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The ambitions to fund excellent researchers and path-breaking research unite a whole family of funding instruments ranging from Centres of Excellence to individual grants. While instruments aimed at funding excellence share a number of commonalities, there are important subsidiary features which determine their overall efficacy. The paper uses a case study of the Swedish Distinguished Professor Grant (DPG) to investigate the role of subsidiary features in enabling conditions associated with path-breaking research. Interviews were conducted with DPG recipients, to develop an "affordance analysis" identifying how features of the instrument enabled certain researcher actions and opportunities. Results suggest that while long duration and large funds are central to research excellence, the way in which subsidiary features such as reporting, planning and content requirements are structured affect the level of risk-taking. In terms of policy, the paper offers specific and general suggestions for the design of excellence funding instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Over the past twenty-five years, or so, considerable advances have been made in understanding how learning occurs in the brain, though much of this research is still to make its way into education. One contribution it should be making is to furnish the philosophical critique of past and current theory with supporting empirical evidence. For example, motivation theory and its cognate expectancy-value theory continue to be taught in teacher education, even though their rational cognitivist foundations are philosophically shaky, and their shared representational notion of the mind is incompatible with what is now known about the learning brain. Furthermore, the central claim of motivation theory that children need to be motivated in order to learn is educationally problematic, not least because it incorporates a deficit model of the child as learner. This paper provides a philosophical and educational critique of motivation and expectancy-value theories and begins to sketch out an alternative dynamic systems (complexity-theory) approach, which argues that value is deeply embedded in the learning process, not only in the value students may or may not attach to their learning, but also neurobiologically. In opposition to motivation and its notion of the learner this paper argues that every student is equipped with a brain that is value-orientated towards learning and will learn, when nested in suitably affordant learning environments. In place of expectancy-value, we argue for value-embedded learning (VEL), which provides a non-reductive and biologically plausible account of how value and emotional salience are dynamically interwoven in the learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I focus on a subset of experiences in which action-properties are presented—namely, those in which objects in our perceptual surroundings or environment 'demand' that certain actions be carried out, as experienced mandates (EMs). The critical part of the paper argues that a complex contents view, which builds all of the distinctiveness of such experiences into their perceptual content, is unsatisfactory. As an alternative, I argue that EMs involve bodily potentiation, which is best understood in terms of felt action readiness. I then outline a hybrid account, which combines content-based features of EMs with action-readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe demands on public space are manifold, and are likely to increase due to the densification of cities and diversification of societies. How can we better understand public space, and plan spaces that accommodate a wider range of users and activities? This paper discusses the concept of affordances and operationalizes it for public space research. Affordances are possibilities for action that users can engage in when in an environment or using an artefact. Studying public space through the lens of affordances is a relational approach that can serve as a planning and design tool or as a means of evaluating public space in post-occupancy studies. We address three questions regarding affordances in public space: who produces them, what and how do they afford, and to whom? We then present a typology of five affordances, empirically grounded by interviews and observations in three public squares in Zurich, Switzerland: expected, extended, secondary, intentionally shaped and unintentionally shaped affordances. By examining representative artefacts, we show that affordances may be created intentionally by different actors but also emerge unintentionally from relations between human beings, artefacts and the environment. They all shape the way in which public space is used, and by whom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The AI-enabled intelligent learning system (AEILS) is able to provide personalised and intelligent tutoring and is more capable of meeting individuals' need. Nevertheless, limited studies focused on the effect of AI-specific factors on user behaviour. To fill this research gap, we identified the AEILS-specific affordances (i.e. interactivity, personalisation, competition, convenience) and explored their effect on user engagement and foreign language speaking anxiety (FLSA). In this paper, we integrate quantitative and qualitative studies to explore user behaviour in AEILS. Survey data was collected from 457 respondents and analysed using structural equation modelling with the smart-PLS software. The results showed that AEILS-specific affordances significantly affect flow experience and self-expansion, thus facilitating user engagement and alleviating FLSA. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to corroborate the findings of the quantitative study. These findings highlighted the importance of technology affordance in AEILS. This study contributed to the literature on IS and education by incorporating context-specific factors into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metaverse is an emerging phenomenon that lacks a widely accepted academic definition. Previous attempts have primarily focused on a technological perspective, ignoring the user perspective that is central in advertising research. However, the metaverse provides fast-changing updates and dynamic interactions, allowing users to actively engage in content creation. A typology using affordances and psychological processes as dimensions bridges the gap between media features and user outcomes, serving as an effective framework. Therefore, in this research, we conducted two studies to develop a typology of metaverse. Study 1 provides a systematic review of literature and uncovers two affordances (social connection and content generation) and three psychological processes (interactivity, motivation, and boundary alteration) to form a typology of metaverse experiences. The metaverse is further defined as "virtual generated space where users can form social connections and generate content, inducing psychological processes including interactivity, motivation, and boundary alteration." Study 2 conducts interviews and reveals more basic constructs and processes relevant to each dimension, such as embodiment, proximity, realism, autonomy, and personalization. Considered together, this research assists in defining and categorizing existing metaverse experiences based on human-centered dimensions and points to prominent constructs in the metaverse research that are worthy of further discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many fields, visual literacy is enamoured with digital cameras. They are convenient for classrooms, can accelerate learning, and can facilitate research where verbal language cannot. However, exclusive use puts at risk the possibility of experiencing affordances of other photomedia. This paper argues for diversifying photomedia used in research. While it recognises that digital cameras have a role to play in developing visual skills, particularly when resources are limited, it posits that sole use of digital cameras obfuscate other possibilities for expression. Adopting autoethnographic description, affordances were considered of three photomedia as used during a rephotography project along Japan's north-eastern coast between 2019 and 2022. Setting out photomedia literacy as a competence that complements rather than competes with a range of other literacies (e.g. media literacy, digital literacy, information literacy), the paper concludes with challenges for any scholars thinking that digital cameras are convenient one-stop solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to investigate how paper materials can be used as a dramaturgical premise when co-creating a fantasy world together with kindergarten children. Four exploratory workshops were carried out with a group of children in a kindergarten in Norway. The findings demonstrate how transformative materials function as a driving component in collective creations. The children moved between creating individually and collectively with the material, and through this interaction they co-created stories and play situations. These findings suggest implications for how art pedagogical practice can make use of transformative materials to build collective fantasy play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Despite an increasing number of studies that explore language learning beyond the classroom (LBC), research examining LBC activities in relation to in-class learning is very limited. This paper investigates what kinds of LBC activities university students of Chinese and Japanese in Australia engage in and how they connect these activities to classroom learning. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, two-week diary entries about their exposure to the target language and stimulated-recall interviews based on their diary entries. The analysis reveals several ways that the students bridge in-class and out-of-class learning, including integration between in-class learning and LBC which are mutually supportive. It also shows some differences in types of LBC activities between learners of Chinese and those of Japanese, in part due to the limited availability of online resources and media in China. Based on these findings, we need to continue to discuss how to encourage LBC based on students' digital literacies and practices and how to integrate LBC with classroom learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most major platforms and news portals use the feed approach to information display, which offers people the ability to engage in continuous scrolling. This affordance, "scrollability," is an understudied feature that changes how people consume news. The endless scroll presents opportunities to monetize attention for advertisers, and a seemingly bottomless supply of headlines for news consumers. Moreover, more people report scrolling headlines than actually reading news stories. A scrollable technical environment creates circumstances that encourage headline reading, or what we call "news-scrolling," and yet we know little about the consequences of scrollability for other behaviors. In this paper we set forth an argument for increased scholarly attention to scrollability in the context of online news consumption, and articulate a theoretical framework for explaining the behaviors of news-scrollers and news-clickers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Affordances serve as design cues, facilitating users in effortlessly identifying the intended use of objects. However, due to the phenomenological nature of the affordance concept, its application and understanding in the human-computer interaction (HCI) domain remain uncertain, resulting in limited utilization in