Social cognition in simple action coordination: A case for direct perception

In this paper we sketch the outlines of an account of the kind of social cognition involved in simple action coordination that is based on direct social perception (DSP) rather than recursive mindreading. While we recognize the viability of a mindreading-based account such as e.g. Michael Tomasello’s, we present an alternative DSP account that (i) explains simple action coordination in a less cognitively demanding manner, (ii) is better able to explain flexibility and strategy-switching in coordination and crucially (iii) allows for formal modeling. This account of action coordination is based on the notion of an agent’s field of affordances. Coordination ensues, we argue, when, given a shared intention, the actions of and/or affordances for one agent shape the field of affordances for another agent. This a form of social perception since in particular perceiving affordances for another person involves seeing that person as an agent. It is a form of social perception since it involves perceiving affordances for another person and registering how another person’s actions influence one’s own perceived field of affordances.     

Social Affordances and the Possibility of Ecological Linguistics

This paper includes an effort to extend the notion of affordance from a philosophical point of view the importance of ecological approach for social psychology, ethics, and linguistics. Affordances are not always merely physical but also interpersonal and social. I will conceptualize affordance in general and social affordance in particular, and will elucidate the relation between intentional action and affordances, and that between affordances and free will. I will also focus on the relation between social institution and affordance. An extended theory of affordances can provide a way to analyze in concrete ways how social institution works as an implicit background of interpersonal interactions. Ecological approach considers social institution as the producer and maintainer of affordances. Social institutions construct the niches for human beings. Finally, I will argue the possibility of the ecological linguistics. Language is a social institution. The system of signs is the way to articulate and differentiate interpersonal affordances. Language acquires its meaning, i.e. communicative power in the interpersonal interactions, and interpersonal interactions, in turn, develop and are elaborated through the usage of signs. Communication is seen as never aimed to transmit inner ideas to others, but to guide and adjust the behaviors of others thorough articulating the affordance of responsible-ness.     

Scaling-up skilled intentionality to linguistic thought

Cognition has traditionally been understood in terms of internal mental representations, and computational operations carried out on internal mental representations. Radical approaches propose to reconceive cognition in terms of agent-environment dynamics. An outstanding challenge for such a philosophical project is how to scale-up from perception and action to cases of what is typically called ‘higher-order’ cognition such as linguistic thought, the case we focus on in this paper. Perception and action are naturally described in terms of agent-environment dynamics, but can a person’s thoughts about absent, abstract or counterfactual states of affairs also be accounted for in such terms? We argue such a question will seem pressing so long as one fails to appreciate how richly resourceful the human ecological niche is in terms of the affordances it provides. The explanatory work that is supposedly done by mental representations in a philosophical analysis of cognition, can instead be done by looking outside of the head to the environment structured by sociomaterial practices, and the affordances it makes available. Once one recognizes how much of the human ecological niche has become structured by activities of talking and writing, this should take away at least some of the motivation for understanding linguistic thinking in terms of content-bearing internal representations. We’ll argue that people can think about absent, abstract or counterfactual because of their skills for engaging with what we will call “enlanguaged affordances”. We make use of the phenomenological analysis of speech in Merleau-Ponty to show how the multiple affordances an individual is ready to engage with in a particular situation will typically include enlanguaged affordances.

     

Metastable attunement and real-life skilled behavior

In everyday situations, and particularly in some sport and working contexts, humans face an inherently unpredictable and uncertain environment. All sorts of unpredictable and unexpected things happen but typically people are able to skillfully adapt. In this paper, we address two key questions in cognitive science. First, how is an agent able to bring its previously learned skill to bear on a novel situation? Second, how can an agent be both sensitive to the particularity of a given situation, while remaining flexibly poised for many other possibilities for action? We will argue that both the sensitivity to novel situations and the sensitivity to a multiplicity of action possibilities are enabled by the property of skilled agency that we will call metastable attunement. We characterize a skilled agent’s flexible interactions with a dynamically changing environment in terms of metastable dynamics in agent-environment systems. What we find in metastability is the realization of two competing tendencies: the tendency of the agent to express their intrinsic dynamics and the tendency to search for new possibilities. Metastably attuned agents are ready to engage with a multiplicity of affordances, allowing for a balance between stability and flexibility. On the one hand, agents are able to exploit affordances they are attuned to, while at the same time being ready to flexibly explore for other affordances. Metastable attunement allows agents to smoothly transition between these possible configurations so as to adapt their behaviour to what the particular situation requires. We go on to describe the role metastability plays in learning of new skills, and in skilful behaviour more generally. Finally, drawing upon work in art, architecture and sports science, we develop a number of perspectives on how to investigate metastable attunement in real life situations.

