Postural and Locomotor Contributions to Affordance Perception

The authors sought to evaluate the relative importance of locomotor control and postural control in the perception of affordances. While seated in a stationary wheelchair, participants made a series of judgments about the minimum lintel height under which they could roll in the wheelchair. Prior to making judgments, participants were given brief (～2 min) experience with wheelchair locomotion. They expected that this practice would influence the accuracy of subsequent affordance judgments. During practice, participants moved under their own power (using their hands on the wheels) or with an experimenter pushing the wheelchair. Also during wheelchair locomotion the participant's head was restrained, or was not. Results revealed that head restraint during the practice session had no effect on the accuracy of subsequent judgments. By contrast, the judgments of participants who controlled locomotion during practice were significantly more accurate than the judgments of participants who had not controlled their locomotion during practice.     

Norms with feeling: towards a psychological account of moral judgment

There is a large tradition of work in moral psychology that explores the capacity for moral judgment by focusing on the basic capacity to distinguish moral violations (e.g. hitting another person) from conventional violations (e.g. playing with your food). However, only recently have there been attempts to characterize the cognitive mechanisms underlying moral judgment (e.g. Cognition 57 (1995) 1; Ethics 103 (1993) 337). Recent evidence indicates that affect plays a crucial role in mediating the capacity to draw the moral/conventional distinction. However, the prevailing account of the role of affect in moral judgment is problematic. This paper argues that the capacity to draw the moral/conventional distinction depends on both a body of information about which actions are prohibited (a Normative Theory) and an affective mechanism. This account leads to the prediction that other normative prohibitions that are connected to an affective mechanism might be treated as non-conventional. An experiment is presented that indicates that "disgust" violations (e.g. spitting at the table), are distinguished from conventional violations along the same dimensions as moral violations.     

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。     

Positive and negative well-being among adolescents from theological and conventional schools in India

In this pilot study, we examined positive and negative well-being among 60 students from theological and conventional schools. Participants included 30 students (50% females) from each school, aged 16–18 years. Self-reported measures included life satisfaction and achievement motivation for positive well-being and stress and anxiety for negative well-being. Results indicated that theological school students reported much lower life satisfaction compared to students in conventional schools with a large effect size. Similar patterns were observed with stress and anxiety, although effects were small. There were no differences in achievement motivation between the two schools. Regarding gender, findings showed that males reported lower stress and anxiety than their female counterparts and these effects were large. Genders did not differ in life satisfaction and achievement motivation.     

Socio‐economic Status (SES) Affects Infants' Selective Exploration

Infants change their behaviours in accordance with the objects they are exploring. They also tailor their exploratory actions to the physical context. This selectivity of exploratory actions represents a foundational cognitive skill that underlies higher‐level cognitive processes. The present study compared the development of selective exploratory behaviours in high and low socio‐economic status (SES) infants. Sixty‐one 6–8‐ and 10–12‐month‐old infants were presented with rigid and flexible cubes on a tray that was half rigid and half flexible. There were SES effects for each category of exploratory behaviours: object only, surface only and object–surface interactions. Low‐SES infants engaged in comparable amounts of exploratory behaviours with high‐SES infants, but they exhibited behaviours less conducive to information uptake, compared with high‐SES infants. The results suggest difficulty for low‐SES infants in transitioning to more mature exploration strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于客体的空间一致性效应:功能可见性或空间位置编码?

采用空间Simon任务范式,考察基于客体空间一致性效应到底是手柄的功能可见性引起,还是其空间位置编码导致。实验1采用Pellicano等(2010)研究中的带手柄电筒,要求被试完成与抓握功能相关的形状判断任务,结果表明,唯有当电筒开时,被试产生了基于客体的空间一致性效应。实验2去除电筒可抓握的手柄,发现无论电筒开或关,均出现了更大的基于客体空间一致性效应。上述结果与空间编码假说一致,表明空间位置编码是产生基于客体空间一致性效应的原因。     

God's Mission and the Christian Assembly: The Search for an Alternative Practice of Worship

Abstract : The search for something alternative characterizes the practice of worship in many contemporary Christian assemblies. Although “alternative” is often set in opposition to “traditional,” it is better understood in response to “conventional” worship. Five such alternative movements are described here: liturgical movement, contemporary worship movement, liberation perspectives, Pentecostalism, and postmodern approaches. The alternative impulse in all of these perspectives has to do with a fuller realization of the Christian assembly in relation to God's mission.     

Simon-like and functional affordance effects with tools: The effects of object perceptual discrimination and object action state

In the present study two separate stimulus–response compatibility effects (functional affordance and Simon-like effects) were investigated with centrally presented pictures of an object tool (a torch) characterized by a structural separation between the graspable portion and the goal-directed portion. In Experiment 1, participants were required to decide whether the torch was red or blue, while in Experiment 2 they were required to decide whether the torch was upright or inverted. Our results showed that with the same stimulus two types of compatibility effect emerged: one based on the direction signalled by the goal-directed portion of the tool (a Simon-like effect as observed in Experiment 1), and the other based on the actions associated with an object (a functional affordance effect as observed in Experiment 2). Both effects emerged independently of the person's intention to act on the stimulus, but depended on the stimulus properties that were processed in order to perform the task.     

Affordances and the Nature of Perceptual Content

Abstract

According to John McDowell, representational perceptual content is conceptual through and through. This paper criticizes this view by claiming that there is a certain kind of representational and non‐conceptual perceptual content that is sensitive to bodily skills. After a brief introduction to McDowell’s position, Merleau‐Ponty’s notion of body schema and Gibson’s notion of affordance are presented. It is argued that affordances are constitutive of representational perceptual content, and that at least some affordances, the so‐called ‘conditional affordances’, are essentially related to the body schema. This means that the perceptual content depends upon the nature of the body schema. Since the body schema does not pertain to the domain that our conceptual faculties operate upon, it is argued that this kind of perceptual content cannot be conceptual. At least some of that content is representational, yet it cannot feature as non‐demonstrative conceptual content. It is argued that if it features as demonstrative conceptual content, it has to be captured by private concepts. Since McDowell’s theory does not allow for the existence of a private language, it is concluded that at least some representational perceptual content is non‐conceptual.     

La Caze on Envy and Resentment

Abstract

Marguerite La Caze has recently published a stimulating analysis of the emotions of envy and resentment in which she argues that to envy others for a benefit they have received or to resent them for such a reason can be ethically acceptable in cases where that benefit has been unjustly obtained (La Caze, 2001). I question this on the ground that the judgement that the benefit has been unjustly obtained plays a more complex role in the structure of envy and resentment than La Caze allows and should alter the nature of the feeling that is evoked. From the perspective of virtue ethics there is nothing creditable about still feeling envy or resentment in such circumstances.