Understanding Skill Acquisition: The Enactive vs. the Ecological Approach and Some Consequences

This theoretical contribution aims at shedding light on the use of the notion of ‘enactive’ in research on direct perception and on its contribution to the understanding of skill acquisition. While its founders Varela et al. (1991) in the work ‘The Embodied Mind’ have stressed the specificity of the enactive approach and have insisted on the difference between the enactive and the ecological approach, ecological research tends to use the term ‘enactive’ as a general umbrella term to indicate intrinsically active perception. This contribution makes the point that the specificity of the notion of ‘enactive’ cannot be neglected and that this may have some relevant consequences for the understanding and investigation of skill acquisition.