Ecological validity, representative design, and correspondence between experimental task constraints and behavioral setting: comment on Rogers, Kadar, and Costall (2005)

Using the term ecological validity, in a recent issue of Ecological Psychology, Rogers, Kadar, and Costall (2005) discussed how the simulator they used could provide data by replicating natural road driving behaviors. However, ecological validity, as Brunswik (1956) conceived it, refers to the validity of a cue (i.e., perceptual variable) in predicting a criterion state of the environment. Like other psychologists in the past, Rogers et al. (2005) confused this term with another of Brunswik's terms: representative design. In this comment, the authors clarify the distinction between these concepts and also discuss how Gibsonian ideas can strengthen understanding of the correspondence between experimental task constraints and behavioral settings outside the laboratory. The main implication of this theoretical rationalization is for the development of a measurable correspondence between experimental and behavioral contexts, enabling defensible generalization to both organisms and environments beyond the bounds of particular experiments.