     

The Separation of Action and Perception and the Issue of Affordances

Michaels's (2000) reassessment of the relation between action and perception is endorsed. In alignment with Milner and Goodale (1995), she proposed a separation between action (i.e., control of movement) and perception (i.e., the explicit knowledge of environmental properties, including animal-referential ones), the separation being based on the reliance on different optical variables. However, how should the concept of affordances be incorporated into this scheme? We present data showing that affordances, both when perceived and acted on, are not susceptible to optical illusions. Because action and perception are distinguished on the basis of information used, but are also proposed to interact, it is hypothesized that, dependent on the task goal, "information for action" may be used in perception, and "information for perception" may be used in action. Participants may become more attuned to information for action when perception serves to acquire explicit knowledge about what the environment affords for action.     

Scaffolds for Social Meaning

The perception of social meanings traditionally deemed to be private is addressed by contrasting the perception of social affordances with the perception of the physical affordances of environmental objects. Assuming that (a) affordances are defined by relationships between properties of the environment and properties of an actor and that (b) information must exist to specify this relationship for the perception of affordances, the question is whether and how private social meanings can fulfill these criteria. The attack is twofold. First, one needs to take seriously the ontology of the social world by considering social environment properties and actors' social roles as real and embodied—existing in the world and not just in mental representations. Second and more problematically, one needs to understand how information exists that specifies these more abstract and temporally extended aspects of the environment and actor. I propose that these problems can be averted by taking seriously as conceptual scaffolds the reality of functionally defined properties of the environment and actor, J. J. Gibson's primacy of events, and his notion of the occluding edge (1979/1986).     

What’s Inside Your Head Once You’ve Figured Out What Your Head’s Inside Of

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the foundations for a Gibsonian neuroscience. There is an increasingly influential current in neuroscience based on pragmatic and selectionist principles, which we think can contribute to ecological psychology. Starting from ecological psychology, we identify three basic constraints any Gibsonian neuroscience needs to adhere to: nonreconstructive perception, vicarious functioning, and selectionist self-organization. We discuss two previous attempts to integrate affordances with neuroscience: Reed’s ecological rendering of Edelman’s selectionism as well as Dreyfus’ phenomenological interpretation of Freeman’s neurodynamics. Reed and Dreyfus face the problem of how to account for “value.” We then show how the free-energy principle, an increasingly dominant framework in theoretical neuroscience, is rooted in both Freeman’s neurodynamics and Edelman’s selectionism. The free-energy principle accounts for value in terms of selective anticipation. The selection pressures at work on the agent shape its selective sensitivity to the relevant affordances in the environment. By being responsive to the relevant affordances in the environment, an agent comes to have grip on its interactions with the environment and can thrive in its ecological niche.     

Affordances and Events: Theory and Research

In replying to the commentaries, I focus on issues relating to theory, empirical practice (i.e., to how research on events and affordances has been conducted), and empirical research that I think is needed. I reiterate my argument that because they differ qualitatively, affordances might be perceived without prior or concurrent perception of the underlying events. I suggest that research on event perception might, in principle, inform research on the perception of affordances, but existing research has made no explicit attempt to do this. I conclude by stressing the need for new research and for exponents of event perception to identify a theoretical motivation, within ecological theory, for why events should be perceived.     

Empathy and the responsiveness to social affordances

The direct perception theory of empathy claims that we can immediately experience a person’s state of mind. I can see for instance that my neighbour is angry with me in his bodily countenance. I develop a version of the direct perception theory of empathy which takes this perceptual capacity to depend upon recognising in what way the other person is responsive to the affordances the environment provides. By recognising which possibilities for action are relevant to a person, I can thereby understand something about the meaning they give to the world. I come to share something of their perspective on the world, and this allows me to grasp based on my perception of them something about their current state of mind. I argue that shared affect plays a central role in this perceptual capacity. Shared affect allows me to orient my attention to possibilities for action that matter to the other person. I end by briefly discuss the implications of this view of empathy for the disturbances in so-called “cognitive empathy” that are found in people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.     

