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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]

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]

People's emotional life is increasingly interwoven with social media. Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in China, this study investigated social media affordances enacted during people's emotion regulation processes. By analyzing in-depth interviews with 27 Shanghai residents going through a 2-month lockdown, we identified intersections between social media affordances and different emotion regulation processes: selectivity and intrapersonal emotion regulation; visibility and emotional self-presentation; bandwidth and interpersonal emotion regulation; connectivity and collective emotion regulation. This study extended our knowledge of mediated emotion regulation processes and enriched our understanding of the dynamic relations between users, media technologies, and emotional and social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we engage with the concept and theories of "affordance" in the adoption of digital tools to perform qualitative inquiry. We first raise the question of what is afforded when we use online digital tools such as Zoom to interview young children (5–10 years old) and then draw on empirical examples from our multi-sited critical ethnography with transnational Chinese children to illustrate our key methodological points. We lay out three dimensions along which the concept of affordance can be conceptualized: the relational, the embodied situational, and the social-cultural. We discuss the potential to map out a critical approach to enable qualitative researchers to practice reflexivity in technology-mediated qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telepresence robots are increasingly used in schools as a way of including students who are unable to be physically present in the classroom with other students. The use of such robots is intended not just to help students follow their education but also to serve a social purpose. However, the extent to which the robots actually afford socializing needs to be explored further. This article analyzes how, to what extent, for whom, and under what circumstances the telepresence robot AV1 affords social contact for the heterogenous group of homebound Norwegian upper secondary school students. Building on Jenny Davis' mechanisms and conditions framework of affordances, we focus on how AV1 affords for different students in specific circumstances. Our analysis draws on interviews with 11 upper secondary school students in Norway and finds that individual traits and circumstances such as health issues and social networks are important aspects when assessing whether a technology affords socializing. Based on our findings, we argue for expanding the mechanisms and conditions framework to include not just its current focus on perception, dexterity, and cultural and institutional legitimacy, but also the users' emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most theoretical and empirical studies of discourse marker multifunctionality do not approach it using a formal, systematic annotation model. Drawing on a domain-function taxonomy, this study examines 270 tokens of the discourse marker ni zhidao in Chinese media interviews. All values of the two-dimensional model designed for the whole category of discourse markers apply to ni zhidao, demonstrating its equally potent affordance on a particular discourse marker case cross-linguistically. By putting this model to the test, we found that "emphasis" needs to be added to the original 15 functions in the model, and that domains and functions need to be treated as dependent layers of pragmatic meaning. Functions determine domains, and domains need to be regarded as macro-functions to which specific functions are attributed. As such, we tentatively put forth an updated version that provides finer granularity and greater affordance, shedding new light on the pragmatic meaning of ni zhidao and the speaker's underlying communicative intent. We propose that the sample be divided into uni-functional and multi-functional categories before being analyzed within the updated model to capture the multifunctional discourse markers in the same context-specific utterances. This study has implications for the need of more exhaustive, speech-friendly annotation models of DM multifunctionality and the cross-linguistic adaptation or refinement of established DM annotation models to cater to the unique traits of spoken DMs in different languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By analysing 600 Instagram posts that use mental health related hashtags, this article investigates how mental health communication and support practices are enacted on Instagram, and how such practices relate to the perceptible affordances and hegemonic uses of the service. The article demonstrates how Instagram tends to privilege casual snapshots of individual recovery, in line with broader discourses of positive thinking and individual responsibility. Whereas this hegemonic way of using the service may be functional for many users, three examples of negotiated and oppositional use are also discussed in the article: motivational picture quotes, text-rich posts, and non-recovery oriented posts. It is suggested that different ways of imagining and approaching the affordances of the service engender different patterns of support practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the effect of conceptual transparency in the physical structure of manipulatives on place-value understanding in typically developing children and those at risk for mathematics learning disabilities. Second graders were randomly assigned to one of three manipulatives conditions: (a) attachable beads that did not make the denominations or ones in the denominations transparent, (b) pipe cleaners that made only the denominations transparent, and (c) string beads that made both the denominations and the ones in the denominations transparent. Participants used the manipulatives to represent double- and triple-digit numerals. Statistical analyses indicated that the transparency of the denominations, but not the transparency of the ones in the denominations, is responsible for children's number representation and place-value understanding. Descriptive analyses of their responses revealed that the at-risk children were at a greater disadvantage than their typically developing peers with the attachable beads, failing to use place-value concepts to interpret their representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we translated the Affordances in the Home Environment for Motor Development-Infant Scale (AHEMD-IS) into Turkish, adapted the instrument culturally, examined its psychometric properties within a Turkish population, and identified its limitations. We administered the AHEMD-IS to families of 65 premature or full-term Turkish infants and repeated this testing for 17 families after one-two weeks to establish test-retest reliability. We calculated the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Cronbach alpha coefficient to assess reliability, and we evaluated test validity using the Spearman's correlation coefficient and correlations with the Bayley-III motor development score. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.846, and, for test-retest reliability, the ICC score was 0.830. The Turkish AHEMD-IS total score was moderately correlated with the Bayley-III fine motor development score (r = 0.469, p < 0.001), the Bayley-III gross motor development score (r = 0.533, p < 0.001), and the Bayley-III total motor development score (r = 0.526, p < 0.001). The Turkish version of the AHEMD-IS was found to be valid and reliable for children born prematurely or at full-term. The use of this questionnaire in Turkey will facilitate the creation of a home environment that will support motor development in children between 3-18 months of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should sociologists understand the everyday lives of those living in adversity, coping with the experience of structural violence? In this article, focusing on the urban experience, we suggest a perspective on 'everyday life' that can encompass corporeal, mental, relational and social dimensions, which we term 'niche sociality'. First, we use Gibson's niches and affordances to enrich the post-representationalist understanding of human beings as embodied/cultural/environmentally embedded organisms. Second, we enrich Gibson's niches and affordances with theories for 'small-scale' sociality drawn from social practice theory and interaction ritual chains. Third, we illustrate the productivity of these ideas throughout the article, by grounding our conceptual work in empirical examples that analyse the everyday lives and mental life of migrant workers in Shanghai. Niche sociality, we argue, is a way of framing the experience of the everyday, a perspective that could – perhaps should – provoke novel ecosocial studies of adversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends our understanding of inland waterways by theorising the temporary absences of water in canals and rivers as possibilities for action, that is, affordances. The interplay of temporary absence and presence of water in the inland waterways provides a range of potentialities for various activities and practices. Affordance theory can help us to further theorise material absences and position them as important elements of performing, practicing and interpreting place. We show how temporary absence of water can create spatial, historical and communicative affordances, affording the movement of boats, revealing and recreating the past and raising environmental awareness. The paper is based on semi-ethnographic research on the rivers and canals in the United Kingdom and Italy, featuring document analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with various waterway users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project ethnographically explores how individuals in a small Japanese town negotiate the changes brought about by the increased omnipresence of digital technologies in their everyday lives. It delves into the affective dimensions of individuals' imagination of a global digital order, of the impact of digital media on social organization, and of their own sense of place in a globalized world. It demonstrates that while digital media's connective affordances help reduce the sense of isolation stemming from the community's geographic position, conflicting feelings of dis connection, alienation and loss simultaneously arise in its members' broader relationship to the digital world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livehouse is a small venue for live music performance, a term commonly used in the Asian context. This article adopts an insider's perspective to look at the connections between livehouse and its audiences. Instead of treating spaces and objects as silent textures of live music experiences, we regard livehouse as an active site filled with ideas and feelings. The meaning of livehouse is made by audiences through both human and non-human agents and extends to the broader social and cultural context of Shanghai. By highlighting the power of things and networking in between, this article combines the affordance theory to illustrate the experiential dimensions and interpretive processes of livehouse audiences in Shanghai. Drawing on ethnographic data from 26 in-depth interviews and participant observation, we conclude the social, cultural, and emotional affordances of livehouses perceived through tangible and intangible objects and settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates a semiotic phenomenon within the global fashion industry: the branding of designer jeans as 'authentic' and 'genuinely local', focusing on the Swedish brand Sarva. Drawing on a social semiotics approach, the authors see authenticity as a discursive construct and look at the ways in which Sarva authenticate their jeans as Sámi in multimodal texts. The aim is: (1) to reveal how places and narratives are commodified in texts that accompany the jeans; and (2) to explore how authenticity is materially instantiated in the jeans by using different resources. The article focuses on the connotative provenance and affordances of different semiotic materials for the rendering of authenticity. The analysis of the jeans as semiotic entities reveals how the thickness of the garment, texture and leather details, and the choice of materials, languages as well as iconography, evoke ideas about historical and local 'Sáminess', whilst at the same time indexing a global ideology that regiments what quality jeans are. The analysis shows how authenticity can be reinvented and relocated in ways that allow a commodity to travel between the local and the global. It also shows how this movement is not neutral or straightforward, but rooted in power relations that underlie globalization and advanced capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affordance-based design (ABD) plays an important role in identifying interactions, especially effortless ones, between users and artifacts. Cognitive ergonomics extends our understanding of this effortless interaction. This study combines the two design methodologies together in order to reduce cognitive friction in using digital products. The design process of a compact digital camera is selected as a case study that includes the design of the physical shape for a camera and of its user interface. In designing a product shape, a design toolbox was developed that integrated a modified multi-objective genetic algorithm and the ABD, which was named as affordance-based interactive genetic algorithm. Using this toolbox and interactive user feedback, the camera design evolves toward a product that better satisfies the users. User interfaces (UIs) including linear and elliptic layouts were subsequently designed based on cognitive ergonomics. A predictive tool of UI, the Cog Tool, was used to evaluate the performance of skilled users on a given task by correlating the overall task completion time. Finally, this research has the potential to not only effectively