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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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

A virtue of the turn called ‘ordinary ethics’ is that it can steer us toward the often tacit and seemingly pervasive presence of ethics in everyday social practice. Yet what is the status of this presence? Is ethics somehow intrinsic to discursive interaction, as suggested by Michael Lambek and by earlier writers ranging from Goffman to Habermas? I argue that ordinary ethics’ notion of ethical immanence poses risks for the anthropology of ethics. This notion indulges an old desire to trace ethics back to its roots, to some purportedly singular, determinate ‘source’ – here, a disciplinary defined object of knowledge like ‘interaction’ or ‘language’. The notion also risks making us complacent with respect to studying the diverse forms of communicative labor by which actors themselves frame and construe behavior as ‘ethical’. And without taking as our guide what actors do, it becomes difficult methodologically for us to distinguish the ethical from non-ethical dimensions of social life in a given context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proffitt's embodied approach to perception is deeply indebted to Gibson's ecological approach to visual perception, in particular the idea that the primary objects of perception are affordances or what the environment offers for action. Yet, rather than directly addressing affordance perception, most of the empirical work evaluating Proffitt's approach focuses on the perception of spatial properties of the environment. We propose that theoretical and empirical efforts should be directed toward an understanding of the relationship between affordance perception and spatial perception, keeping in mind that this relationship is nontrivial because affordance perception is dichotomous, whereas the perception of spatial properties is gradual. We argue that the perception of spatial properties of the environment is enslaved by affordance perception, most notably at the critical boundaries for action. To empirically scrutinize this proposition, and to solve issues raised regarding the validity of several empirical findings, we call for joint research efforts to further understanding of embodied perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do young children do with the literacies they have learned at school? This article reexamines traditional notions of literacy by documenting a second grade child's literacy practices in school and out-of-school contexts. Data collected included field notes, interviews, observations of school and out-of-school literacy practices, and artefacts (such as worksheets, constructions and computer screenshots) from the school, home and community contexts. In analysis, literacy practices were traced to show how meanings travelled across contexts and switched modes. Findings show that the focal child recontextualized school literacies in out-of-school spaces and changed them in flexible, playful and technologically contemporary ways. The study offers new knowledge of how school literacy may impact on some children's out-of-school literacies and recognizes that these out-of-school spaces may serve to prepare children more appropriately for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Naturalistic, normative, and ethnographic approaches to ethical life seem to describe very different worlds. Focusing on ordinary social interactions and ideologies surrounding them, this article argues the ethnographic stance allows us to look in two directions, where we can see some points of articulation among these worlds. In one, the domain of naturalistic explanations, ethical life draws on affordances offered by psychological, linguistic, and other processes usually described as operating beneath the level of people’s awareness. In the other, the normative domain of reasons, principles, and arguments about them, it is the demands of ordinary social interaction that form some of the most ubiquitous inducements for people to account for themselves in ways that can become conscious, reflexive, and purposeful. When explicit reasons and justifications result they may give rise to historical objects like moral codes and ethical precepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video games have grown in number, variety, and consumer market penetration, encroaching more aggressively into the domestic realm. Within the home therefore, parents whose children play video games have to exercise mediation and supervision. As video games evolve, parental mediation strategies have also had to keep pace, albeit not always successfully. By transposing our appreciation of parental concerns over the historical development of video games, we propose an analytical framework identifying key affordances of video games, elucidating how their evolution has distinct implications for effective parental mediation. These affordances are portability, accessibility, interactivity, identity multiplicity, sociability, and perpetuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has demonstrated that left- and right-hand responses are facilitated when they are performed with the hand compatible with the orientation of a viewed object. This suggests that graspable objects automatically activate the motor representations that correspond to their orientation. It has recently been proposed that similar positive stimulus-response compatibility effects (PCE) may turn into negative compatibility effects (NCE) when a prime object is displayed very briefly. These NCEs are suggested to reflect motor inhibition mechanisms-motor activation triggered by briefly viewed objects may be treated by the motor system as unwanted, and thus it is rapidly inhibited. We examined whether the motor activation triggered by the orientation of a task-irrelevant object is similarly inhibited when the object is displayed briefly. In Experiment 1, a NCE was observed between the orientation of an object and