The Independent Perceptual Calibration of Action-Neutral and -Referential Environmental Properties

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to explore how the calibration of perception of environmental properties taken with reference to an animal and their action capabilities (e.g., affordances) and those that are independent of action capabilities (e.g., metric properties) relate. In both experiments, participants provided reports of the maximum height they could reach above their head with a number of different stick(s) (reach-with-stick height) and the length of those stick(s), a property that is a constituent of reach-with-stick height. In Experiment 1 reach-with-stick height reports improved over trials whereas stick length reports remained constant. In Experiment 2, feedback about maximum reach-with-stick height improved perception of this affordance, but such improvements did not transfer to perception of stick length in a pretest/practice task/posttest design. The results suggest that the perceptual calibration with practice perceiving or feedback about actual dimensions of action-referential and action-neutral properties do not necessarily depend on one another.

Development of affordance perception and recalibration in children and adults

“…That children's abilities develop differently in each task lends further support to the action-specific account of perception as opposed to the action-general account. Future research could address this question more directly by testing whether children's perceptual judgments of an object that modifies affordances (platform shoes or backpacks) is related to their perception of affordances, replicating the strategies used in adult studies (Mark, 1987;Thomas et al, 2016).…”

“…Evidence supports this claim: Mark (1987) demonstrated that observers' perception of affordances for sitting while wearing platform shoes was independent of their perception of the size of the platform shoes. This implies that observers recalibrate by learning something intrinsic about the body's abilities relative to the environment rather than by computing an affordance from constituent properties (see also Thomas, Wagman, Hawkins, Havens, & Riley, 2016). Thus, recalibration is not as simple as "adding" the perceived size of the platform shoe to adjust one's judgment of sitting or the perceived size of a backpack to one's judgment of fitting through doorways.…”

Exploratory behaviors and recalibration: What processes are shared between functionally similar affordances?

“…Thus, it is unknown whether participants could have recalibrated without vision of the body-modifying object or whether visual access conferred any advantage. I predict that vision of the body-modifying object is not critical: Past work shows that affordance perception is independent of judgments of objects that alter affordances (Mark, 1987;Thomas & Riley, 2014;Thomas et al, 2016). Moreover, participants were no worse at judging affordances for reaching with rods when rods were present in view or absent (Thomas & Riley, 2014).…”

“…Seeing the backpack may have also helped participants in the PF condition make slightly more accurate judgments during pretest trials. Finding a benefit of vision of the backpack was unexpected given that past work demonstrated perceptual independence between affordance judgments and metric judgments of objects that manipulated affordances (Mark, 1987;Thomas & Riley, 2014;Thomas et al, 2016). However, these benefits of visual information about the backpack should be interpreted cautiously because differences between vision conditions were only observed when measuring accuracy as a proportion of manipulation size.…”

“…The range of affordances available to humans is vast. Accordingly, researchers have investigated a wide array of affordances, including fitting through doorways (Fath & Fajen, 2011;Higuchi et al, 2011;Petrucci, Horn, Rosengren, & Hsiao-Wecksler, 2016; Thomas & Riley, 2014;Warren & Whang, 1987;Yasuda, Wagman, & Higuchi, 2014), navigating under barriers (Franchak, Celano, & Adolph, 2012;Stoffregen, Yang, Giveans, Flanagan, & Bardy, 2009;Wagman & Malek, 2009;Yu, Bardy, & Stoffregen, 2011), sitting on seats (Mark, 1987;Mark, Baillet, Craver, Douglas, & Fox, 1990;Stoffregen, Yang, & Bardy, 2005), reaching (Thomas & Riley, 2014;Thomas, Wagman, Hawkins, Havens, & Riley, 2016), leaping and stepping (Cole, Chan, & Adolph, 2013;Day, Wagman, & Smith, 2015), throwing (Bingham, Schmidt, & Rosenblum, 1989;Zhu & Bingham, 2010), and catching (Oudejans, Michaels, Bakker, & Dolne, 1996). Such studies reveal great diversity in the types of information that support affordance perception.…”