address the shortcomings of the design of consumer electronics but also enrich the generation of design solutions during the preliminary design phase of such products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a socio-technical framework for better understanding youthful attraction to, and engagement in, online transgressions and delinquencies. Specifically, it takes the concept of 'seduction' from the work of Katz, as well as 'affordance theory' and insights from software and human–computer interaction studies, to analyse the affordances of the Internet that tempt and invite youthful transgressions such as digital piracy, viewing illegal pornography and hacking. We argue that Internet affordances not only enable transgressions to occur but can also precipitate them. The implications for youth crime policy are briefly addressed. Policy needs to reckon with the power of these factors in adolescent lives and thus minimize reliance on punitive responses. The article also contributes to the development of the concept of digital drift, by showing how Internet features and affordances foster drift into cyber delinquency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend "4E" cognition to moral psychology. Since acting on affordances typically requires expertise, moral expertise, or virtue, is needed to act on moral affordances and to shape moral agency. Ethical rules and codes, often selected through a process of constraint satisfaction, are also involved in the detection and selection of moral affordances. We argue that individuals who act prudently possess moral expertise that allows them to remain in the "metastable zone" between mind and world, giving them an optimal grip on moral affordances and permitting wise judgement and action. We show how this can be explained via a noncognitivist, affordance-based account of the virtue phronesis (prudence). Our overall approach creates space for reciprocally causal accounts and prospection in explanations of human moral activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music streaming services provide people with access to vast libraries of music, but also encourage certain patterns of consumption. In this article, I use Spotify as a case and investigate the action potentials for exploring and archiving music. The personal role of music implies we may expect the 'will to archive' to be prevalent even if these archives are not based on individual ownership. First, an analysis of Spotify suggests that the machine agency of Spotify pushes people towards exploring music, whereas archiving features are material and depend on human action. Spotify is hence skewed towards prompting users to explore rather than archive music. Next, an analysis of 23 focus-group interviews suggests that users value opportunities to explore music, yet their practices are equally directed towards archiving music. Theoretically, this article delineates how objects with machine agency are different from material objects in terms of affordances. The action potentials of material objects are symmetrically constituted by what the objects provide relative to an active being. The action potentials of objects with machine agency interfere with this symmetry: the machine is designed to act on behalf of the human being, making certain affordances more perceivable than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By addressing recent discussions on reception within the field of memory studies, this article aims to analyze the reasons for the alleged absence of public memory relating to the history of Ingria and the experiences of Ingrian Finns in Finland by focusing on Inkerin romaani (2002), a posthumous novel by Toivo Pekkanen. Through analysis of three scales of reception, the article explores the dynamics of memory and affordances of memorability. It argues that understanding memory dynamics requires looking at the reception of memory as well as its blockages. Moreover, this article suggests that these aspects of memory dynamics can be fruitfully analyzed and theorized through the notion of affordances of memorability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay introduces a special issue focused on 4E cognition (cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) in the Lower Palaeolithic. In it, we review the typological and representational cognitive approaches that have dominated the past 50 years of paleoanthropology. These have assumed that all representations and computations take place only inside the head, which implies that the archaeological record can only be an "external" product or the behavioral trace of "internal" representational and computational processes. In comparison, the 4E approach helps us to overcome this dualist representational logic, allowing us to engage directly with the archaeological record as an integral part of the thinking process, and thus ground a more parsimonious cognitive archaeology. It also treats stone tools, the primary vestiges of hominin thinking, as active participants in mental life. The 4E approach offers a better grounding for understanding hominin technical expertise, a crucially important component of hominin cognitive evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional typological, technical, and cognitive approaches to early stone tools have taken an implicit Cartesian stance concerning the nature of mind. In many cases, this has led to interpretations of early technology that overemphasize its human-like features. By eschewing an epistemic mediator, 4E approaches to cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) are in a better position to make appropriate evaluations of early hominin technical cognition that emphasize its continuity with non-human primates and ground a description of the evolution of hominin technology. This essay takes some initial steps in that direction by shifting focus away from tool types and knapping patterns toward a description based on ergonomics and Gibsonian affordances. The analysis points to the evolutionary importance of two hitherto underappreciated aspects of hominin technical systems—the emergence of ergonomic clusters instantiated in artifact form and the development of displaced affordances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is devoted to investigating mechanisms that inhibit habituated response associated with affordance of a non-target while executing action directed to a target. In four experiments, a paradigm was used that required a rapid left- or right-hand response according to the direction of the target arrow presented simultaneously or in close temporal proximity to a non-target whose handle position afforded grasping with the left or right hand. In general, responding was decelerated and more erroneous when the handle position was compatible with the responding hand. This effect of response inhibition was removed when the delay between the non-target offset and target onset was longer than 200 ms, and reversed into response facilitation when the target onset was delayed for 400–600 ms. The study suggests that processes that control withholding habitual response associated with