.

Researchers did the chair syncing study again but this time with children that had ASD. [27]

They found those with ASD were less likely to unintentionally synchronize with the other chair.

researchers concluded that difficulty perceiving and acting with respect to the rhythms of the world and of other people is an important prerequisite for social connection and that impairment in this ability may play a role in ASD - page 225

So variation in humans can be found through ecologically driven research.

Disabilities, disorders, injury or impairment which means the ecological approach can be used for designing appropriate rehabilitation and training.

You have or likely know someone who has done physio.

Doing the same movements over and over again and when you have done it enough you can transfer the strength to daily activities. [47]

But it doesn't work like that.

Sometimes you can do daily activities before you finish the program.

Other times you finish the program but then inure yourself again when you start doing daily activities.

The skills, movements are different.

Person environment relationship. The practice should represent the performance.

Rehabilitation and training should be activity based, not movement based. [48]

Dynamical systems

and as mentioned throughout this video, complex dynamic systems are non-linear.

thats where multi causality and non obvious causality can come into our explanations.

and at the centre of all that is complexity.

complexity is a function of the number of and interactions among the factors that affect a particular outcome. - page 233

all of those interactions resulting in emergent behaviours. Not predictable, emergent.

ecological psychology leans on dynamical systems to help explain these complex interactions.

At uni we did this in group but it is just me here.

I have a sheet.

As I move the sheet the ball moves, it is attracted to a part of the sheet.

This sheet in dynamical systems is an attractor layout or landscape.

The deeper the attractor the more stable the behaviour so system can maintain the behaviour and is also more efficient.

But there is never just one behaviour, because there are affordances.

Opportunities for behaviour.

So there are multiple attractors. Dips in the layout. [57]

but also different types of attractors.

Fixed point attractors stay in the same place.

Periodic attractors repeat positions through time.

Going back and fourth like a pendulum. Attracting one way then the other.

But these could also be repeated with some differences. Quasi-periodic.

Like the life of a leaf. The same cycle but at different times and rates.

Then there are chaotic attractors. Not random, chaotic.

Veritasium did a video about chaos and this clip should give some context.

6:30 7:38 chaos animation

So attractors can be difficult to isolate.

The opposite, aptly named, repellers.

Now explaining behaviour through dynamical systems means behaviour is not static.

Attractor layout changes over time.

Thinking about the phase states of walking and running.

As we speed up the attractor layout changes, and we become attracted to running as we speed up which triggers a phase transition.

From walking to running. A more efficient behaviour for the system to maintain.

When testing these attractor changes in learning, one study looked at juggling. [50]

After observing a professional juggler the researchers noticed an attractor of an effective cascade.

The balls were carried 70% of the time, 30% in the air.

When participants were taught to juggle they used 60% or 80% of the time carrying the balls.

This testing and practice of movement could be described as exploring the attractor landscape.

Overtime, participants learned to juggle. At different rates but attracted their behaviour to the 70%.

The juggling behaviour wasn't as stable as the professional, but that comes with the calibration over time from education of attention and intention.

Greater levels of expertise.

But Attractors could also be societal norms.

Interactions between people, you leaning one way more than another.

or from physical orientations of objects.

Following the shortest path across the grass instead of all the way around a corner.

learning is therefore about developing a new skill, and adaptation is changing an old skill to reflect a new context

The noise being an integral part of the system.

As you move the sheet, the attractor layout, behaviours move closer to the attractors.

If I put beeds on my sheet they wont move towards the repeller, my hands, they will attract to the middle.

My shaking, my noise, helps the transition.

Thinking about the gear study mentioned earlier, if we add more noise, so shake the gear system around, it in theory would help people attune to the attractor faster. [51]

The more noise that was introduced to the system (the more the gears hopped around the screen), the more likely it was that the participants discovered the alternation method. - page 243

Now we could have things start at a different place and end at the same place. equifinality.

something like language.

people born all over the world with vastly different situations will attract to communication and therefore a language.

We will find a way to communicate, even if it is sign language [52]

Something I mentioned when discussing issues with cognitive load theory.

On the other hand we could start at the same point but end in different places. pluripotentiality.

Twins. Same start different end.