An ecological approach to disjunctivism

In this paper I claim that perceptual discriminatory skills rely on a suitable type of environment as an enabling condition for their exercise. This is because of the constitutive connection between environment and perceptual discriminatory skills, inasmuch as such connection is construed from an ecological approach. The exercise of a discriminatory skill yields knowledge of affordances of objects, properties, or events in the surrounding environment. This is practical knowledge in the first-person perspective. An organism learns to perceive an object by becoming sensitized to its affordances. I call this position ecological disjunctivism. A corollary of this position is that a case of perception and its corresponding case of hallucination—which is similar to the former only in some respects—are different in nature. I show then how the distinguishability problem is addressed by ecological disjunctivism.

     

Discovering your inner Gibson: Reconciling action-specific and ecological approaches to perception–action

Both the action-specific perception account and the ecological approach to perception–action emphasize the role of action in perception. However, the action-specific perception account demonstrates that different percepts are possible depending on the perceiver’s ability to act, even when the same optical information is available. These findings challenge one of the fundamental claims of the ecological approach—that perception is direct—by suggesting that perception is mediated by internal processes. Here, we sought to resolve this apparent discrepancy. We contend that perception is based on the controlled detection of the information available in a global array that includes higher-order patterns defined across interoceptive and exteroceptive stimulus arrays. These higher-order patterns specify the environment in relation to the perceiver, so direct sensitivity to them would be consistent with the ecological claims that perception of the environment is direct and animal-specific. In addition, the action-specific approach provides further evidence for the theory of affordances, by demonstrating that even seemingly abstract properties of the environment, such as distance and size, are ultimately perceived in terms of an agent’s action capabilities.     

Artifacts and affordances

What are the affordances of artifacts? One view is that the affordances of artifacts, just as the affordances of natural objects, pertain to possible ways in which they can be manipulated (e.g., a computer keyboard affords grasping). Another view maintains that, given that artifacts are sociocultural objects, their affordances pertain primarily to their culturally-derived function (e.g., a computer keyboard affords typing). Whereas some have tried to provide a unifying notion of affordance to capture both aspects, here I argue that they should be kept separate. In this paper, I introduce a distinction between standard affordances, which concern the function of artifacts, and ad-hoc affordances, which refer to how artifacts are manipulated. I then argue for the neuropsychological plausibility of such a distinction, linking it to the dissociation between function knowledge and manipulation knowledge. Finally, I defend the equal status of these forms of knowledge and, hence, of standard and ad-hoc affordances, and I show that this has some implications for the debate on the role of motor processes in the conceptual knowledge of artifacts.

     

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

Recalibration of affordance perception allows observers to adapt to changes in the body’s size or abilities that alter possibilities for action. Of key interest is understanding how exploratory behaviors lead to successful recalibration. The present study was designed to test a novel hypothesis—that the same processes of exploration and recalibration should generalize between affordances that share a similar function. Most affordances for fitting the body through openings are recalibrated without feedback from practicing the action; locomotion exploration is sufficient. The present study used a different fitting task, squeezing through doorways, to determine whether locomotor experience was sufficient for recalibrating to changes in body size that altered affordances. Participants were unable to recalibrate from locomotor experience, demonstrating that exploratory behaviors do not necessarily generalize between functionally similar affordances. Participants only recalibrated following action practice or after receiving feedback about judgment accuracy, suggesting that the informational requirements of the squeezing task may differ from those of other fitting tasks. Implications for affordance theory are discussed.     

Conflict in the kitchen: Contextual modulation of responsiveness to affordances

Recently, human behavior has been considered the product of continuous interactions between perception, cognition and action in which “affordances” (action possibilities the environment has to offer) play an important role. Converging evidence suggests that multiple action possibilities simultaneously compete for further processing, while external and internal factors (e.g., incoming sensory information, predictions) bias this competition. In the present study we used a stop-task to investigate whether context is able to modulate the strength of the responsiveness to affordances. We therefore placed participants in an actual kitchen and workshop during electroencephalographic recordings. A faster response to context congruent objects demonstrated that the direct surrounding is able to affect responsiveness to affordances. In addition, when responses needed to be withheld, context congruent objects evoked greater response conflict as indicated by an enhanced N2 Event Related Potential (ERP) component.     