affordance of a non-target utilise response inhibition mechanisms overlapping with those involved in behavioural control of the stop-signal task. This response inhibition is triggered automatically and directly by affordance of a non-target without preceding response excitation associated with this affordance cue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational choice perspectives have been the dominant models used for conceptualizing the nature of exchanges in illicit drug markets, but various critiques have found these abstracted assumptions inadequate for understanding concrete illicit drug market activity. Considerably less, however, is known about key aspects of rationality in exchanges within online drug markets. Recognizing the inadequacies of an underlying homo economicus, we instead conceive drug market exchanges as complex assemblages, noting how exchanges are reconstructed in online spaces, and technological affordances may facilitate elements of rationality in drug exchanges. Adopting these notions allows us to argue that aspects of rationality can potentially contribute to an understanding of exchange practices in online markets, and that online channels can afford assumptions of utility-maximization, rich market information to guide decision-making, and anonymity in the exchange. In addition, consideration is given to the structural variability of online illicit drug markets, and that the affordance of rationality should be considered across a spectrum of applicability that takes into account the specifics of each dimension of online drug market (i.e. drug cryptomarkets, illicit online pharmacies, and "app-based" drug markets). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to show the socio-cognitive engineering of the pickpocket craft from the point of view of cognitive ecology. Being a pickpocket has a wider, existential status; studying it goes beyond the field of cognitive sciences. My ambitions are more modest: I try to show that the question about what it is like to be someone like a pickpocket is also a question about the cognitive structure of his or her activity space. In this light, I analyze some aspects of the reality presented in the movie Pickpocket by Robert Bresson. From the ecological point of view, scenes from the old movie present pickpocketing techniques in the context of the opportunities and constraints of a given environment. I claim that studies like this require integrating certain conceptual tools, like distributed cognition approach, ecological psychology, and cognitive studies of design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual perception of whether an object is within reach while standing in different postures was investigated. Participants viewed a three-dimensional (3D) virtual reality (VR) environment with a stimulus object (red ball) placed at different egocentric distances. Participants reported whether the object was reachable while in a standard pose as well as in two separate active balance poses (yoga tree pose and toe-to-heel pose). Feedback on accuracy was not provided, and participants were not allowed to attempt to reach. Response time, affordance judgements (reachable and not reachable), and head movements were recorded on each trial. Consistent with recent research on perception of reaching ability, the perceived boundary occurred at approximately 120% of arm length, indicating overestimation of perceived reaching ability. Response times increased with distance, and were shortest for the most difficult pose—the yoga tree pose. Head movement amplitude increased with increases in balance demands. Unexpectedly, the coefficient of variation was comparable in the two active balance poses, and was more extreme in the standard control pose for the shortest and longest distances. More complex descriptors of postural sway (i.e., effort-to-compress) were predictive of perception while in the tree pose and the toe-to-heel pose, as compared with control stance. This demonstrates that standard measures of central tendency are not sufficient for describing multiscale interactions of postural dynamics in functional tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human description of the surrounding world may spontaneously rely on others' perspective, which is a crucial component of social cognition. In five studies, participants were asked to describe the spatial relations between objects in visual scenes including, or not, other agents. In Experiment 1, a substantial proportion of participants used an other-centered perspective in the presence of another agent, replicating classical findings. To our own surprise, we also observed that an even greater number of participants used an other-centered perspective when the human agent was replaced by an armchair. In order to explore this phenomenon, Experiments 2 to 5 compared the respective strength of chair-centered and agent-centered perspectives and/or set them into conflict. A significant proportion of participants spontaneously took the seat's perspective even when it may not be sat on (Experiments 3 and 4) and even when the seat was not referred to (Experiments 4 and 5). Altogether, these findings suggest that perspective taking may spontaneously apply to inanimate objects. These results question whether such tendencies originate from social cognitive skills—as classically assumed—or reveal a nonsocial phenomenon. Future works should specifically test the widely assumed social nature of spontaneous perspective-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article gives an overview of sociocultural approaches to creativity and advances a particular theory of the creative process grounded in the notions of difference, position, perspective, dialogue, and affordance. If sociocultural psychology challenges old dichotomies between mind and body, individual and society, then creativity is ideally placed to demonstrate their interdependence. While sociocultural thinking in creativity research has traditionally emphasized the social or collaborative nature of creative processes, recovering old scholarship and reviewing it in light of current empirical developments shows how socio-materiality can properly inform psychological theory in this area. The article starts with an outline of sociocultural principles before considering their application to creativity. It then formulates four propositions regarding the creative process: (a) differences of perspective increase creative potential; (b) exchanging positions and perspectives, within and between individuals, fosters creative processes; (c) these exchanges result in perspectives that reveal previously unperceived affordances; and (d) oftentimes, it is the affordances of material objects or of unique idea combinations that guide the development of novel perspectives in creative work. Evidence supporting these key hypotheses of the perspective-affordance theory of creativity (PAT) comes from research conducted in a variety of areas within psychology and in related fields. In the end, the methodological and practical implications of considering creativity as a process of recognizing