The Perception-action Coupling

Behavior is organized into stable action modes with qualitative transitions between them. An ecological approach attempts to account for these patterns in terms of physical and informational constraints, such as attractors in the underlying dynamics of action and perceptual information specific to them. Perception and action are coupled by laws of control that relate informational variables to parameters of the action system so as to regulate behavior adaptively. The case of optical flow fields and the control of locomotion is developed in some detail. This approach implies a view of perceptual-motor development as a process of discovering and exploiting stabilities in the underlying dynamics and the information that specifies and modulates them.