Doggone affordances: Canine perception of affordances for reaching

Performing any behavior requires perceiving affordances—whether and how that behavior can be performed. Perception of affordances exhibits action scaling—choices about when to transition between two different modes of behavior reflect the fit between action capabilities and environmental properties. The boundary between distances that are perceived to be reachable with an arm-only reach and those that are perceived to be reachable with an arm-plus-torso reach occurs at farther distances for long-armed than for short-armed people, but at the same ratio of object-distance-to-arm length for both groups. To the extent that perception of affordances is supported by detection of invariant stimulation patterns, perception of a given affordance ought to exhibit action scaling regardless of species. We investigated the heights at which dogs chose to transition from reaching with the head only to rearing (i.e., reaching with the head plus torso). This transition occurred at a taller height for tall than for short dogs, but at the same ratio of shoulder-height-to-treat-height for both groups. The results demonstrate a similarity in perception of affordances across species and suggest that perception of affordances is supported by detection of lawfully structured stimulation patterns that may be invariant across species.     

Persons and Affordances

Abstract

Interdisciplinary interest in affordances is increasing. This paper is a philosophical contribution. The question is: Do persons offer affordances? Analysis of the concepts ‘person’ and ‘affordance’ supports an affirmative answer. On a widely accepted understanding of what persons are, persons exhibit many of the features typical of socionormative affordances. However, to understand persons as offering affordances requires, on the face of it, stretching traditional understandings of the concept of affordance: persons, in contrast to the organisms that partially constitute persons, do not seem to be available to perception. This and similar worries are responded to.     

Perceptually Equivalent Judgments Made Visually and via Haptic Sensory-Substitution Devices

ABSTRACT

According to the ecological theory of perception–action, perception is primarily of affordances, which are directly perceivable opportunities for behavior. The current study evaluated participants’ ability to use vision and haptic sensory-substitution devices to support perceptual judgments of affordances involving the task of passing through apertures. Sighted participants made perceptual judgments about whether they could walk through apertures of various widths and their level of confidence in each judgment, using unrestricted vision and, when blindfolded, using two haptic sensory-substitution instruments: a cane-like wooden rod and the Enactive Torch, a device that converts distance information into vibrotactile stimuli. The boundary between aperture widths that were judged as pass-through-able versus non-pass-through-able was statistically equivalent across sensory modalities. However, participants were not as confident in their judgments using the rod or Enactive Torch as they were using vision. Additionally, participants’ judgments with the haptic instruments were significantly more accurate than with vision. The results underscore the need to assess sensory-substitution devices in the context of functional behaviors.     

Perception is not all-purpose

I aim to show that perception depends counterfactually on the action we want to perform. Perception is not all-purpose: what we want to do does influence what we see. After clarifying how this claim is different from the one at stake in the cognitive penetrability debate and what counterfactual dependence means in my claim, I will give a two-step argument: (a) one’s perceptual attention depends counterfactually on one’s intention to perform an action (everything else being equal) and (b) one’s perceptual processing depends counterfactually on one’s perceptual attention (everything else being equal). If we put these claims together, what we get is that one’s perceptual processing depends counterfactually on one’s intention to perform an action (everything else being equal).

     

Extending the notion of affordance

Post-Gibson attempts to set out a definition of affordance generally agree that this notion can be understood as a property of the environment with salience for an organism’s behavior. According to this view, some scholars advocate the idea that affordances are dispositional properties of physical objects that, given suitable circumstances, necessarily actualize related actions. This paper aims at assessing this statement in light of a theory of affordance perception. After years of discontinuity between strands of empirical and theoretical research, the time is ripe for addressing the question of whether the dispositional interpretation of affordance is in accordance with some recent evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience. Following this line, I clarify that there are some cases of affordance-related effects that neither require the actualization of an action, nor the presence of an action-related property bearer in the environment, and that the identification of affordance with physical properties provides only a partial explanation of the wide range of affordance-related effects. Accordingly, I argue in favor of a more general account of affordance perception based on the ability to directly detect perceptual patterns in the environment.