differences, exchanging positions, developing perspectives and discovering affordances will be discussed, as well as the broader implications of building theories that bring together, rather than keep separate, the social, the material, and the psychological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploratory movements provide information about agents' action capabilities in a given environment. However, little is known about the specifics of these exploratory movements, such as which movements are necessary to perceive a given action capability. This experiment tested whether arm movements contributed to judgements of maximum reach distance. Participants made judgements about their maximum reach distance by walking to the point farthest from an object from which they still perceived the object to be reachable. Over the course of two sets of nine judgements, participants' arms either swung naturally by their sides (Unrestricted Condition) or were held together behind their backs (Restricted Condition). Arm movement restriction increased maximum reach distance judgement error when compared with unrestricted judgements. In addition, judgement error improved over trials only when exploratory arm movements were unrestricted, and the improvements did not carry over to subsequent judgements made when exploratory arm movements were restricted. Arm movement restriction did not increase the variability of judgement error when compared with unrestricted judgements. The results indicate that exploration is necessary to generate affordance information, show that restricted exploration degrades affordance perception, and suggest that maximum reach distance exists at the global array level. In addition, they have practical implications for operational situations in which actors' arm movements are restricted, such as when military personnel wear body armour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Organic granular materials offer a valid alternative for non-biodegradable composites widely adopted in building construction and digital fabrication. Despite the need to find alternatives to fuel-based solutions, current material research in architecture mostly supports strategies that favour predictable, durable and homogeneous solutions. Materials such as soil, due to their physical properties and volatile nature, present new challenges and potentials to change the way we manufacture, built and integrate material systems and environmental factors into the design process. This article proposes a novel fabrication framework that combines high-resolution three-dimensional-printed biodegradable materials with a novel robotic-additive manufacturing process for soil structures. Furthermore, the research reflects on concepts such as affordance and tolerance within the field of digital fabrication, especially in regards to bio-materials and robotic fabrication. Soil as a building material has a long tradition. New developments in earth construction show how earthen buildings can create novel, adaptive and sustainable structures. Nevertheless, existing large-scale earthen construction methods can only produce highly simplified shapes with rough geometrical articulations. This research proposes to use a robotic binder-jetting process that creates novel organic bio-composites to overcome such limitations of common earth constructions. In addition, this article shows how biological polymers, such as polysaccharides-based hydrogels, can be used as sustainable, biodegradable binding agents for soil aggregates. This article is divided into four main sections: architecture and affordance; tolerance versus precision; water-based binders; and robotic fabrication parameters. Digital Soil envisions a shift in the design practice and digital fabrication that builds on methods for tolerance handling. In this context, material and geometrical properties such as material porosity, hydraulic conductivity and natural evaporation rate affect the architectural resolution, introducing a design process driven by matter. Digital Soil shows the potential of a fully reversible biodegradable manufacturing process for load-bearing architectural elements, opening up new fields of application for sustainable material systems that can enhance the ecological potential of architectural construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct perception and theory–theory approaches to social cognition are opposed with respect to whether social cognition is inferential. The latter argues that it is inferential, the former that it is not. This article argues that the opposition in terms of inference is mistaken. A sense of inference is specified on which social cognition can be inferential and directly perceptual. Arguing for inferential social cognition does not commit to a defense of indirect social cognition if inferential access to other minds can be direct. Contrary convictions are symptomatic of working with too simplistic a notion of inference. The dispute between direct and inferentialist social cognition is one in which both sides can be right. The argument, then, is that inferentialism should not be called on to witness in favor or disfavor of advocates of either direct or indirect social cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last few decades, media theorists have been faced with the understanding that the networked digital computer is the meta-medium to end all mediums. This places researchers in the curious position where online platforms, such as YouTube, cannot legitimately and directly be contrasted with traditional analogue mediums, such as cinema and television. To address this inconsistency, I developed the theory of foundation technologies and their respective proto-affordances, which demonstrates the existence of past periods of 'new media'. These were brought about by the introduction of key technologies that each offered, at the time, a new and unique underlying affordance to a society. Each new 'proto-affordance' inspired social disruption, as new specific mediums were spawned – each remediating existing mediums of similar mode. This framework shows digitality as another evolutionary step in a line of foundation technologies, which includes the artefact, the machine and electricity. The theory of foundation technologies permits software-based online platforms, such as YouTube, SoundCloud and Twitter, to be called digital mediums, and thus aids in understanding their technological substrate and unique affordances. Justifying this relation between old mediums and new, digital, ones equips us to more effectively comprehend and analyse these platforms as to their social adoption and uses, cultural practices, implications and effects. This allows us to better understand and control our present, and even guide our potential future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentators suggest the social media platform, Twitter, might afford challenges to hegemonic knowledge by providing voice to those outside traditional media and by enabling vigorous public discussion and contestation of dominant ideas and concepts. In this article, we ask whether such affordances