Are Events and Affordances Commensurate Terms?

In this article, I argue that the dichotomy between events and affordances as Stoffregen (target article, this issue) devises is unwarranted and potentially misleading. I challenge the notion that the role of the actor distinguishes events from affordances in any useful way. The research labeled event perception is neither less ecological nor qualitatively different from research on affordances. Instead, the main distinction is constituted by affordance being a perceptual property, whereas event pertains to a different semantic category. Nonetheless, the contemplation of these concepts, in particular an elaboration of the concept of affordance, is desperately needed.     

动允直接知觉的共鸣原理

传统认知理论认为我们只能间接知觉动允,而生态认知心理学则认为对动允的知觉是个体与环境信息直接共鸣的过程。生态认知心理学首先判定动允并不是存在于我们头脑中的认识,而是实际存在于个体-环境系统中的事实,对动允的直接知觉就是对动允的检测而非推测,是对动允信息的拾取而非对记忆内容的提取。这种直接知觉表现为身体的相关动作机制（动作神经元、肌肉组织等）与环境中动允信息的共鸣。进化与学习在共鸣的形成与发展中具有重要作用。     

Social Ecological Context of Conversing

The purpose of this article is to provide some groundwork about ecological social psychology as a starting point for researchers tackling neglected issues of language ecologically. I review basic principles of the ecological approach to perceiving and acting and discuss how the ecological approach has been applied beyond solo actors in an ecological niche to multiple actors acting in a niche explicitly conceptualized as social. In the last decade, researchers were inspired by tool-use research and solo action-based research on affordances (e.g., stair climbing) to take an affordance-based approach to understanding cooperation in a more embodied approach than was previously used in social psychology. Beginning at least a decade prior to that, researchers were inspired to wonder whether the dynamics of the coordinative structures of a solo actor's body movements, spontaneously emerging when different limbs engaged in rhythmic movement, might cross the bodily divide to yield similar collective dynamics when multiple actors are incidentally engaged in rhythmic movement (e.g., different people swinging their legs together). One insight from the affordance research emphasizes the role of meaning as emerging in dynamic interaction between multiple actors confronted by demands and resources of an environment: language's potential contribution to this is discussed in the context of the newest advances in theorizing about values and about the sociocultural grounding of affordances. Finally, the potential role of language for facilitating being pulled into “social eddies” of coordinated orbits of motion, as well as its potential role in joint action, is discussed.     

Who is approachable?

The consequences of social interaction can be variable, sometimes harmful, but often rewarding. The adaptive social perceiver must therefore determine which interactions are worthwhile pursuing and which are not. The present research investigated whether subtle but meaningful differences in facial expressions are perceived in terms of the affordance of approachability. Participants engaged in simulated social encounters with targets displaying enjoyment smiles, non-enjoyment smiles or neutral expressions while fluctuations in their posture were measured. The results indicated systematic differences in perceived approachability as a function of facial expression and target sex. These findings are discussed in terms of the functional coupling between social perception and action with respect to the information that specifies the affordance of approachability.     

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.     

Affordances as Properties of the Animal-Environment System

In this article, I argue that affordances are properties of the animal-environment system, that is, that they are emergent properties that do not inhere in either the environment or the animal. I critique and review the formal definition of affordance offered by Turvey (1992). Turvey defined affordances as properties of the environment; I discuss some consequences of this and argue that Turvey's strategy of grounding the definition of affordance in terms of dispositional properties is problematic. I also suggest that Turvey's definition of affordance may lead to problems for the specification and direct perception of affordances. Motivated by these problems, I propose a new definition of affordance, in which affordances are properties of the animal-environment system. This definition does not rely on the concept of dispositional properties and is consistent with direct perception.     

Multiple systems: A new approach to cognitive theory

Abstract

Cognitive processes turn out to be both more innate and more culturally based than we used to think. On the one hand, ecological and interpersonal perception are innately prepared, available in infancy; on the other, mental development depends critically on social support. Taken together with the emerging multiple/modular structure of the brain, these discoveries demand a new kind of cognitive theory: an ecologically grounded, developmental account of distinct systems in interaction. Three such systems, primarily perceptual in function, are described here: (1) direct perception/action establishes an immediate non-representational sense of self and environment that grounds all other cognition; (2) interpersonal perception/reactivity produces species-specific patterns of social interaction; (3) recognition/representation identifies and classifies what is perceived. These systems are distinguished by neurological as well as psychological criteria: the neuroanatomical “where/what” distinction, for example, reflects the difference between direct perception and recognition. Cooperation among these three systems, which begins near the end of the first year, is basic to language and other forms of cultural learning.     

Perceiving and Interacting Affordances: A New Model of Human–Affordance Interactions

This article introduces a new affordance framework for humans and human design. Based on previous important concepts in product design–affordance, signifier, and product semantics, the authors propose three new concepts to illustrate how people perceive affordance. According to the model, perceptual probability of affordance is the probability that the public can perceive a certain affordance; perceptual threshold of affordance is the threshold at which affordance can be perceived by a person and changed by perceptual information; and situations, in which interactions between affordances and people exist, are crucial influences on human–affordance interactions. An illustration of the model and suggestions for further research are provided.     

