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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]

Research suggests that responses to pictures of manipulable objects are facilitated when the location of the response is aligned with the side of the object handle. One interpretation of alignment effects is that object identification results in the automatic activation of actions associated with the object. Alignment effects are, however, not ubiquitously found. Yu, Abrams, and Zacks (2014) found an alignment effect when participants were instructed to imagine picking up the pictured objects while making upright-inverted judgments. Six other experiments, which did not use such instructions, found no alignment effect. One interpretation is that motor-imagery instructions draw attention to the graspable parts of an object, which results in the activation of actions associated with the object. This account predicts that alignment effects are restricted to responses with the left and right hand. An alternative interpretation is that motor-imagery instructions result in the formation of abstract spatial codes for left versus right. This spatial coding account predicts that alignment effects are present for other types of responses that involve a left-right dimension. Consistent with the latter account, we found that alignment effects were found even when participants responded with the index and middle finger of the same hand or with their left and right feet. Currently popular accounts of human cognition suggest that the actions associated with objects are automatically activated when one perceives an object. Our study presents evidence against this view. In fact, it suggests that not even when participants are instructed to think how they would pick up an object is such information readily activated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osiurak and Badets (2016) examined the validity of the manipulation-based versus the reasoning-based approaches to tool use in light of studies in experimental psychology and neuropsychology. They concluded that the reasoning-based approach seems to be more promising than the manipulation-based approach for understanding the current literature. Buxbaum (2017) questioned this conclusion and raised certain theoretical limitations with regard to the reasoning-based approach. She also suggested that this approach is not well-equipped to integrate the existing psychological and neuroanatomical data in the tool use domain. In this context, she presented a neurocognitive model--the "Two Action Systems Plus" (2AS + ) framework--deeply anchored in the embodied cognition approach. In this reply, we address the key points raised by Buxbaum, leading us to draw 2 new conclusions. The first is that the reasoning-based approach integrates the existing psychological and neuroanatomical data not only in the tool use domain, but also in the motor control domain. As a matter of fact, it is even better equipped than the 2AS+ to account for recent neuroscience data. The second is that the 2AS+ suffers from epistemological and theoretical limitations, generating confusion as to what manipulation knowledge-a core concept in this model-precisely is. To sum up, 2AS+ illustrates potential misuse of embodied cognition, viewing tool use mainly as a matter of manipulation and not of understanding mechanical actions between tools and objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on writings in psychology and philosophy to offer an "ecological" description of jazz improvisation. The description is grounded in the analogy of navigation through a complex environment, an environment that comprises the harmonic and metrical scheme on which the improvisation is based coupled with broader stylistic norms. The improvising soloist perceives this environment in terms of its "affordances," that is, the possibilities for action that it offers (Gibson, 1979). While navigating the improvisational environment, the soloist also seeks opportunities for artistic display--motivic development, conspicuous risk-taking, and so on. Errors in improvisation reflect the soloist's misperception of the environment's affordances. Learning to improvise is a matter of refining perception through repeated experiences of improvisational success and failure. To bring the description to life, I offer evidence from an exploratory study of improvisational errors. The ecological description leads to new interpretations of the referent (the conceptual frame for a solo), improvisational learning and memory, and temporal coordination between soloist and ensemble. It counterbalances the prevailing computational view of improvisation, oriented around input, processing, and output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tool use is a defining feature of human species. Therefore, a fundamental issue is to understand the cognitive bases of human tool use. Given that people cannot use tools without manipulating them, proponents of the manipulation-based approach have argued that tool use might be supported by the simulation of past sensorimotor experiences, also sometimes called affordances. However, in the meanwhile, evidence has been accumulated demonstrating the critical role of mechanical knowledge in tool use (i.e., the reasoning-based approach). The major goal of the present article is to examine the validity of the assumptions derived from the manipulation-based versus the reasoning-based approach. To do so, we identified 3 key issues on which the 2 approaches differ, namely, (a) the reference frame issue, (b) the