might be reshaping the culturally charged concept of addiction and, in turn, its accompanying abject and maligned subject, the 'addict'. To explore this question, we examine Twitter messages about addiction posted by celebrities. These people are among the most highly followed Twitter account holders, meaning their Twitter messages can reach millions of people. Our analysis examines how specific addiction problems, and their solutions, are being constituted through the tweeting practices of celebrities. We also consider the unintentional effects these messages produce. Finally, we examine the ways in which these messages are discussed and contested by the audiences of the celebrities. We find celebrity Twitter activity re-enacts familiar realities of addiction, realities that collapse drug use with harm and addiction, addiction with pathology and death. Abstinence is posed as the only effective and genuine response, and the contradictions in simultaneously individualizing action against addiction and condemning stigmatization are ignored. Despite the 'revolutionary' potential of Twitter posited by advocates and some scholars, when it comes to addiction, it seems, the global, uncensored, 'free' communication on Twitter serves largely to validate and perpetuate dominant addiction concepts and the stigma and discrimination these concepts evoke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past century, strong applications of psychometrics have resulted in an ideology and practices of identification in the field of gifted education. In recent years, an alternative ideology that construes giftedness in an inclusive light and promotes democratic practices has emerged. This ideology posits a new meaning-making system of giftedness that is process-based rather than person-based. In this article, we elaborate some conceptual principles of this emerging ideology. First, we reflect on the nature of giftedness as a social construct using a symbolic interactionist perspective and articulate the dialectical evolution of collective meanings of giftedness. Second, we address the interdependency between an individual and a context when it comes to helping students realize their giftedness. Third, we accentuate a growth orientation and outline the importance of considering giftedness as a process-based entity. Furthermore, we provide a T:CAD conception of giftedness along with ideas for transaction-focused practices that aim to encourage the rendering of this emerging ideology in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-level motor computations reflect abstract components far apart from the mere motor performance. Neural correlates of these computations have been explored both in nonhuman and human primates, supporting the idea that our brain recruits complex nodes for motor representations. Of note, these computations have exciting implications for social cognition, and they also entail important challenges in the context of autism. Here, we focus on these challenges benefiting from recent studies addressing motor interference, motor resonance, and high-level motor planning. In addition, we suggest new ideas about how one maps and shares the (motor) space with others. Taken together, these issues inspire intriguing and fascinating questions about the social tendency of our high-level motor computations, and this tendency may indicate that we are “motorically” wired to others. Thus, after furnishing preliminary insights on putative neural nodes involved in these computations, we focus on how the hypothesized social nature of high-level motor computations may be anomalous or limited in autism, and why this represents a critical challenge for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergent 'uses of the past' literature challenges traditional perspectives on history as an objective constraint for organizational action. It does so by putting forward an interpretivist view that highlights the moulding and shaping of history as a resource that enables action. We build upon and extend this approach by demonstrating how a more explicit attention to materiality reveals 'the dual nature of the past' as not simply constraining and/or enabling but also actively orienting organizational action in the present. We draw upon research on organizational remembering and the concept of affordance to theorize the entanglement of organizational remembering and the material technologies of memory. We examine the dynamics of organizational remembering and materiality in the context of the British Museum's digitization efforts. We show how narratives about the past enable organizational actors to make sense of and repurpose a novel material technology of memory (computers) through the construction of affordances. However, we also demonstrate how the materiality of objects inherited from the past also actively constrained and oriented how actors worked upon various obstacles on the path to digitization. We make two contributions. First, we develop how the dual nature of the past constitutes a novel way to reconcile deterministic and voluntarist interpretations of the past in organizations by assigning a more active role to material objects in organizational remembering. Second, we introduce a novel way to theorize organizational memory as an ongoing process of mutual constitution between technologies of memory (Speicher) and social practices of remembering (Gedächtnis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on how Early Childhood Education and Care institutions provide for 1- to 3-year-olds’ risky play—a previously little researched topic—utilizing data from an exploratory, small-scale study investigating aspects of risky play in the age-group. The main findings describe how three essentially different Early Childhood Education and Care centers provide different opportunities for risky play. These environments are assessed with the theoretical concept of affordance and suggest that versatile, flexible, and complex environments and equipment—with little objective risk—are optimal for children’s risky play in this age-group. Being a new topic, the affordance assessment is discussed in relation to a standardized measurement, the Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale—Revised edition. Findings indicate that the two approaches partly coincide but also that there are discrepancies. Interpretations and implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opportunity an object presents for action is known as an affordance. A basic assumption in previous research was that images of objects, which do not afford physical action, elicit effects on attention and behavior comparable with those of real-world tangible objects. Using a flanker task, we compared interference effects between real graspable objects and matched 2-D or 3-D images of the items. Compared with both 2-D and 3-D images, real objects yielded slower response times overall and elicited greater flanker interference effects. When the real objects were positioned out of reach or behind a transparent barrier, the pattern of response times and interference effects was comparable with that for 2-D