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Purpose—The purpose of this paper is to provide a new and useful formulation of relevance. Design/methodology/approach—This paper is formulated as a conceptual argument. It makes the case for the utility of considering relevance to be function of use in creative processes. Findings—There are several corollaries to formulating relevance as a function of use. These include the idea that objects by themselves cannot be relevant since use assumes interaction; the affordances of objects and how they are perceived can affect what becomes relevant but are not in themselves relevant; relevance is not an essential characteristic of objects; relevance is transient; potential relevance (what might be relevant in the future) can be distinguished from what is relevant in use and from what has been relevant in the past. Originality/value—The paper shows that its new formulation of relevance brings improved conceptual and terminological clarity to the discourse about relevance in information science. It demonstrates that how relevance is articulated conceptually is important as its conceptualization can affect the ways that users are able to make use of information systems and, by extension, how information systems can facilitate or disable the co-production of creative outcomes. The paper also usefully expands investigative opportunities by suggesting relevance and creativity are interrelated.

Hiding from war, violence, and persecution in a secret, confined place affects the subjectivity of the occupants. The hideout's material properties and the hiders' silence to avoid detection enter deep into their lives. This co-constitution of subjectivity and hiding becomes manifest in their affects, feelings, and emotions, as will be illustrated by an analysis of Anne Frank's lived experience of hiding for two years from Nazi persecution. She and her fellow hiders maintained a regime of silence in the secret annex of a canal house in Amsterdam to prevent their discovery and deportation. The hideout's material and social restrictions created a subjectivity of hiding that devalued Anne Frank's existence as a human being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social life of things, in the aftermath of war and forced displacement, is associated with change in significance and value. Against a background of massive destruction and dispossession, object survival is exceptional. However, not every object that survives gains value equally. Private possessions that survive might not be attended to or be discarded. This complicates a straightforward coupling of person and surviving object. In this paper, the becoming of biographic objects is addressed. My interview partners fled the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s as children. The objects they presented in biographic interviews have accompanied them throughout their lives. Rather than being mere prompts to tell life stories, these biographic objects, I suggest with Barad's study, emerged in tandem with the biographic subject. By example of a wartime letter and a childhood object, I demonstrate how these things become biographic objects as they afford social action at various points in people's lives. My main argument is that things come to be biographic objects because they afford agency in specific socio-historic constellations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution investigates the campaign posters of the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) in four communication domains: in public space, in the mass media, their impact on other political actors and manipulations of the posters. This approach combines social semiotics, discourse analysis, media linguistics, and linguistic landscaping to present a comprehensive account of the posters' usage and design. Relying on social semiotics, we first analyze the posters themselves. We then show how the posters are reproduced in journalistic news media which creates a visual framing of the discussion about migration. This framing effect is also evidenced by the fact that many political actors adapt to the SVP's visual language. Consequently, the discussion about migration increasingly follows the SVP's logic. In a fourth analytical step, we show how the posters become objects of manipulation that turn them into a place of public debate. We sum up by pointing out the affordances that the posters offer to actors in these different domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online dating and dating apps are meant to help sexual minorities find romantic partners, but they have also presented challenges and obstacles. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with lesbian, gay, and bisexual dating app users living in Taiwan, this exploratory study proposes the concept of hyperpersonal failure as a holistic framework for understanding these challenges. This framework specifies four types of failure, each corresponding to one element in the original hyperpersonal communication model: the failure to present oneself (online daters as the sender), the failure to meet conversational expectations (the channel), the failure to develop positive impressions of the targets (online daters as the receiver), and the failure to obtain responses (the feedback). The study also discusses how the affordances of online environments contribute to hyperpersonal failure. Overall, the framework has the potential to shed light on online dating in general, extending beyond the experiences of sexual minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums are multimodal environments where semiotic resources including objects, space, sound, light, movement, language and the body converge. Our case study of a Taiwanese