But how do you then measure dynamic systems?

It's not one moment in time so we need continuous measurements.

Eye tracking, motion tracking even remote tracking like using a wii remote.

Once we have all that data, instead of looking for an average.

A proposed point in time, we look at the fluctuations.

Julia and Jeff use the example of a person that hates and loves their job.

An average would find a neutral zone but they might not have one.

Instead using dynamical systems we would look for why their are the fluctuations

I don't quite get the recurrence quantification analysis that is used here but it seems work. [53]

One study looked into the a-not-b error.

Traditionally put down to object permanence. Not realizing objects still exist even if you cover them up.

But this can be extended to you having a habit of going to a certain place to find something but it not being there. [54]

And you know it isn't there but your so used to going there you still make the error.

however, object permanence struggles to explain this fully.

dynamical systems, can.

constraints shifted the attractor layout, which accounts for the delay in the new behaviour.

It takes time for the the new attractor to stabilize.

Reading comprehension explained through ecological dynamics also uses the recurrence analysis.

A study looking into this found those that higher comprehension of text had higher recurrence levels of the information [55]

less-apt readers explored the space but were unable to find areas of recurring content. - part 249

This gives us ideas about how we can help people develop skills.

In this case, finding the attractors which was recurring themes across text.

But dynamical systems don't stop there.

intractable conflict is where the conflict is so much that the agents can't get past their differences.

War being one example.

Most people will want to stop the deaths, but war still continues. [56]

The attractors for war is deeper or stronger than that of piece

Peace of course the other way around so the noise through time can shift the conflict if the appropriate attractors are leveraged.

navigating conflict being explained through dynamical systems, not solved.

however one suggestion was to not change the attractors but destabilize the attractor layout.

like when trying to synchronise out-phase movements as speed is increased the attractor layout changes and there is a phase transition.

The speed as a destabilizer.

changing a control parameter, speed as an example, destabilizes the layout.

If you could discover a control parameter for a particular relationship, then provide a more stable arrangement while the system is destabilized, it might be possible to create new, lasting patterns of behaviour. - page 250

Now that is pretty cool if you ask me.

Evolution

if we zoom out a bit we could think as far as evolution.

Changes in species often associated with Darwins theory of evolution but combined with natural selection.

That refers to neo-darwinism or modern evolutionary synthesis.

Survival of the fittest.

Dominant behaviours related to the idea of being the fittest but what does fittest mean?

When I learned about this at school all I remember now is that animals solve problems they face in the environment.

Animals solve those problems with variation among species which are heritable. Passed down in genes.

The animals with better genes therefore survive more and the variation becomes dominant and visa versa for the other variations. They die out.

Some variations of species could be so diverse that they become a different species. Speciation.

However if there is an environmental problem that can't be solved quick enough, the species goes extinct.

but heritance isn't just DNA, actions and environments could alter DNA which changes how it is passed on [59]

This approach to evolution is about the individual. One animal outlasting another.

But that doesn't account for altruism.

Why would an animal want to save others. To save the species not the animal. So we need to step back a bit.

I don't think there is a gene for altruism and Jeff and Julia didn't mention one.

So this trait is incidental. It happens because of something else.

Not quite matching my original view of survival of the fittest. Not quite neo-darwinian.

If you think about red blood cells, they make us fit. Keep us alive.

But it is the oxygen that does that, not the redness of the cell.

Octopi have blue blood, but it does essentially the same thing.

carrying oxygenated blood is the trait, the colour is, what Jeff and Julia refer to as a gift-with-purchase.

buy one get something free.

evolve oxygenated blood transfer get red colour for free.

if you are like me you might wonder what the Darwinian's mean by environment.

as mentioned earlier environment, space, and environmental niche are different.

if species interact with an environment it is an environmental niche. different from others.

We can't fly so are in a different niche to birds. A broad example but I think you get the point.

so the environment problem we are evolving to solve, should surely be a problem in the environmental niche.

Unless ecologists would like to correct me, a niche can't be defined without an organism.

But this means that a niche could be anything really.

So evolution loses some of its explanatory power.

Environment problem for what species?

Neo-darwinian explanations also seem to rely on the environment not changing much. Animals evolving to survive.

