Ulric Neisser was born 8 December 1928 is in American psychologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a faculty member at Cornell University. He was a great contributor to cognitive psychology with his first book: Cognitive Psychology.
His criticism
He criticized the field of cognitive psychology; he disagreed with the linear programming model of cognitive psychology, which sees the human brain like an operating computer, with its overemphasis on information processing models used to describe behavior. Moreover he argued that cognitive psychology had failed to address everyday aspects of human behavior. He blamed the excessive dependence on artificial laboratory tasks for this failure. He felt that in cognitive psychology, there was a severe disconnection between theories of behavior shaped by laboratory experiments and real-world events, which he called “ecological validity”. Lastly, he criticizes the opinion that individuals are passive in the perception process.
Five selves
In his article he says; “If we are in search of the self, we can look either inward or outward. To look inward is to focus on private experience, on mental representations, on the self-concept. To look outward is to see the self as embedded in its environment, ecologically and socially situated in relation to other objects and persons.”(Neisser, 1994) Human beings’ confirmation of each other’s selfhood is seen as an aspect of life.
Human beings have different ways to know about themselves; perceiving themselves ecologically or socially, remembrance, conception, reflection and introspective awareness are some of the spots to see the self from. Despite to the fact that each have their own origins Neisser claims that two perceptions are fundamental compared to other ones; ecological and interpersonal. (Neisser, 1993) This view of him is definitely affected by his colleague and friend, James Gibson. Gibson sees the two perceptions like two