intention issue, and (c) the action domain issue. These different issues will be addressed in light of studies in experimental psychology and neuropsychology that have provided valuable contributions to the topic (i.e., tool-use interaction, orientation effect, object-size effect, utilization behavior and anarchic hand, tool use and perception, apraxia of tool use, transport vs. use actions). To anticipate our conclusions, the reasoning-based approach seems to be promising for understanding the current literature, even if it is not fully satisfactory because of a certain number of findings easier to interpret with regard to the manipulation-based approach. A new avenue for future research might be to develop a framework accommodating both approaches, thereby shedding a new light on the cognitive bases of human tool use and affordances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People spontaneously gesture when they speak (co-speech gestures) and when they solve problems silently (co-thought gestures). In this study, we first explored the relationship between these 2 types of gestures and found that individuals who produced co-thought gestures more frequently also produced co-speech gestures more frequently (Experiments 1 and 2). This suggests that the 2 types of gestures are generated from the same process. We then investigated whether both types of gestures can be generated from the representational use of the action generation process that also generates purposeful actions that have a direct physical impact on the world, such as manipulating an object or locomotion (the action generation hypothesis). To this end, we examined the effect of object affordances on the production of both types of gestures (Experiments 3 and 4). We found that individuals produced co-thought and co-speech gestures more often when the stimulus objects afforded action (objects with a smooth surface) than when they did not (objects with a spiky surface). These results support the action generation hypothesis for representational gestures. However, our findings are incompatible with the hypothesis that co-speech representational gestures are solely generated from the speech production process (the speech production hypothesis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study was designed to investigate the linkage between intention, attention, and information selection and detection. Two experiments determined whether the intention to perceive maximum overhead reaching height with the use of handheld rods with different rotational inertia resulted in the ability to remember the rods' heaviness after they were removed from view. Participants were partially successful at distinguishing the heaviness of rods but only when visual information was restricted and reaching height was perceived using the rods by dynamic touch. The results support an ecological approach to attention, and suggest that information picked up for perception can support the memory of other properties of the environment if their informational bases are related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological psychology suggests the environment is experienced by perceivers in terms of their ability to behave within it--or their affordances. The authors used the remembered-affordance paradigm to evaluate this claim in contrast to an additive model that combined lower-order, action-neutral, perceived properties of the perceiver and environment to compute an affordance. In 2 experiments, participants reported the boundary between actions that were or were not possible (overhead reaching in Experiments la and lb, and minimum aperture pass-through-ability in Experiment 2) while using or not using an implement (a stick). They also reported the length of the implement independent of its use in any action. Reports of stick length were consistently different from action-relevant affordance reports, and the additive model was incapable of accounting for participants' affordance reports. The results are consistent with ecological psychology's claim that affordances are perceived directly and also with embodied and functional approaches to memory, which suggest that the environment is experienced in task-specific and action-relevant terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When does looking at an object prime actions associated with using it, and what aspects of those actions are primed? We examined whether viewing manmade objects with handles would selectively facilitate responses for the hand closest to the handle, attempting to replicate a study reported by Tucker and Ellis (1998). We also examined whether the hypothesized action priming effects depended upon the response hand's proximity to an object. In 7 experiments, participants made judgments about whether pictured objects were manmade or natural or whether the objects were upright or inverted. They responded by pressing buttons located either on the same or opposite side as the objects' handles, at variable distances. Action priming was observed only when participants were explicitly instructed to imagine picking up the pictured objects while making their judgments; the data provide no evidence for task-general automatic priming of lateralized responses by object handles. These data indicate that visually encoding an object activates spatially localized action representations only under special circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mon-Williams and Bingham (2011) developed an affordance model of the spatial structure of reaches-to-grasp. With a single free parameter (P), the model predicted the safety margins (SMs) exhibited in maximum grasp apertures (MGAs), during the approach of a hand to a target object, as a function of an affordance measure of object size and a functional measure of hand size. An affordance analysis revealed that object size is determined by a diagonal through the object, called the maximum object extent. Mon-Williams and Bingham provided no theoretical account for the empirically determined values of P. We now address this question. Snapp-Childs and Bingham (2009) augmented Warren's (1984) geometric affordance scaling model with a dynamical component determined by the stability of the motor performance. Because P was found to vary with the speeds of reaches, we incorporated a measure of the variability of performance into the model to yield predictions of P. We also found that P varied with gender. In respect to the size of safety margins, women were more conservative in taking risks then men. Finally, following Warren (1984), the classic paradigm for testing affordance models is to test the scaling relations with both small and large participants. We tested small- and large-handed men and small- and large-handed women and found that the new parameter free model successfully accounted for the spatial structure of reaches-to-grasp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For skills that involve hitting a target, subsequent judgments of target size correlate with prior success in hitting that target. We used an archery context to examine the judgment-success relationship with varied target sizes in the absence of explicit knowledge of results. Competitive archers shot at targets 50 m away that varied in size among five diameters. Immediately after the arrow's release, its flight and landing were occluded and archers chose which of 18 miniature targets looked most like the distal target. Greater apparent size correlated with higher accuracy. In a second experiment, nonarchers merely aimed the bow (without an arrow) at varied targets. Apparent size was larger when the bow arm was stabilized than when it was not. Archery is seemingly an instance of affordance-based control: For an archer, the affordance of the target is the "hitableness" of its central regions, a property inclusive of his or her momentary, and perceptible, archery form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choice reactions to a property of an object stimulus are often faster when the location of a graspable part of the object corresponds with the location of a keypress response than when it does not, a phenomenon called the object-based Simon effect. Experiments 1-3 examined this effect for variants of teapot stimuli that were oriented to the left or right. Whether keypress responses were made with fingers within the same hand or between different hands was also manipulated. Experiment 1 showed that, for judgments of stimulus color and upright-inverted orientation, the Simon effect for intact teapots occurred in the direction of the spout location and was larger for within- than between-hand response modes. In Experiments 2 and 3, teapots with the handle or spout removed showed separate contributions of each component to the Simon effect. In Experiment 4, we clarified a discrepancy between our findings of object-based Simon effects and a previously reported absence of effect with color judgments for door-handle stimuli. We obtained an object-based Simon effect with respect to handle position when the bases of the door handles were centered but not when the handles were centered. The findings that object-based Simon effects occur with color judgments and when responses are fingers on the same hand are in closer agreement with a location coding account than with a grasping affordance account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bingham, Schmidt, & Rosenblum, (1989) showed that people are able to select, by hefting balls, the optimal weight for each size ball to be thrown farthest. We now investigate function learning and smart mechanisms as hypotheses about how this affordance is perceived. Twenty-four unskilled adult throwers learned to throw by practicing with a subset of balls that would only allow acquisition of the ability to perceive the affordance if hefting acts as a smart mechanism to provide access to a single information variable that specifies the affordance. Participants hefted 48 balls of different sizes and weights and judged throwability. Then, participants, assigned to one of four groups, practiced throwing (three groups with vision and one without) for a month using different subsets of balls. Finally, hefting and throwing were tested again with all the balls. The results showed: (1) inability to detect throwability before practice, (2) throwing improved with practice, and (3) participants learned to perceive the affordance, but only with visual feedback. These results indicated that the affordance is perceived using a smart mechanism acquired while learning to throw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reaction time is often shorter when the irrelevant graspable handle of an object corresponds with the location of a keypress response to the relevant attribute than when it does not. This object-based Simon effect has been attributed to an affordance for grasping the handle with the hand to the same side. Because a grasping affordance should differentially affect keypress responses only when they are made with different hands, we conducted three experiments that measured the object-based Simon effect for frying pan stimuli