Perceivers’ assessments of dynamic and static displays of environmental scenes were compared to evaluate how readily responses to static displays can be extrapolated to experience in situ. The dynamic displays were videotaped segments taken along a route presenting transition events characterized by the property mystery. The static displays were freeze frames from each segment. Results indicated that assessments of static displays do not simply parallel those of dynamic displays. Preference ratings were higher for static displays, but preference ratings in the dynamic condition were more strongly correlated with a wider range of variables. Moreover, epistemic ratings were higher for dynamic than static displays. Turn segments of the route, where the greatest amount of new information is revealed, produced the highest ratings on epistemic and evaluative variables. Differences across display modes point to a greater need for understanding environmental perceiving in relation to the dynamic quality of everyday experiences.

Both ecological psychology and enaction theory offer an alternative to long-standing theoretical approaches to perception that invoke post-perceptual supplemental processes or structures, e.g., mental representations, to account for perceptual phenomena. They both do so by taking actions by the individual to be essential for an account of perception and cognition. The question that this paper attempts to address is whether ecological psychology and enaction theory can be integrated into a stronger non-representational alternative to perception than either one can offer on its own. Doing so is only possible if most of the basic tenets and concepts of ecological psychology and enaction theory are compatible. Based on an examination of the role that sensations play within each approach; the manner in which each treats the concept of information; and how each conceptualizes an organism’s boundaries, it is concluded that a synthesis of the two approaches is not possible. Particular attention is paid to the concept of sensations, the limitations of which were an impetus for the development of ecological psychology.

An animal's habitat is filled with places that support activities in daily life. There are places, for example, that afford sleeping, eating, hiding, and gathering with others. Most places reflect the environment's nested structure. Even as perception–action is coupled to structure at the level of affordances, it is also coupled especially in human societies to dynamic structures at the level of places within which affordances are nested. These places have a distinctive complexity arising from the collective actions of individuals. For this reason, place-specific activities in human habitats are nearly always embedded in collective social practices. If children are to function adaptively as social beings in the community where they develop and live from day to day, they must learn not only where such places are located but also and critically how to participate in them. Owing to shared intersubjective intentions that give rise to places as behavior settings, individuals' actions in community settings are normatively constrained in the course of their participating in those settings. Consideration of the place within which perception–action is nested is indispensable if we hope to attain an adequate understanding of human perception–action in community settings as well as in some of the settings where research is conducted.

“Behavior settings” are generated by joint actions of individuals in conjunction with the milieu features (or affordances) that are available. The reported research explores the hypothesis that the identity or meaning of a behavior setting can be perceived by means of the patterns of action collectively generated by the setting’s participants. A set of computer animations was created based on detailed observation of activities in everyday settings. Three experiments were conducted to assess whether perceivers could extract “structure from motion” (in this case, collective actions) that was specific to the particular behavior setting displayed by way of the animations. Two experiments assessed whether individuals could accurately perceive the identity of the behavior settings with such displays, and a third experiment indirectly examined this possibility by evaluating whether setting possibilities and constraints were recognized. The results offered some support for the hypothesis, and suggested several refinements in how to conceptualize a typology of behavior settings. An ecological approach to place perception is also discussed.

In spite of the fact that Roger Barker’s groundbreaking research was acclaimed sixty years ago by his contemporaries, it has all been but forgotten among recent generations of psychologists. However, in the wake of developments in dynamical systems and complexity theory, its value for understanding psychological processes in everyday life should be recognized anew. Barker’s naturalistic studies of children’s daily behaviours in their community revealed that their actions which initially seemed only marginally predictable at the level of individual interaction were, in fact, reliably context-dependent. These results led to the discovery that there are nested structures operating in human habitats as there are throughout the natural world. Barker’s discovery of emergent eco-psychological structures, behaviour settings, that are generated from interdependent actions among individuals in the course of everyday life has yet to be fully appreciated because of the continuing dominance of linear, mechanistic models. His recognition of nested systems operating in human habitats is finally coming into its own with the current metatheoretical shift in psychology embracing dynamical models. Additionally, new understanding arises from the consideration of convergent individual developmental histories of situated action and their role in maintaining the historical dimensions of behaviour settings. This article is part of the theme issue ‘People, places, things and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century’.