Ecological approaches to development provide a challenge to conventional approaches. In particular, ecological realist approaches question the need for the concept of representation in early cognitive development, suggesting reality is directly perceived without the need for mental mediation, and dynamic systems approaches are showing how direct perception may be integrated with action during development to lead to developmental changes in competence that previous accounts have based on the development of representations. A more contentious claim is embedded in the direct realist concept of affordance, namely that the functional properties of objects as well as their physical properties are directly perceived. Additionally, all versions of ecological accounts are based on systems thinking in which there is an inseparable mutuality between individual and environment. This indicates the need to investigate the interplay between environmental and individual factors, and calls for investigations of behaviour based in natural situations.