Self–other contingencies: Enacting social perception

Can we see the expressiveness of other people's gestures, hear the intentions in their voice, see the emotions in their posture? Traditional theories of social cognition still say we cannot because intentions and emotions for them are hidden away inside and we do not have direct access to them. Enactive theories still have no idea because they have so far mainly focused on perception of our physical world. We surmise, however, that the latter hold promise since, in trying to understand cognition, enactive theory focuses on the embodied engagements of a cognizer with his world. In this paper, we attempt an answer for the question What is social perception in an enactive account? In enaction, perception is conceived as a skill, crucially involving action (perception is action and action is perception), an ability to work successfully within the set of regularities, or contingencies that characterize a given domain. If this is the case, then social perception should be a social skill. Having thus transformed the question of what social perception is into that of what social skill is, we examine the concept of social contingencies and the manner in which social skills structure—both constrain and empower—social interaction. Some of the implications of our account for how social and physical perception differ, the role of embodiment in social interaction and the distinction between our approach and other social contingency theories are also addressed.     

The Essential Elements of an Evolutionary Theory of Perception

ABSTRACT

Traditional theories of perception developed for centuries before Darwin conceived his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Although many areas of psychological theory and research now have mainstream approaches strongly influenced by evolutionary thinking, mainstream perceptual theory remains close to its pre-Darwinian roots. This paper draws on insights from ecological psychology, especially as represented in J. J. Gibson's The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966), to identify 4 elements that any future evolutionary approach to perception should be expected to include: (a) an ecological analysis of ambient energy, (b) a comparative understanding of the perceptual abilities of different species, (c) a dynamic understanding of organism–environment interaction as essential for perception, and (d) an understanding of perceptual attunement based on the concept of affordances. Each of these elements serves an essential theoretical role while also pointing toward lines of research where much work remains to be done. The presence of these elements explains, in part, the affinity between ecological psychology and other evolutionarily grounded approaches to psychology, including the emerging fields of enactivism and embodied cognition.     

Life story research: A relevant methodology for counsellors and psychotherapists

Aims: This paper introduces, describes and proposes life story research as an important, relevant and appropriate contribution to counselling and psychotherapy research. It shows how narrative knowledge is created and constructed through the stories people tell about their lived experiences and explores the concept of ‘narrative knowing’ (Bruner, 1986). Methods: Drawing on life story research with people who linked their history of problematic drug use with experiences of historic trauma/abuse, the paper contributes to the ongoing discussion related to the similarities/differences between therapy and research and what we might learn from each that informs the other. Implications for practice: The paper offers narrative ideas and practices as ways of researching matters of social and psychological importance. It suggests that therapists (and counselling researchers) could learn from what participants tell us about the therapeutic value of using life story methods which one participant described as helping him to face ‘out into the world, without unduly or specifically delving into, or focusing on [my] emotional state’. This learning may be particularly relevant for therapists working with traumatised clients.     

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal is proposed. It assumes that the perception of other people is accomplished by a dynamical system involving continuous interaction between social categories, stereotypes, high-level cognitive states, and the low-level processing of facial, vocal, and bodily cues. This system permits lower-level sensory perception and higher-order social cognition to dynamically coordinate across multiple interactive levels of processing to give rise to stable person construals. A recurrent connectionist model of this system is described, which accounts for major findings on (a) partial parallel activation and dynamic competition in categorization and stereotyping, (b) top-down influences of high-level cognitive states and stereotype activations on categorization, (c) bottom-up category interactions due to shared perceptual features, and (d) contextual and cross-modal effects on categorization. The system's probabilistic and continuously evolving activation states permit multiple construals to be flexibly active in parallel. These activation states are also able to be tightly yoked to ongoing changes in external perceptual cues and to ongoing changes in high-level cognitive states. The implications of a rapidly adaptive, dynamic, and interactive person construal system are discussed.     

A behavioral alternative to an ecological approach to understanding the development of knowing in infancy: A commentary

The concept of affordance is proposed by Goldfield to account for “knowing” in infancy as an ecologically more valid approach than Piaget's notion of representation. While the use of affordances is regarded as an improvement over the concept of representation an argument is put forth that a more parsimonious and scientifically useful approach to the development of knowing in infancy is to be found in a behavioral analysis of a learned association of stimulus cues with behavior patterns.     

关系属性:动允性概念的方法论蕴含

动允性是指环境提供给有机体的行动可能性。1977年,生态心理学家吉布森首次提出了“动允性”概念。这一概念有着深刻的方法论含义。首先,动允性超越了传统二元论思维的束缚。它既不是环境方面的物理属性,也不是动物方面的主观属性,而是环境与动物交互作用中的一个关系属性。其次,动允性所体现出来的价值和意义与动允性的关系属性是一致的。它主张意义既不外显于事物的外部,也不隐藏于事物的内部,而是嵌入于有机体和环境的互动互补关系之中。最后,这种关系属性使它免于被归结为物理的或心理的性质,从而超越了还原论的思维方式。     

