Affordances are available behaviours emerging from relations between properties of animals and their environment. In any situation, multiple behaviours are available, that is, multiple affordances exist. We asked whether participants could detect means-ends relations among affordances (i.e., higher order affordances) in the context of reaching to a maximum height. We both assessed perceived affordances and evaluated actual reaching ability. In Experiment 1, we co-varied higher order goals (reaching to touch vs reaching to grasp) and the lower order effectors used to achieve the goals (fingertips vs a hand-held tool). In Experiment 2, we varied the lower order posture from which reaching would occur (standing vs kneeling). In both experiments, perceived maximum reaching height reflected relations between lower order means (effectors and postures) and higher order ends (reaching goals), and judgments closely reflected actual performance. We conclude that participants demonstrated prospective sensitivity to higher order affordances for reaching extended across multiple levels of the means-ends hierarchy.

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In this chapter, the authors focus on cognitive architectures that are developed with the intent to explain human cognition. The authors first describe the mission of cybernetics and early cognitive architectures and recount the popular criticism that these perspectives fail to provide genuine explanations of cognition. Moving forward, the authors propose that there are three pervasive problems that modern cognitive architectures must address: the problem of consciousness, the problem of embodiment, and the problem of representation. Wild Systems Theory (Jordan, 2013) conceptualizes biological cognition as a feature of self-sustaining embodied context that manifests itself at multiple, nested, time-scales. In this manner, Wild Systems Theory is presented as a particularly useful framework for coherently addressing the problems of consciousness, embodiment, and representation.

In this chapter, the authors focus on cognitive architectures that are developed with the intent to explain human cognition. The authors first describe the mission of cybernetics and early cognitive architectures and recount the popular criticism that these perspectives fail to provide genuine explanations of cognition. Moving forward, the authors propose that there are three pervasive problems that modern cognitive architectures must address: the problem of consciousness, the problem of embodiment, and the problem of representation. Wild Systems Theory (Jordan, 2013) conceptualizes biological cognition as a feature of self-sustaining embodied context that manifests itself at multiple, nested, time-scales. In this manner, Wild Systems Theory is presented as a particularly useful framework for coherently addressing the problems of consciousness, embodiment, and representation.

The Problem and its Background Perception and action comprise two fundamental phenomena within cognitive psychology. Perception may be construed as the process of obtaining information about one's environment. Action, on the other hand, may be construed as the process of engaging one's environment. Thus, perception-action theories concern how a cognitive system's contact with the world constrains the expression of behavior (and vice versa) or, more simply, how perception relates to action. Multiple frameworks have been developed to address this perception-action relation. For example, Prinz (1990) describes what he terms the "standard model" in which perception and action are incommensurable, so cognitive work is required to translate perception into action. However, other frameworks have been devised in which there is a greater degree of continuity or overlap between perception and action. For example, in the Theory of Event Coding (TEC; Hommel et al., 2001), perception and action planning share common representational codes and, therefore, require minimal (or no) translational work to get from perception to action planning. In the ecological approach to perception-action (Gibson, 1979), information obtained through perception directly specifies opportunities for action (i.e., affordances). Like TEC, the ecological perspective assumes minimal (or no) translational work to get from perception to action planning, but unlike TEC, the ecological approach often does not incorporate neural events or representations in its account of the perception-action relationship. While researchers operating from these various perspectives greatly differ in their fundamental assumptions about the perception-action relationship, what is common across all theories is that they have historically focused on the individual, emphasizing the contextual factors that constrain the expression of individual behavior. Such research has investigated the