2001•Ecological PsychologyRequires access

Perception and Action Are Inseparable

Jeroen B. J. Smeets, Eli Brenner

Open publisher page 23 citations

Abstract

In her article, Michaels (2000) defined action as "a temporally bounded, observable, goal-directed movement (or non-movement) that entails intention, the detection of information, and a lawful relation between that information and the movement" (p. 251). She defined perception as "the detection of information" (p. 244). This forces one to conclude that it is impossible to study action separately from perception. We argue that perceptual judgments are communicated by movements and that it is impossible to distinguish movements reporting perceptual judgments from other movements, so we conclude that the reverse also is true: It is impossible to study perception separately from action.

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What this paper is about

In her article, Michaels (2000) defined action as "a temporally bounded, observable, goal-directed movement (or non-movement) that entails intention, the detection of information, and a lawful relation between that information and the movement" (p. 251). She defined perception as "the detection of information" (p. 244). This forces one to conclude that it is impossible to study action separately from perception. We argue that perceptual judgments are communicated by movements and that it is impossible to distinguish movements reporting perceptual judgments from other movements, so we conclude that the reverse also is true: It is impossible to study perception separately from action.

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OpenAlex reports 23 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

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Available abstract

In her article, Michaels (2000) defined action as "a temporally bounded, observable, goal-directed movement (or non-movement) that entails intention, the detection of information, and a lawful relation between that information and the movement" (p. 251). She defined perception as "the detection of information" (p. 244). This forces one to conclude that it is impossible to study action separately from perception. We argue that perceptual judgments are communicated by movements and that it is impossible to distinguish movements reporting perceptual judgments from other movements, so we conclude that the reverse also is true: It is impossible to study perception separately from action.

Key concepts: Perception, Action (physics), Movement (music), Cognitive psychology, Psychology, Relation (database), Communication, Computer science

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