Individualism versus interactionism about social understanding

In the debate about the nature of social cognition we see a shift towards theories that explain social understanding through interaction. This paper discusses autopoietic enactivism and the we-mode approach in the light of such developments. We argue that a problem seems to arise for these theories: an interactionist account of social cognition makes the capacity of shared intentionality a presupposition of social understanding, while the capacity of engaging in scenes of shared intentionality in turn presupposes exactly the kind of social understanding that it is intended to explain. The social capacity in question that is presupposed by these accounts is then analyzed in the second section via a discussion and further development of Searle’s ‘sense of us’ and ‘sense of the other’ as a precondition for social cognition and joint action. After a critical discussion of Schmid’s recent proposal to analyze this in terms of plural pre-reflective selfawareness, we develop an alternative account. Starting from the idea that infants distinguish in perception between physical objects and other agents we distinguish between affordances and social affordances and cash out the notion of a social affordance in terms of “interaction-oriented representations”, parallel to the analysis of object affordances in terms of “action-oriented representations”. By characterizing their respective features we demonstrate how this approach can solve the problem formulated in the first part.     

Direct perception in the intersubjective context

This paper, in opposition to the standard theories of social cognition found in psychology and cognitive science, defends the idea that direct perception plays an important role in social cognition. The two dominant theories, theory theory (TT) and simulation theory (ST), both posit something more than a perceptual element as necessary for our ability to understand others, i.e., to “mindread” or “mentalize.” In contrast, certain phenomenological approaches depend heavily on the concept of perception and the idea that we have a direct perceptual grasp of the other person’s intentions, feelings, etc. This paper explains precisely what the notion of direct perception means, offers evidence from developmental studies, and proposes a non-simulationist interpretation of the neuroscience of mirror systems.     

Action,affordances, and anorexia: body representation and basic cognition

We evaluate a growing trend towards anti-representationalism in cognitive science in the context of recent research into the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa in cognitive neuropsychiatry. We argue two things: first, that this research relies on an explanatorily robust concept of representation—the concept of a long-term body schema; second, that this body representation underlies our most basic environmental interactions and affordance perception—the psychological phenomena supposed to be most hospitable to a non-representationalist treatment.     

Categorizing others and the self: How social memory structures guide social perception and behavior

In keeping with the special issue theme of “Remembering the Future,” this article provides a selective review of research on how memory for social information (i.e., social category representation) influences future processing and behavior. Specifically, the authors focus on how categorization and stereotyping affect how we perceive others and ourselves. The first part of the article reviews research on how individuals perceive others. The authors review research on the determinants and outcomes of social categorization and stereotype activation, concluding with the influence of ingroup/outgroup categorization on face processing. The second part of the article reviews research on how individuals perceive themselves. The authors argue that stereotype threat—concerns about being judged or behaving in ways that confirm negative group stereotypes, leading to poor performance—is the result of both self-categorization and stereotype activation. Overall, the article highlights the complex relationship between memory for social category information and future social perception and behavior.     

Beyond sensorimotor segregation: On mirror neurons and social affordance space tracking

Mirror neuron research has come a long way since the early 1990s, and many theorists are now stressing the heterogeneity and complexity of the sensorimotor properties of fronto-parietal circuits. However, core aspects of the initial ‘mirror mechanism’ theory, i.e. the idea of a symmetric encapsulated mirroring function translating sensory action perceptions into motor formats, still appears to be shaping much of the debate. This article challenges the empirical plausibility of the sensorimotor segregation implicit in the original mirror metaphor. It is proposed instead that the teleological organization found in the broader fronto-parietal circuits might be inherently sensorimotor. Thus the idea of an independent ‘purely perceptual’ goal understanding process is questioned. Further, it is hypothesized that the often asymmetric, heterogeneous and contextually modulated mirror and canonical neurons support a function of multisensory mapping and tracking of the perceiving agents affordance space. Such a shift in the interpretative framework offers a different theoretical handle on how sensorimotor processes might ground various aspects of intentional action choice and social cognition. Mirror neurons would under the proposed “social affordance model” be seen as dynamic parts of larger circuits, which support tracking of currently shared and competing action possibilities. These circuits support action selection processes—but also our understanding of the options and action potentials that we and perhaps others have in the affordance space. In terms of social cognition ‘mirror’ circuits might thus help us understand not only the intentional actions others are actually performing—but also what they could have done, did not do and might do shortly.     

“Unpacking” the Identity‐to‐Politics Link: The Effects of Social Identification on Voting Among Muslim Immigrants in Western Europe

The identity‐to‐politics link assumes that individuals who share a certain demographic feature also share common political pursuits. This article critically examines that presumed relationship by analyzing how voting probability is affected by social identification in combination with other elements—namely, perception of shared grievances and group resources. Tallying responses from Muslim immigrants in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom via surveys conducted for the European research project EURISLAM, this study supports the assumption that social identification affects voting in specific circumstances. The results show that identifying with the origin country decreases voting probability among Muslim immigrants in Europe. Another finding was the context‐specific effect of social identification. That is, origin‐country identification's effect is contingent on an individual's perception of shared grievances and national identification; and origin country and religious identifications' effects are contingent on an individual's perception of shared grievances, national identification, and group differences.