ceramics exhibition draws on the concept of 'affective affordances', meaning the socially and contextually informed ways that semiotic resources invite felt and embodied responses. We use this concept to investigate the ways in which texts and space co-construct affective meanings. We discuss texts and space as physical entities within the affective exhibition, each possessing intrinsic properties which can potentially stimulate certain embodied responses from visitors. Specifically, the case study addresses two questions: (1) how written texts within an exhibition interact with space to afford affective meaning potential; and (2) how museum visitors as active participants respond to space and text as affective stimuli. The study adopts a novel composite theoretical framework that combines spatial discourse analysis using the Binding framework, linguistic analysis using the Appraisal framework, and walking interviews. Our analysis provides rich empirical evidence of how space and written texts interact to create a felt sense of place for visitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the intimacy between the situation and our agency, "situation" remains an ambiguous concept in theory. Even within the context of situated theories of cognition and agency that take the organism-environment system as central in their investigations, the notion of "situation" has been undertheorized. Yet, whether affordances are relevant depends on the situation. Therefore, Van Dijk and Rietveld argue that we must understand the practical situation in which behavior occurs in order to know how we respond to the affordances that the materials and other people offer. Taking John Dewey's notion of "situation" as the basis for investigation, I follow Shaun Gallagher's analysis of how we are not just part of a situation, but we understand what an action is only in relation to a situation. Situations act like large-scale affordances, but this does not mean that affordances are inviting or soliciting as such. Because of the situational transactions with the environment that an agent has, the environment pushes and pulls the agent from and toward certain actions. This means that environments have expressive qualitative features that are non-subjective emotional qualities and social gestalt. I propose four overlapping but distinct features or axes of analysis of situations that can be identified and analyzed in terms of how they shape our agency: complexity, determinedness, the establishment of expectations, and restrictiveness. Situations can be more or less complex in a spatial, temporal, or layered way. They can also be more or less determined, meaning that the agent's actions are more or less obvious. Third, they can be characterized as socially established, meaning that certain behavior is expected. Finally, situations are more or less restricted, denoting the number of activities available to an agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological psychologist James J. Gibson defined the notion of affordances to refer to what action possibilities environments offer to animals. In this paper, we show how (artificial) agents can discover and exploit affordances in a Multi-Agent System (MAS) environment to achieve their goals. To indicate to agents what affordances are present in their environment and whether it is likely that these may help the agents to achieve their objectives, the environment may expose signifiers while taking into account the current situation of the environment and of the agent. On this basis, we define a Signifier Exposure Mechanism that is used by the environment to compute which signifiers should be exposed to agents in order to permit agents to only perceive information about affordances that are likely to be relevant to them, and thereby increase their interaction efficiency. If this is successful, agents can interact with partially observable environments more efficiently because the signifiers indicate the affordances they can exploit towards given purposes. Signifiers thereby facilitate the exploration and the exploitation of MAS environments. Implementations of signifiers and of the Signifier Exposure Mechanism are presented within the context of a Hypermedia Multi-Agent System, and the utility of this approach is presented through the development of a scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mental health professionals traditionally have been viewed as sole experts and decision-makers, there is increasing awareness that the experiential knowledge of former patients can make an important contribution to mental health practices. I argue that current patients likewise possess a kind of expertise, and that including them as active participants in diagnosis and treatment can strengthen their autonomy and allow them to build up important habits and skills. To make sense of these agential benefits and describe how patients might act as co-regulators of a therapeutic encounter, I look to the enactivist notion of "participatory sensemaking". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Live streaming technologies transform the information processing of customers by changing the way they interact with and acquire information. However, this emerging technological artefact may induce both positive and negative consequences for customer decision making. It is yet unknown what constitutes the dimensions of the juxtaposed IT affordances and how they affect customer behaviours in this new social phenomenon. This paper contributes to IS research by uncovering the specific bright and dark sides of IT affordances in live streaming e-commerce and by explaining the cognitive mechanisms underpinning customer purchase and brand citizenship behaviours. We employed a sequential mixed-methods design to embrace and contextualise the theory of affordance, vicarious learning, and cognitive load to rigorously develop a theoretical framework of the juxtaposed IT affordance in live streaming e-commerce. The results indicate that positive affordances (e.g., interactivity, visibility, and entertainment) have stronger effects on both economic and non-economic value. However, the potential dark side (e.g., broadcasting and source diversity) has more negative effects on purchase intention than brand citizenship behaviour, underscoring the importance of involving customers in co-creating brand-related value in live streaming e-commerce. Our findings contribute considerably to the emerging literature on live streaming e-commerce and provide actionable recommendations for practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe multi-sensorial and embodied experiences of ‘being transported’ as passengers are an important, but at times underemphasized, theme in transport policy and planning. Asking the key question ‘how does it feel?’ seems straight forward and yet still hard to accommodate in the realm of planning and transport policies. However, if the ‘way that we feel’ is what attunes us to be attracted (or the opposite) to different modes of transport, then the affective, embodied, and sensorial qualities of buses, subways, airplanes, and ferries is more than an issue of ‘comfort’ and competitive advantage (even though this is a central concern for public transport agencies in the post-covid 19 context). Rather, we should understand how the enrolment of human bodies into infrastructural systems and mobility technologies shape our experiences in the everyday life. This paper hones in on a few theoretical concepts developed under the umbrella of ‘mobilities design’. Seen as a field of ‘material pragmatism’ it presents concepts such as ‘material interpellation’, ‘mobility affordance’, ‘extended bodies’, and ‘osmosis’ as part of a vocabulary enabling a more granular understanding of how we experience the world as passengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a conceptual analysis and critical review of the notion of 'affordance' and its uptake, transformation and application in the work of Gunther Kress. It traces its origins and explores how Kress, co-founder of social semiotics, (re)conceptualised affordance and incorporated it in his social semiotic theory of sign making, defining affordance in terms of the "potentials and limitations of specific modes". The paper discusses how his take on the term was received, and develops a radical critique questioning the analytical merits of affordance. It concludes with a call for a return to Kress's original question of exactly what it is about a form (signifier) that makes it suitable, in the eyes of the sign maker, for what they want to express (signified), and to consider materiality and social convention alongside the sign maker's lifeworld, audience, situation, and conditions of sign making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological approach to psychology has been a main antecedent of embodied and situated approaches to cognition. The concept of affordances in particular has gained currency throughout psychological science. Yet, contemporary ecological psychology has seemed inaccessible to outsiders and protective of its legacy. Indeed, some prominent ecological psychologists have presented their approach as a "package deal"—a principled and unified perspective on perception and action. Looking at the history of the field, however, we argue that ecological psychology has developed in rich and pluriform ways. Aiming to open the field to critical engagement and productive exchange, we identify three major strands of thought within ecological psychology, each of which emerged in the 20 years after Gibson's death: physical, biological, and social ecological psychology. Each of these strands develop ecological ideas in quite different directions, making different use of some of its central concepts, adopting different explanatory principles, and embodying different philosophical worldviews. Proponents of the ecological approach have been arguing for pluralism within cognitive science to make room for ecological psychology. Given the diversity of the strands, we extend this plea to within ecological psychology itself; the field is better off aiming for a productive pluralism in which the different strands are in dialogue with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies on deception in soccer penalty kicks have focused on the deceptive actions used by penalty takers. However, it is worth noting that deception can also be played out by goalkeepers. To examine the effectiveness of goalkeepers' deceptive actions in professional competition, we analysed 714 penalty kicks taken during matches in the English Premier League and German Bundesliga, spanning the seasons from 2016–2017 to 2019–2020. We scored whether goalkeepers used deception, and if so, what type of deception, the outcome of the penalty and the kicking strategy of the penalty taker. The results showed that goalkeepers used deception in half of the penalty kicks, resulting in significantly less goals compared to penalties without deception. This advantage was similar for the different types of deception, but larger when penalty takers paid attention to goalkeepers. We propose that the deceptive actions by goalkeepers are effective, mainly because it leads the penalty taker to lose focus. The practical implications of these findings are discussed for both goalkeepers and penalty takers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile instant messaging is widely used in governing circles today. This article considers the implications for political legitimacy, examining how far the technology encourages those in authority to act consistently with the obligations that come with their roles. It looks at several recent political scandals in which officeholders are alleged to have transgressed public norms with their use of instant messaging. It goes on to argue that the concerns raised are well grounded, as the affordances of the technology point to personalized, informal, and untransparent modes of rule. As the final section argues, that figures in public authority embrace the technology despite the scandals it can yield tells us something important about their political priorities, in particular their willingness to prize output over procedural legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a new and useful formulation of relevance. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is formulated as a conceptual argument. It makes the case for the utility of considering relevance to be function of use in creative processes. Findings: There are several corollaries to formulating relevance as a function of use. These include the idea that objects by themselves cannot be relevant since use assumes interaction; the affordances of objects and how they are perceived can affect what becomes relevant but are not in themselves relevant; relevance is not an essential characteristic of objects; relevance is transient; potential relevance (what might be relevant in the future) can be distinguished from what is relevant in use and from what has been relevant in the past. Originality/value: The paper shows that its new formulation of relevance brings improved conceptual and terminological clarity to the discourse about relevance in information science. It demonstrates that how relevance is articulated conceptually is important as its conceptualization can affect the ways that users are able to make use of information systems and, by extension, how information systems can facilitate or disable the co-production of creative outcomes. The paper also usefully expands investigative opportunities by suggesting relevance and creativity are interrelated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by the Digital Coping Model, this article explores the use of social network sites among chronically ill patients and caregivers. In particular, it focuses on the use of Facebook (FB) groups among patients diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and their caregivers in the Philippines. Situated in a country with a high prevalence of CVD, it explores the communication technology affordances and digital coping activities of members belonging to a private FB group for CVD. Using in-depth interviews with members, this article found that digital coping engages with polymedia, that is, patients and caregivers use the private FB group together with other platforms. Members likewise engaged with praying as an emergent digital coping activity. Moreover, they characterised the private FB group as an epistemic community critical for creating, sharing and challenging CVD-related information. Taken together, the results extend the conversations about the ways patients and caregivers continue to repurpose communication and technology for managing their chronic illness in the larger backdrop of polymedia, limited access to healthcare, and the ongoing pandemic. Implications to moderators of health groups, healthcare professionals and health associations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Research on the concept of affordance generated different interpretations, which are due to different stories aimed at describing how this notion accounts for visually guided motor behaviors. On the one hand, dispositional accounts of affordances explain how affordances emerge from the encounter of the agent’s perceptual-motor skills, with an object offering possible interactions, as behavioral dispositional properties. On the other hand, cognitive neuroscience explains what neural mechanisms are required for agents to detect affordances, resulting from an internal processing. As the literature recognized, it would be beneficial to connect these two stories. We propose an important step into this connection, showing how a dispositional notion of affordance can be distinguished into two versions, the Dispositional Account of Nomological Affordance Response and the Dispositional Account of Probable Affordance Response, and how to complement different aspects of visuomotor processing for affordance extraction, discussed in neuroscience, with them. An important benefit of our proposal is that it suggests, for the first time, that we should not prefer one dispositional account at the expense of the other. Indeed, we show that different dispositional accounts can capture distinct aspects of the plethora of complex manifestations, at the neurocognitive level of visuomotor-processing, that affordances can display in humans, both in healthy and pathological subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social changes are reshaping play affordance patterns and redefining the concept of play space fences. This study explores this shift by examining four “childcare support bases” in Setagaya ward, Japan. We provided a historical overview of play affordances and explored how fences reflect the contemporary understanding of new play affordances. We categorized the play environment into new designated play spaces (NDPS) and carved-out play spaces (CPS). These were observed from the perspectives of both operators and users. We conducted four unstructured interviews to understand the operator’s viewpoint. From the user’s perspective, we interpreted fences perceived through social media phenomenologically, drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “perception through embodied experience.” The study sites in Setagaya ward encompass NDPS created and operated through new play affordances. Each NDPS forms a flexible cluster of play spaces by generating temporary CPS around it. Institutionalized play assistants facilitate an alliance between NDPS and CPS, acting as a non-physical fence permeable to the city and expandable through CPS. By reinterpreting fences in the context of new play affordances, we envision the integrated use of DPS and CPS in urban space planning, transcending the traditional conflict between them. This study offers a comprehensive examination of these concepts together.