As environmental niches are always changing, the climate crises an obvious example and animals changing things like beavers creating dams known as niche construction - laland 2000

This natural selection and evolution can't be solely DNA or solely dependent on the organism.

If it was, you would think those that have been around the longest would have the best chance of sticking around, but extinction rates seem independent of time [60]

The start of species is also a big question. That doesn't mean the model is wrong, just incomplete.

an ecological view would suggest the scale of organism environment relationship.

But this requires a theory of explanation much like Gibsons theory of direct perception, we need a theory of evolution.

The red queen hypothesis attempts to emphasize the relationship between the environment and organism.

In this view, niches are gradually but continuously changing, and species are gradually but continuously running along behind. - page 261

now although this sounds ecological, the environment and organism are still separate.

it also doesn't explain why a species can evolve when no other species is keeping up.

why would warm blooded creaturs evolve when cold blooded ones were fine?

Why did birds evolve when land animals were fine?

Why evolve animals that eat plants, when plants are fine?

• Further reading

– Stephen Jay Gould

– Conway Morris

– Susan Oyama

These theories can explain why species survive, but not how or why they get here.

the beginning of life.

Not a question you might have thought about at the start of this video.

In Ecological Psychology, and much of biology research from what I can see, they use the theory of thermodynamics, study of energy, to explain evolution and or speciation.

thermodynamics, like direct perception is built on laws.

physicists correct me if I am off here but one of laws could be broken into two parts.

all energy is the same be it heat, mechanical, electormagnetic, it's all the same.

but also energy can't be created or destroyed. It can be moved or converted but not created or destroyed.

this means if we are trying to look at systems for energy movement we might need to zoom out

a second law is about entropy.

as I understand it and as is explained in the book, it is about splodges or as Jeff and Julia say clumps of sand.

when dots are evenly spread on a screen there is thermodynamic equilibrium. An even spread of energy.

if the dots go together you get clumps.

the clumps known as potential energy can do mechanical work.

as energy moves from a clump somewhere it causes a change.

evenly distributed energy can't move from a clump because it isn't in a clump.

Entropy is the measure of how much energy in a system is unavailable for mechanical work - page 262

or you could say a measure of disorder in the system.

so clumpy energy is ordered, like us, and spread out energy is disordered

thermodynamic equilibrium, maximum evenly distributed spread out of dots is maximum entropy. Maximum disorder.

figure 15.7 - page 263

the law states that ordered clumpy low entropy systems are not stable. they want to be more evenly distributed. higher entropy, more spread out, more disordered.

so if we think of a battery or plants they store energy. ordered, clumpy and low entropy.

they could be referred to as an energy sink. A place that traps energy.

and if we think about evolution, it creates energy sinks. It creates animals, plants, things that trap energy.

This goes against the entropy slope. negentropy

this is a problem as it goes against the law of equilibrium.

However, bigger organisms expend more energy, we increase entropy, disorder, quicker.

so zooming out at the whole energy systems from this thermodynamic approach we would look at the end state of equilibrium, not current state of the animal.

if you have put the pieces together thermodynamic equilibrium, maximum entropy or disorder would therefore be the end of the universe.

Uplifting video right.

well stepping backwards to evolution again, this dissipation of energy explains the survival part and procreate part of evolution, much like neo-darwinian approaches.

but it can also explain why new species evolve.

why did land mammals evolve when aqua animals were doing fine?

they evolved because there was lots of energy available to consume. This could also explain the variety of life [61]

Each new form of life as an energy sink.

so if there is an energy source that isn't being consumed.

Say plastic as it isn't biodegradible

A term used when species don't consume it.

then we could predict a species to evolves that eats plastic.

A plastic consuming species. Sceptical.

well say hello to the plastic eating wax worms [62]

or the plastic eating fungus [63]

plastic eating microorganisms [64]

There aren't enough to solve our plastic problem but the thermodynamic approach explains this evolution.

Using this approach life was inevitable.

