The Monster Muggs

The essential nature of learning is primarily thought of as a verbal process or function, but this notion conveys that pre-linguistic infants do not learn. Far from being blank slates that passively absorb environmental stimuli, infants are active learners who perceptually engage their environments and extract information from them before language is available. The ecological approach to perceiving - defined as a theory about perceiving by active creatures who look and listen and move around - was spearheaded by Eleanor and James Gibson in the 1950s and culminated in James Gibson's last book in 1979.