How Does the Environment Affect the Person?

Standard conceptions of how the environment influences the person are constrained by the dominant view of representation and, therefore, perception, cognition, and language as fundamentally consisting of encodings. I argue that this encoding view is logically incoherent. An alternative view of representation is presented, interactivism, and shown to avoid the incoherencies of encodingism. The interactivist model of representation provides accounts for standard presumed encoding phenomena, and highlights processes and forms of influence of the environment on the person that are obscure or entirely absent from the encoding account. The multiplicity and complexity of the processes of environmental influence acquire a theoretically coherent organization and development from within the interactive perspective. How Does the Environment Affect the Person?