design practice. This study introduces the concept of nested affordances, linking affordances more closely and explicitly with perception. We reposition the affordance concept and transform it into a design tool--the Affordance Interaction Matrix (AIM). This matrix captures the nested relationships and perceptual conflicts between target affordances within a product, assisting designers in identifying and eliminating potential confusion for users when facing a design, providing implicit interaction cues. The AIM-based design method proposed in this research addresses the shortcomings in describing product affordance interactions, focusing on the natural guidance of specific behaviors. This approach enables designers to clarify intuitive interaction foundations and make swift, effective decisions. Finally, the paper demonstrates the application and advantages of AIM through a practical case study of accessible kitchen furniture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gamification is gaining popularity in organisational settings, yet it is unclear if investments in organisational gamification will pay off, given that reports of mixed results are commonplace in the literature. It is important that potential factors behind any mixed results from the initial wave of gamification research be identified and addressed before organisational scholars and practitioners start investing valuable resources into large-scale gamification projects. In this Issues and Opinions paper, we identify and discuss several reasons that may be contributing to the problem of mixed results. We ground our arguments in an umbrella review of the gamification literature. In line with the theme of "Putting more than mere 'Fun and Games' into Systems" for this special issue, we propose a framework grounded in Adaptive Structuration Theory and present a set of research questions that can help guide future organisational gamification research. Further, based on the strengths and limitations of our work, we identify several additional avenues to stimulate future research and produce fresh practical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations 'Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development' lays out 17 Sustainable Development Goals to address a range of global issues related to the future of the planet and human well-being. Critics, however, argue that the Agenda, a complex product of multi-stakeholder governance, in its drive to accommodate many competing voices, is overloaded with weakly defined, overlapping and contradictory issues, concepts and buzzwords. These serve to gloss over actual concrete global problems and forces, concealing an underlying free-trade ideology. In this paper, using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we draw attention to the nature of the documents used to communicate the Agenda. These documents comprise an edifice of self-referential texts that rely heavily on infographics, bullet points, charts and tables. Such formats appear to helpfully simplify, distil information and break things down into workable components. But, we show, through the affordances of these formats, the the vagueness of buzzwords, contradictions and lack of clear causalities can be glossed over, presenting the Agenda as a highly technical, engaging, and above all moral process. These formats are important, therefore, for the legitimization and rhetorical power of the Agenda, necessary for its take-up by governments and organizations around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-adaptive behavior can be defined as the behavior that allows an agent to adapt to a context using her/his/its resources. The property of being 'self-adaptive' implies considering some preliminary sources or elicitors for such skill. In the case of machine learning, all the learning or self-adaptive behavior mechanisms are related to algorithmic models of mathematical nature, while in the case of humans more subtle neurochemical and symbolic processes (logical and linguistic) are present. The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical analysis of the basic mechanisms related to learning processes, always oriented towards the creation of artificial cognitive systems which can implement such bioinspired mechanisms. Parafunctionality is the key innovative concept we introduce for applying bioinspired cognition to machine learning exploring a real mechanism still unexplored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late twentieth century sociology began to recognise the performative role of technological artefacts in human lives. These objects enact their non-human agency by actions that human users cannot completely control. This paper critically assesses existing approaches that investigate the relation of human and non-human agencies (actor-network theory, the ventriloqual perspective on communication, contemporary affordance theory). The main focus of this article is the challenge of describing the performative influence of routine and invisible objects. By analysing existing approaches that employ the concepts of inscriptions and attachments, the paper argues that the ventriloqual perspective on communication is human-centered because it assesses the relevance of an object by pointing to a person's attitude to it (attachment). In turn, actor-network theory is object-centered as it emphasizes the visible performativity of technologies (inscriptions) and ignores the action possibilities provided by them. Meanwhile, contemporary affordance theory helps to extend the agency of things to their potential performances. Despite the shortcomings and merits of existing approaches, each of these frameworks employ multiple types of agencies without full acknowledgement. Using the examples of several empirical studies, the author shows that there is a lack of conceptual clarity when trying to account for the agency of routine