Self-organization

Organization could be done by the system, self organization or something else like a central executive, other organization.

other organization is like following a blueprint or plan. Lot of intelligence needed to start with.

and the ecological approach doesn't say that doesn't exist.

there can be partial self-organization [65]

but the bulk of biological systems self-organize.

self-organized system doesn't require lots of intelligence to perform. they don't need loans of intelligence

• intelligent desgin - termites v building

A self-organized system is one in which small, minimally intelligent pieces follow local, simple rules by constantly interacting with each other. - page 272

and sometimes very complex patterns can emerge. Behaviour

dynamic systems can respond to perturbations (interruptions)

dynamic systems have attractor states. Stable behaviour.

but dynamic systems also have multi-stability. More than one stable state.

This can account for the various types of attractors in an attractor layout but also that there is more than one attractor for a layout, or situation.

water spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise if there are no influencers

an example of this in human design is locating paths.

grounds people laying grass and after time people will leave paths that are followed. There is self organization to the design.

Ants do the same thing when finding food.

They have a good homing sense but when going out to find food they line their path with chemicals so others can follow.

figure 16.2 - page 276

forager ant leave more chemicals or pheromone for higher nutrient food which is how ants go between the two foods and favour the more nutritious.

but the peremones are used by ants to follow to get to the food. If on their way back a path diverts them away from home, they go back and try to find a more direct path, eventually leading to a best fit.

Synchronized firefly blinking has been an amazement for years [66]

Explaining this through other organized systems, there could be a go signal of some kind, or a conductor.

but it seems to be down to local forces [67]

the entire hillside can flash in sync just by individual fireflies synching with their neighbors - page 277

Termite buildings, bees finding nector, wasp nest buildings all other examples

If we move away from animals we see self-organization with metal beads. [68]

figure 16.3 - page 278

In the image electricity want to get to the surrounding ring as fast as possible.

It want's to dissipate energy as in thermodynamics. Follow the entropy slope.

With oil in the dish when we put electricity in oil the beads snap into line towards the edge.

the beads followed the rules or laws of physics, not instruction from a conductor.

There are loads of other examples in the book about self-organization but this emphasizes that the body is a system not machine

When we look at temperature some explanations may say there is thermostat in the brain triggering sweating or shivering

but that doesn't match data.

The body temperature fluctuates across the day like a dynamic system.

A fever makes our temperature go all over the place so the body doesn't keep it at optimum level.

Either the thermostat is being moved by the central executive or something else is happening.

The body temperature could be an emergent property from all of the coordination within the self organised systems.

digestive, ciculatory, nervous, endocrine etc...

This could be described as a tug of war, one system wanting hotter, another colder for the goals of that system [69]

Our immune system bringing the temperature up to fight the fever but other systems wanting to be cold to function.

DNA can set up rules for self-organizing systems to follow in line with the changing contexts.

But DNA isn't a set of blueprints to follow.

Building F1 cars have rules but they build their own cars. The self organized systems end in cars but are all different.

Why it matters

Now ecological dynamics, the thing I mentioned at the beginning combines ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory into one framework. [70]

so my language changes as I am talking about affordances, constraints, attractors, development of skills not acquisition.

I am looking at development overtime in my relationship to the environment not me as the problem.

My brain isn't the problem. My naturally limited central excutive isn't the problem.

I don't a central executive.

my calibration of capabilities or level of expertise in this context, needs developing to achieve the goal directed behaviour.

instead of following instructions trying to find the right answer, or repeating the same thing over and over to get better.

I design with affordances in mind.

ideas like non-linear pedagogy, the constraints led approach, representative practice design, repetition without repetition, periodization the list goes on.

I discuss examples of this in a weekly podcast but there is now how to guide.

as annoying as it is to say, it depends on the relationship between the organism and environment.

for me ecological dynamics, gives me a way to explain my experiences and other situations, while giving me ideas about how to shape my experiences for learning.

I will be making more video on this channel about the theory and practice of ecological dynamics alongside also alternative ideas.

the bayesian brain hypothesis and predictive processing has really interesting research alongside loads of other fields.

but this is practice.

education of attention and intention calibrated over time to attune to affordances often resulting in attractors which when stable allow for higher levels of expertise while managing energy.

If you are interested, and if you have watched this far, I assume you are, consider subscribing to be notified as this video is meant as an introduction to the ideas not a answer to solutions.