the responding hand when the object was displayed for 30 or 70 ms. The effect turned into a PCE when the object was displayed for 370 ms. Experiment 2 confirmed that this motor inhibition effect was produced by the handle affordance of the object rather than some abstract visual properties of the object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that attention is drawn to the location of manipulable objects and is distributed across pairs of objects that are positioned for action. Here, we investigate whether central, action-related objects can cue attention to peripheral targets. Experiment 1 compared the effect of uninformative arrow and object cues on a letter discrimination task. Arrow cues led to spatial-cueing benefits across a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs: 0 ms, 120 ms, 400 ms), but object-cueing benefits were slow to build and were only significant at the 400-ms SOA. Similar results were found in Experiment 2, in which the targets were objects that could be either congruent or incongruent with the cue (e.g., screwdriver and screw versus screwdriver and glass). Cueing benefits were not influenced by the congruence between the cue and target, suggesting that the cueing effects reflected the action implied by the central object, not the interaction between the objects. For Experiment 3 participants decided whether the cue and target objects were related. Here, the interaction between congruent (but not incongruent) targets led to significant cueing/positioning benefits at all three SOAs. Reduced cueing benefits were obtained in all three experiments when the object cue did not portray a legitimate action (e.g., a bottle pointing towards an upper location, since a bottle cannot pour upwards), suggesting that it is the perceived action that is critical, rather than the structural properties of individual objects. The data suggest that affordance for action modulates the allocation of visual attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

The article describes and discusses the learning potential of unofficial techno-literacy activities in the classroom with regards to Swedish 7—8-year-olds’ exploration of semiotic resources when interacting with computers. In classroom contexts where every child works with his or her own computer, such activities tend to take up a substantial amount of time. The children have access to a wide range of sites and programs and show an interest in discovering these resources. The article thus explores a previously often neglected site for learning, located in the official classroom context but involving self-chosen activities with contemporary technology. In terms of theory and methodology, social semiotic ethnography is introduced into the field of young children’s techno-literacies. It is illustrated how a social semiotic approach allows for a more detailed analysis of the semiotic resources, whereas ethnographic data are necessary for an understanding of how such resources are put to use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues for the development of a framework through which to describe children's multimodal texts. Such a shared discourse should be capable of including different modes and media and the ways in which children integrate and combine them for their own meaning-making purposes. It should also acknowledge that multimodal texts are not always or only screen-based. In addition, it is argued that current definitions of literacy do not readily answer to the variety of semiotic resources deployed in the design of multimodal texts. In revisiting the author's previous tentative thoughts about 'the rhetoric of design' the article develops this theme further through offering a possible framework and using this to analyse three different types of multimodal texts created by seven-year-old children. The framework is, however, a 'work in progress', which it is hoped, will open up debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventionally, voluntary conscious acts and automatic behavior have been considered to be mediated by separate processes— and by separate brain structures. In this review, the authors consider the evidence that this might not be the case. First, they draw together disparate lines of evidence showing that visual stimuli cause automatic and unconscious motor activation. They briefly discuss the visual grasp reflex (automatic orienting of gaze to a salient visual stimulus), subliminal priming, and object affordances in healthy individuals. They also consider cases where inhibition of such reflexive behavior may be disrupted following brain lesions, as in patients demonstrating alien limb syndrome and utilization behavior. The authors argue that automatic motor activation forms an intrinsic part of all behavior, rather than being categorically different from voluntary actions. A crucial issue is how such automatic mechanisms are controlled so that the most appropriate responses are made and unwanted responses inhibited. The authors discuss some of the brain areas involved, including the supplementary motor area and the parietal cortex. Last, they review evidence that some control may actually be achieved by automatically triggered inhibition as well as modulation of unconscious processes by attention and task goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by Carey's cultural approach to communication, this article revisits the debate about the historical impact of new communication technologies. Several studies have pointed to technology "affordances" as offering a useful middle ground between determinist and social constructivist perspectives. This article explores how the concept of affordance might be tweaked to emphasize what an emerging technology suggests in time to the cultures using and developing it. The second half of the article illustrates the discussion with a close examination of the affordances of blogging technology and especially of a novel communications genre: news-related blogs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]