using between- and within-hand response sets. When the relevant stimulus dimension was color, neither the object-based Simon effect nor the location-based Simon effect varied across response sets. When upright-inverted orientation judgments were made for the frying pan and for nongraspable stimuli derived from it, there again was no significant difference in size of the between- and within-hand Simon effects for any of the stimuli. The results provide evidence that the Simon effect for graspable frying pan stimuli is because of relative location of the handle and not to a grasping affordance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perception and action are influenced by the "possibilities for action" in the environment. Neuropsychological studies (e.g., Riddoch, Humphreys, Edwards, Baker, & Willson, 2003) have demonstrated that objects that are perceived to be interacting (e.g., a corkscrew going toward the top of a wine bottle) are perceptually integrated into a functional unit, facilitating report of both objects. In addition, patients with parietal damage tend to report the "active" item of the pair (the corkscrew in the above example) when the objects are positioned for action, overriding their spatial bias toward the ipsilesional side. Using a temporal order judgment task we show for the first time that normal viewers judge that active objects appear earlier when they are positioned correctly for action. This effect is not dependent on a learned relationship between objects, or on the active object being integrated at a perceptual level with the object it is paired with. The data suggest that actions afforded by a correctly positioned active object permeate normal perceptual judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments are reported that use patients with visual extinction to examine how visual attention is influenced by action information in images. In Experiment 1 patients saw images of objects that were either correctly or incorrectly colocated for action, with the objects held by hands that were congruent or incongruent with those used premorbidly by the patients. The images were also shown from a 1st- and 3rd-person perspective. There was an overall reduction in extinction for objects colocated for action. In addition, there was an extra benefit when the objects were held in hands congruent with those used by the patients and when the objects were seen from a 1st-person perspective. This last result fits with an effect of motor simulation, over and above a purely visual effect based on positioning objects correctly for action. Experiment 2 showed that effects of hand congruence could emerge with images depicted from a 3rd-person perspective when patients saw themselves holding the objects. The data indicate 2 effects of action information on extinction: (a) an effect of colocating objects for action, which does not depend on a self-reference frame (a visual effect), and (b) an effect sensitive to object-hand congruence, which does depend on a self-reference frame (a motor-based effect). The self-reference frame is induced when stimuli are viewed from a 1st-person perspective and when an image of the self is seen from a 3rd-person perspective. Both visual and motor-based effects of action information facilitate the spread of attention across objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affordances--possibilities for action--are constrained by the match between actors and their environments. For motor decisions to be adaptive, affordances must be detected accurately. Three experiments examined the correspondence between motor decisions and affordances as participants reached through apertures of varying size. A psychophysical procedure was used to estimate an affordance threshold for each participant (smallest aperture they could fit their hand through on 50% of trials), and motor decisions were assessed relative to affordance thresholds. Experiment 1 showed that participants scale motor decisions to hand size, and motor decisions and affordance thresholds are reliable over two blocked protocols. Experiment 2 examined the effects of habitual practice: Motor decisions were equally accurate when reaching with the more practiced dominant hand and less practiced nondominant hand. Experiment 3 showed that participants recalibrate motor decisions to take changing body dimensions into account: Motor decisions while wearing a hand-enlarging prosthesis were similar to motor decisions without the prosthesis when data were normalized to affordance thresholds. Across experiments, errors in decisions to reach through too-small apertures were likely due to low penalty for error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four experiments are described in which 1 visual object (the target) was selected from another (the distractor) according to its color (Experiments 1,2, and 4) or its relative location (Experiment 3) and then was classified according to a simple geometric property. Object classification was signaled as fast as possible by a precision or power grip response, and this grip was either compatible or incompatible with either object. When targets were selected by color, target-compatible grip responses were facilitated, but distractor-compatible grip responses were impaired. When targets were selected by location, similar results were obtained for target-compatible grip responses, but not distractor-compatible grip responses. These data are explained in terms of the involvement of action codes in object-level selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]