The purpose of this study was to draw consensus among an expert panel regarding essential elements of an accessible fitness center guide for people with intellectual disabilities that will enable them to engage in physical activity fully and effectively. The study was situated in the socioecological model of disability. Researchers drew expert consensus regarding the essential features of accessible guides in fitness environments. A three-round Delphi procedure was used, involving repeated circulation of the questionnaire to an expert panel (N = 33). The panel was asked to rate the importance and adequacy of 66 items regarding the accessible fitness guide. A consensus was reached regarding 43 items after three rounds. The items include 7 body-weight exercises, 2 machine exercises, 12 environment-related items, 15 exercise preparations, 4 social etiquettes, and 3 emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the dynamic interplay between platform providers and complementors in the context of digital ecosystems, focusing on the complementary factors of affordance, autonomy, and super-modularity. Using national survey data from the Korean digital industry, the study applied multivariate ordered probit and k-mode clustering models to analyze what determines these factors and how these factors are interrelated from the perspective of platform providers and complementors, respectively. The results indicate that platform providers with open APIs promote affordance, but providing an SDK inhibits affordance. In terms of complementors, choosing a platform providing APIs increases super-modularity. And affordance increases when using the platform for logistics and new product development. In addition, we found that affordance and autonomy have a trade-off relationship from the perspective of both platform providers and complementors. Finally, we classified platforms and complementors into subgroups with respect to affordance, autonomy, and super-modularity using cluster analysis and found that the size of a complementor’s firm, such as revenue and number of employees, influences which platform it chooses. Conversely, the size of a platform provider also influences how much autonomy and collaboration it offers. This study contributes to the understanding of digital platform ecosystems and provides insights for practitioners on how to leverage platform dynamics to enhance competitive advantage.

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) serves as a crucial hub for the integration of sensory with motor cues related to voluntary actions. Visual input is used in different ways along the dorsomedial and the dorsolateral visual pathways. Here we focus on the dorsomedial pathway and recognize a visual representation at the service of action control. Employing different experimental paradigms applied to behaving monkeys while single neural activity is recorded from the medial PPC (area V6A), we show how plastic visual representation can be, matching the different contexts in which the same object is proposed. We also present data on the exchange between vision and arm actions and highlight how this rich interplay can be used to weight different sensory inputs in order to monitor and correct arm actions online. Indeed, neural activity during reaching or reachto- grasp actions can be excited or inhibited by visual information, suggesting that the visual perception of action, rather than object recognition, is the most effective factor for area V6A. Also, three-dimensional object shape is encoded dynamically by the neural population, according to the behavioral context of the monkey. Along this line, mirror neuron discharges in V6A indicate the plasticity of visual representation of the graspable objects, that changes according to the context and peaks when the object is the target of one's own action. In other words, object encoding in V6A is a visual encoding for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum material use is an agentive, reciprocal and innovative practice, involving multiple stakeholders such as teacher, students and assessments that mutually shape one another. While it is generally acknowledged that teachers' knowledge and skills deeply shape the way they use materials, little is known about how material use can possibly perturb or afford teacher learning. This, however, is deemed important considering the close relationships among material use, teacher learning and instruction. This study adopts a qualitative case study method to examine three EFL teachers' experiences with new curriculum materials under a new round of national curriculum reform. Findings reveal that (1) new curriculum materials can perturb classroom ecology, prompting teachers to re-examine, reflect and innovate their beliefs and practices; (2) despite teachers' general consensus on features of curriculum materials, the way they enact them in practice along with emerging learning opportunities are rather different; (3) opportunities for teacher learning through material use can be subjected to teachers' existing knowledge, beliefs and experiences; (4) sometimes, lack of clear instructional guidance in the textbook renders teachers more agency and freedom to explore their ideas, which can be ultimately developmental. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the dynamic interplay between platform providers and complementors in the context of digital ecosystems, focusing on the complementary factors of affordance, autonomy, and super-modularity. Using national survey data from the Korean digital industry, the study applied multivariate ordered probit and k-mode clustering models to analyze what determines these factors and how these factors are interrelated from the perspective of platform providers and complementors, respectively. The results indicate that platform providers with open APIs promote affordance, but providing an SDK inhibits affordance. In terms of complementors, choosing a platform providing APIs increases super-modularity. And affordance increases when using the platform for logistics and new product development. In addition, we found that affordance and autonomy have a trade-off relationship from the perspective of both platform providers and complementors. Finally, we classified platforms and complementors into subgroups with respect to affordance, autonomy, and super-modularity using cluster analysis and found that the size of a complementor's firm, such as revenue and number of employees, influences which platform it chooses. Conversely, the size of a platform provider also influences how much autonomy and collaboration it offers. This study contributes to the understanding of digital platform ecosystems and provides insights for practitioners on how to leverage platform dynamics to enhance competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral research investigates the link between human behavior and the natural and the built environment where the behaviors occur. In the ensuing interactions between human behavior and the environment, individuals change their environment, and, in turn, their behaviors are changed by their environment. This article addresses the problem that formal design processes have resulted in gaps between what users want and what professionals design for, and hence the need for spatial analysis. Traces in the physical environment that were consequences of user behaviors were documented. Case studies of the architectural design studios in three universities in Kenya were used. Observation of physical traces was used as a research technique. The study noted that the observed traces were indicators of use of the environment for prescribed activities, significant bad design, alteration of space, space abandonment, space abuse, and afforded appropriate and inappropriate activities and behaviors. The article discusses how the foregoing indicators can be used to improve the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of urban public space is inherently problematic because the range of its possible uses and meanings is broad and unpredictable. This paper engages this problematic through the lens of Gibson's theory of 'affordances'—the ways the material world affords for human desires. We first explore some conceptual and methodological problems of the theory of affordances and its application in understanding and designing public space. These dimensions of affordance theory are then reconceived using the relational thinking of assemblage and actor-network theory (ANT). A key contribution of the paper is an expanded typology of affordances which includes improvised and serendipitous affordances that extend beyond the intentions of designers and users. This opens new ways of thinking about the design of urban public space as a space of possibility where outcomes are open, multiple, and unpredictable. The paper suggests how urban spaces can be shaped to better support rich cultural diversity and social inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussion of affordance perception focuses almost exclusively on affordances for non-mental actions like climbing, walking and eating. This paper asks whether we might also perceive affordances for a specific class of mental action: acts of imagination. We first explore how the environment can present opportunities for imaginative action. We then combine phenomenological and theoretical considerations to argue that we do indeed perceive affordances for imaginative action. Putting this claim to work, we apply the concept of imaginative affordances to the topics of imaginative skill and imaginative tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traffic transfer between social media and E-commerce platforms is essential to the retailers in the E-commerce platform and the platform itself. Drawing on the affordance theory, this study presents the results from three experiments based on two kinds of social media (with or without E-commerce widow) to demonstrate the role of social media recommendation pages’ affordance on the visitors’ usage and sharing intention to the product link attached to the content. The result shows that traffic transfer exists between social media and E-commerce platforms. Moreover, the higher the level of social media affordances (visibility, editability, persistence, association), the higher the willingness of visitors to transfer from social media to E-commerce platforms. This change in traffic volume is mediated by the visitors’ relationship strength and perceived trust in the blogger and the platform. This study expands the research on affordance theory to the area of traffic transfer. Additionally, this study has also enriched the existing literature on cross-platform traffic imports in social E-commerce. The results will guide both content operators and retailers who wish to use social media to increase sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affordance refers to the opportunity available to a learning activity. Taking affordance as a theoretical and analytical construct, this exploratory study investigates learners' attitudes and the opportunities WeChat may provide for Chinese cultural knowledge (CCK) learning. The aim is to find out the potential new affordances and compare learners with different language levels. 