images. Graspable objects exert a more powerful influence on attention and manual responses than images because of the affordances they offer for manual interaction. These results raise questions about whether images are suitable proxies for real objects in psychological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenges abound in providing accurate and useful information to prospective and declared psychology majors about their career options and how to make decisions that will lead to satisfying and rewarding postgraduate lives. One component of this challenge is that by majoring in psychology, career affordances (i.e., the opportunities and limitations inherent to psychology) lead to generalized opportunities that are available to many different disciplinary majors. Another component of this challenge is the alignment between students’ self-reflection and understanding about career goals being aligned with accurate and available information about the desired careers. Understanding how affordances and alignments affect psychology major advising may provide a fruitful framework in moving forward to provide the best professional development resources possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two options fuel the debate on the cognitive processes underlying the perception of affordances. On the one hand, the ecological theory of affordance fits with the methodological assumptions of the dynamical systems theory of cognition. On the other hand, it is nowadays common to conceive the perception of affordances within a computational framework. This article defends the explanatory power of a computational approach and aims to extend the concept of affordance beyond the boundaries of the dynamical systems theory of cognition. For that purpose, I consider the case of patients suffering from optic ataxia, a condition in which some aspects of visual guidance over reaching with the hand are lost following a lesion in the left parietal cortex. Etiological considerations, indeed, reveal that a computational approach to the perception of affordances allows for an explanation of ataxic behavior that is not available to the dynamical systems theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do politicians see constituencies? Various academics have furnished elected officials with effective evidence of activities on the assumption that “better” information inevitably leads to better decisions. I propose we consider official information as seeings. I discuss how constituencies are seen or made sense of in a municipal scrutiny committee meeting in England. Using the notion of “affordance,” I will discuss not only how official evidence affords a perspective but also how that perspective is not reflective of the full spectrum of evidence that decision-makers may rely on to perform effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to discuss how mutually enriching points from both affordance theory and cultural-historical activity theory can promote theoretical ideas which may prove useful as analytical tools for the study of human life and human development. There are two issues that need to be overcome in order to explore the potentials of James Gibson’s affordance theory: it does not sufficiently theorize (a) development and (b) society. We claim that Gibson’s affordance theory still needs to be brought beyond “the axiom of immediacy.” Ambivalences in Gibson’s affordance theory will be discussed, and we will argue for certain revisions. The strong ideas of direct perceiving and of perception–action mutuality remain intact while synthesized with ideas of societal human life. We propose the concept of the affording of societal standards to be a meaningful term in order to grasp the specific societal character of affordance theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the sociological role of activities that seem to make no sense: what can be learnt from episodes ‘unhinged’ from the routines of everyday life? In particular, stressing a processual framework for the study of everyday life, these unhinged episodes are regarded as useful for accessing its virtuality. The paper draws on literatures on everyday life, the object and the event in order, firstly to contrast critique to speculation, and secondly to sketch out what a speculative method for the study of everyday life might look like. Along the way, a number of concepts are developed: including affordance (the combination of plan, body and object); idiocy (a positive responsiveness to that which makes no sense); and affect (an ‘exquisite sensitivity to the world’). This perspective is illustrated through a discussion of how everyday practical issues raised by the use of rolling or wheeled luggage might evoke new forms of sociality – a ‘technosociality’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceived objects automatically potentiate afforded action. Object affordances also facilitate perception of such objects, and this occurrence is known as the affordance effect. This study examined whether object affordances facilitate the initial visual processing stage, or perceptual entry processes, using the temporal order judgment task. The onset of the graspable (righthandled) coffee cup was perceived earlier than that of the less graspable (left-handled) cup for right-handed participants. The affordance effect was eliminated when the coffee cups were inverted, which presumably conveyed less affordance information. These results suggest that objects preattentively potentiate the perceptual entry processes in response to their affordances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has shown that haptically perceived surface slant by foot is matched with visually perceived slant by a factor of 0.81. Slopes perceived visually appear shallower than when stood on without looking. We sought to identify the sources of this discrepancy by asking participants to judge whether they would be able to stand on an inclined ramp. In the first experiment, visual perception was compared to pedal perception in which participants took half a step with one foot onto an occluded ramp. Visual perception closely matched the actual maximal slope angle that one could stand on, whereas pedal perception underestimated it. Participants may have been less stable in the pedal condition while taking half a step onto the ramp. We controlled for this by having participants hold onto a sturdy tripod in the pedal condition (Experiment 2). This did not eliminate the difference between visual and haptic perception, but repeating the task while sitting on a chair did (Experiment 3). Beyond balance requirements, pedal perception may also be constrained by the limited range of motion at the ankle and knee joints while standing. Indeed, when we restricted range of motion by wearing an ankle brace pedal perception underestimated the affordance (Experiment 4). Implications for ecological theory were offered by discussing the notion of functional equivalence and the role of exploration in perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persons, substances, bodies, consumption: an ever widening process of “addicting” is