Visual and Haptic Perception of Affordances of Feelies

Abstract

Most objects have well-defined affordances. Investigating perception of affordances of objects that were not created for a specific purpose would provide insight into how affordances are perceived. In addition, comparison of perception of affordances for such objects across different exploratory modalities (visual vs. haptic) would offer a strong test of the lawfulness of information about affordances (i.e., the invariance of such information over transformation). Along these lines, “feelies”— objects created by Gibson with no obvious function and unlike any common object—could shed light on the processes underlying affordance perception. This study showed that when observers reported potential uses for feelies, modality significantly influenced what kind of affordances were perceived. Specifically, visual exploration resulted in more noun labels (e.g., “toy”) than haptic exploration which resulted in more verb labels (i.e., “throw”). These results suggested that overlapping, but distinct classes of action possibilities are perceivable using vision and haptics. Semantic network analyses revealed that visual exploration resulted in object-oriented responses focused on object identification, whereas haptic exploration resulted in action-oriented responses. Cluster analyses confirmed these results. Affordance labels produced in the visual condition were more consistent, used fewer descriptors, were less diverse, but more novel than in the haptic condition.

Transfer of Recalibration in Perceiving Surface Distance With a Haptic Sensory Substitution Device

“…More speculatively, the results are consistent with the more general proposal that performing any given perceptual task requires developing task-specific sensitivity to invariant stimulation patterns (Blau & Wagman, 2023; Turvey, 2019). Uncovering the invariant stimulation patterns that support perception of a given property across a variety of energy forms and across a variety of circumstances has been the focus of numerous studies and is an important step in better understanding the perceptual process in general (e.g., Dowell et al, 2020; O'Neill & Russell, 2017; Reihm et al, 2019). In particular, uncovering the invariant mechanical stimulation patterns that support perception of surface distance when exploring that surface with a wooden rod and when doing so with an ET is an important area for future research.…”