24 participants were paired with native Chinese speakers and required to complete three-stage activities with the integration of WeChat. This study adopted a mix-method approach. Data were collected through questionnaires, two rounds of semi-structured interviews, chat logs, and WeChat moments. It is found that most learners were positive toward the activities and WeChat provided learners with opportunities for interaction and collaboration, for resource sharing, for knowledge internalization and construction, and for sustainable learning and friendship maintaining. The affordance of knowledge internalization and construction was mentioned with the highest frequency in the interview. The findings that distinguish this study from previous ones are: (1) the affordance for sustainable learning, and (2) differences between high-level (HL) and low-level (LL) learners. In comparison, the activities won more supports from HL learners, and HL learners' frequency in leveraging the affordance for resource sharing and sustainable learning was also higher. Pedagogical implications and research recommendations were provided respectively in discussion and conclusion parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We asked whether the quantitative kinematics of standing postural activity might be related to short-term learning of affordances. Standing participants viewed a narrow path for 15 s, and then gave perceptual reports about the distance that they could walk along the path while wearing a weighted vest (novel affordance) or while not wearing the vest (familiar affordance). In a control condition, participants gave perceptual reports about egocentric distance along the path. During the 15 s viewing intervals, we measured the kinematics of head and torso movement as standing participants made a series of 12 perceptual reports. Perceptual reports improved across trials, but only in the condition in which participants were asked to perceive a novel affordance. The dynamical complexity of head movement changed across trials as participants gave perceptual reports about the novel affordance, but did not change systematically when perceiving a familiar affordance, or a non-affordance egocentric distance. We argue that the dynamical complexity of postural activity may have served an exploratory function supporting the learning of a novel affordance. Our results are consistent with the broader hypothesis that affordances are learned through active engagement with the environment, rather than (for example) through abstract cognitive processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term affordance refers to the property or quality of an object that indicates the ways in which it could potentially be used. Affordances elicit automatic motor representations that sometimes differ from the current action representation, resulting in behavioural interference effects. This affordance-induces interference could result in automatic and involuntary behavioural inhibition, probably according to the same mechanism that controls the voluntary motor inhibition. Nevertheless, few studies have considered how voluntary response inhibition is modulated by affordance. In this study, we assess the effect of affordance on voluntary action inhibition using a stop-signal task with an affordance object as a Stop Signal. An image of a mug, with the handle orientated in the same or in the opposite direction of the hand recruited to respond at the target, was used as Stop Signal. Our results showed a reduction of the time necessary to withhold the response when the handle of the mug was pointed toward the hand pre-activated to respond. This effect indicates an increased inhibition due to the mismatch between the motor representation elicited by the affordance and the motor representation pre-activated by the target. This suggests a specific interference effect, reflected in an enhanced ability to inhibit an ongoing action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that to foster more equity in a South Korean Higher Education English Medium Instruction (EMI) learning environment, future policies should embrace a translanguaging medium of instruction. First, the paper provides an overview of current South Korean EMI challenges and then by drawing on data of a larger study presents examples of translanguaging practices used to offset these challenges. The study explored ten South Korean University students' perceptions of how translanguaging affects access to subject content in their EMI experiences. The findings point to the presence of affordances in the L1 or L2 system in certain EMI situations, which may constrain students' learning. This is because a translanguaging competence is not an overt part of current EMI policy which may prevent students from capitalising on opportunities. This paper further argues that translanguaging should be viewed as a viable, equitable, socially just medium of instruction to overcome these constraints. Recommendations are made for how students can be given the opportunity to be involved in critiquing and changing the social structures in which they learn, to co-imagine a socially just translanguaging future. The paper concludes by further arguing that the native speaker monolingual ideology needs to be challenged in EMI policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To acquire information from the real world and respond appropriately to life's circumstances, vision is indispensable for humans. However, due to its ubiquitous nature, we often perceive the world unconsciously, thereby overlooking the opportunity to contemplate the significance of sight. Seeing goes beyond being a mere method of gathering information; it is an act of uncovering new perspectives and engaging in profound exploration. Theories on creative problem-solving strongly advocate for the advantages of adopting multiple viewpoints. By generating a multitude of alternatives through information gleaned from diverse perspectives, we enhance our ability to expand the range of choices available to us, thus facilitating more effective problem-solving. In this paper, we present Posthuman CollectiveEyes, a digital platform that enriches the human act of visual perception by integrating diverse viewpoints such as collective human, augmented human, and nonhuman viewpoints, and constructs posthuman viewpoints from the diverse viewpoints. In the design of Posthuman CollectiveEyes, we adopt the more-than-human perspective, widely employed in the social sciences to analyze the impact of technology on human actions and decision-making in organizations and societies. This perspective enables us to uncover knowledge that conventional human-centered approaches cannot capture, as the objective of Posthuman CollectiveEyes is to expand human cognitive capabilities through enhanced visual perception. The novel contribution of our approach lies in demonstrating that the design of innovative digital platforms aimed at enhancing human abilities necessitates a fresh design approach that incorporates the more-than-human perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each of the functions of fantasy described by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay "On Fairy‐Stories" can be reframed through affordance theory into a kind of re‐visioning. Such re‐visioning is comparable to the formalist notion of defamiliarization or the science fiction technique that Darko Suvin called "cognitive estrangement." Whereas science fiction projects alternative futures, fantasy's affordances allow writers to generate alternative worldviews grounded in real or invented mythic pasts. The initial move away from claiming to imitate reality allows fantasy writers to project inner experience onto an outer storyworld (there is no pathetic fallacy in fantasy), to depict multiple contradictory selves (housed within a single body or spread out over several characters), and to invite readers to consider alternatives to commonsense assumptions and seemingly inevitable social orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unprecedented times compel new ways to explore relationships. Using interviews with dating app users quarantined in American cities at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I show the impacts of digital mediation on the highly scripted interactional patterns in dating. Drawing from the literature on creative action, temporality, digital affordance, and the materiality of cultural objects, I examine how actors access the creative opportunities in digitally mediated interaction. I find that dating partners creatively mobilized the affordances of digital technologies to approximate a dating script in organizing online interactions, which simultaneously allowed them to formulate relational narratives with varying deviation from the scripted temporal structure. I identify three aspects of digital affordances offering creative opportunities: the dissolution of spatial-temporal boundaries, the production and circulation of digital objects, and the connection between contexts. Taking advantage of an extraordinary moment of cultural and interactional rupture that necessitated digital solutions to connect, this article demonstrates how digital technologies unsettle culturally institutionalized interactional patterns and the formation of meaningful relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The concept of affordance refers to the opportunities for action provided by the environment, often conveyed through visual information. It has been applied to explain visuomotor processing and movement planning. As emotion modulates both visual perception and the motor system, it is reasonable to ask whether emotion can influence affordance judgments. If present, this relationship can have important ontological implications for affordances. Thus, we investigated whether the emotional value of manipulable objects affected the judgment of the appropriate grasping that could be used to interact with them (i.e., their affordance). Methods: Volunteers were instructed to use a numerical scale to report their judgment on how an observed object should be grasped. We compared these judgments across emotional categories of objects (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral), while also considering the expected effect of object size. Results: We found that unpleasant objects were rated as more appropriately graspable by a precision grip than pleasant and neutral objects. Simultaneously, smaller object size also favored this judgment. This effect was seen in all emotional categories examined in equal magnitude. Discussion: Our findings suggest that the emotional value of objects modulates affordance judgments in a way that favors careful manipulation and minimal physical contact with aversive stimuli. Finally, we discuss how this affective aspect of our experience of objects overlaps with what affordances are conceptualized to be, calling for further reexamination of the relationship between affordances and emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]