Cognition is defined as the skill of dealing with knowledge. Such knowledge comes from the environment. Rather than trying to understand which information the mind can process, attention should be paid to which information is available in the environment. The mind developed to cope with that information. Neisser, in partial agreement with Gibson, presents an alternative approach to perception which is based on an ecological orientation.
Organisms pick up information from the environment.
Between perception and action there exists a direct relation. The schema accounts for adaptive behavior while conserving the preminence of cognitive processes. The organism selects information from the environment based on its anticipatory schemata. At every istant the organism constructs anticipations of information that enable it to pick it up when it becomes available. Once picked up, information may in turn result in a change of the original schema, to direct further exploration of the environment.