underway in Western societies. In this article, we turn our attention to the production of addiction on the microblogging social media platform, Twitter, as an important emerging site in which the addicting of contemporary societies is also occurring. Our analysis explores two questions. First, we investigate the ways in which addiction is enacted via Twitter. How is addiction being made on Twitter? Second, we ask how the technology of Twitter itself is shaping meaning: how do the technological “affordances” of Twitter help constitute the kinds of addiction being materialized? While we find a multiplicity of meanings in the 140-character messages, we also find a pattern: a tendency toward extremes—addiction riven between pain and pleasure. In addition, we find significant areas of commonality between approaches and notable silences around alternatives to common understandings of addiction. We argue that the constraints on communication imposed by Twitter technology afford a “shorthand” of addiction that is both revealing and productive. Illuminated is the importance of addiction as a piece of cultural shorthand that draws on and simultaneously reproduces simplistic, reductive addiction objects. In concluding, we consider what these realities of addiction being enacted through Twitter can tell us about contemporary conditions of possibility for drug use in society and for individual subjectivities and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers changes in healthcare professional work afforded by technology. It uses the sociology of professionals’ literature together with a theory of affordances to examine how and when technology allows change in healthcare professional work. The study draws from research into the introduction of a national electronic patient record in an English hospital. We argue that electronic patient record affords changes through its materiality as it interacts with healthcare professional practice. Its affordances entail some level of standardisation of healthcare professional conduct and practice, curtailment of professional autonomy, enlargement of nurses’ roles and redistribution of clinical work within and across professional boundaries. The article makes a contribution to the growing literature advocating a cultural approach to the study of technological affordances in organisations and to studies that explore healthcare professional practice in conjunction with the materiality of technology. Two main lines of argument are developed here. First, that technological affordances do not solely lie with the materiality of technology nor with individual perceptions, but are cultivated and nurtured within a broader cultural–institutional context, in our case a professional context of use. Second, that technological affordance of change is realised when healthcare professionals’ (individual and collective) perceptions of technology (and of its materiality) fit with their sense of (professional) self. In this respect, the article shows the extent to which the materiality of technology plays out with professional identity and frames the level and extent to which technology can and cannot afford restructuring of work and redistribution of power across professional groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cañal-Bruland and van der Kamp present an argument about the incommensurate relationship between affordance perception and spatial perception in a criticism of Proffitt and Linkenauger's phenotypic approach to perception. Many of their criticisms are based on a difference in the interpretation of the core ideas underlying the phenotypic approach. The most important of these differences in interpretations concern fundamental assumptions about the nature of the perceptions of size and distance themselves. Extent perception must be relative to the organism; therefore, there can be no veridical perception of space. Also, we argue in the phenotypic approach that space perception is an emergent property of affordance perception; they are not different types of perceptions as Cañal-Bruland and van der Kamp presume. Third, affordance perception need not be perfectly accurate, just good enough. Additionally, affordance perception need not be dichotomous; this presumption likely originates in the methodology typically employed to study affordance perception. Finally, I agree with Cañal-Bruland and van der Kamp that joint research efforts will clarify and improve our understanding of these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article probes the design history of Stanley Milgram’s simulated shock generator by comparing drawings and notes from Milgram’s archive in the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale with laboratory equipment and apparatus catalogues from the Archives of the History of American Psychology, University of Akron. By applying contemporaneous human factors engineering principles to the generator’s control panel layout, sequencing, and display optimisation, an argument emerges that suggests the tailor-made device had an influential role in facilitating the behaviour witnessed in the laboratory and generalised as obedience. Such an approach puts forward a new reading of Milgram’s experiment design, his penchant for dramaturgy, and reconsiders his generalisation of obedience to social authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study was to answer the question, Do drivers take into account the action boundaries of their car when overtaking? Background: The Morice et al. affordance-based approach to visually guided overtaking suggests that the “overtake-ability” affordance can be formalized as the ratio of the “minimum satisfying velocity” (MSV) of the maneuver to the maximum velocity (Vmax) of the driven car. In this definition, however, the maximum acceleration (Amax) of the vehicle is ignored. We hypothesize that drivers may be sensitive to an affordance redefined with the ratio of the “minimum satisfying acceleration” (MSA) to the Amax of the car. Method: Two groups of nine drivers drove cars differing in their Amax. They were instructed to attempt overtaking maneuvers in 25 situations resulting from the combination of five MSA and five MSV values. Results: When overtaking frequency was expressed as a function of MSV and MSA, maneuvers were found to be initiated differently for the two groups. However, when expressed as a function of MSV/Vmax and MSA/Amax, overtaking frequency was quite similar for both groups. Finally, a multiple regression coefficient analysis demonstrated that overtaking decisions are fully explained by a composite variable comprising MSA/Amax and the time required to reach MSV. Conclusion: Drivers reliably decide whether overtaking is safe (or not) by using low- and high-order variables taking into account their car’s maximum velocity and acceleration, respectively, as predicted by “affordance-based control” theory. Application: Potential applications include the design of overtaking assistance, which should exploit the MSA/Amax variables in order to suggest perceptually relevant overtaking solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]