and invisible objects. By reconciling the inscription and affordance perspectives, the author delineates four types of agencies that material objects can enact. In the conclusion, theoretical and methodological implications for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a design strategy which combines both conceptual and mental design information to quantitative degrees of affordance using a fuzzy scale that provides user-to-designer information. The traditional communication channel has been hidden. In the past, design concepts were not a result of direct communication between designers and users. This study found that, based on users’ mental models, users can reflectively modify product characteristics to improve the convenience of usage. These insights offer a hidden communication channel for designers and are defined as generalised affordance within the context of this research. This study proposed a novel method to semi-quantify affordance using a fuzzy linguistic modelling technique to establish a fuzzy scale table that quantifies degrees of affordance. An affordance fuzzy matrix (AFM) was created to assess the effects of affordance of each task necessary to utilise each product component. The overall results of the AFM indicate the generalised affordance of a particular product. Hidden messages are the characteristic of a product improved by the user itself because of his habit, which incurs additional product features, symbols and words, and will help product designers for further design strategy and improvements. In this study, generalised affordance is applied to an electric oven as an example. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses the notion of material affordances to show that a focus on how people engage with materials helps understanding how organizations transit toward sustainability. Material affordances refer to the enablements and constraints afforded by materials to someone engaging with an environment for a particular purpose. Based on a qualitative study of a company's efforts at becoming circular, we show that material affordances are evolutive as organizational members shift focus from the development of products to the establishment of a circular business model. We also show that affordances are distributed across the company's circular ecosystem. Between what they enable and prevent, they invite humans to a dynamic engagement with materials that decenters human agencies to incorporate material agency in such efforts. A key contribution of the notion of material affordances is to put the relationships of humans and materials at the core of a transition toward circularity and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital optimism of the past decade has been reflected in many policy documents related to cultural heritage in which digital technology is portrayed as a great opportunity to bring cultural heritage to a much wider audience. This potential has been contested as widening access has proved much more complex than some at first thought. Despite that, in this paper we argue that curators of national silent film collections can realistically get inspired by grassroots participatory projects. We consider two digital projects: silent feature films in the British context; and silent home movies in Italy. The first study considers the BFI Player as part of the broader BFI digital strategy. We examine the development of institutional practices to digitally publish silent films, the role of the archive and curators, and the new public experiences of silent cinema. The second study is a grassroots project that looks at the role of digitisation in the re-use of digitised footage from Sicilian home movie collections. The study explores digital forms of organisation and access to this material and how they encourage creative reuse. We extrapolate some best practices that curators and policy makers might find useful and could follow nationally and locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was carried out within a project to promote health and ecosystem services, 'the benefits people obtain from ecosystems', in preschools in Sweden. The paper applies the concept 'affordance' to capture the functional meaning that children assign to different material aspects of their schoolyards before and after the installation of additional environmental features. The findings from walk-and-talks with 23 preschool children highlight what features children preferred in their yards and why. Few children showed spontaneous attention to the installed features, e.g. insect hotels. This might be more because children were not enough involved within the schoolyard development and experienced little guided exploration of environmental affordances, rather than a lack of interest per se. Given this, we suggest that development projects to upgrade schoolyards for improved ecosystem services should involve children in the design of the ecosystem services promoting features throughout the development work, and thereby, integrally, promote ecological literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildlife management is becoming increasingly critical to improving the sustainability of biodiversity and the welfare of human beings. This paper uses affordance as a lens to explore the design of information systems that can assist in managing wildlife in protected areas. Through an action design research (ADR) study with a forest department, we develop and test design principles for a class of wildlife management analytics system (WMAS). We identify the initial design principles, including elements of the action potential, materiality, and boundary condition, and iteratively refine them based on an instantiation of WMAS through two iterations of design and implementation cycles. Through our work, we contribute to design knowledge by abstracting the artefacts, design principles in particular, and the ADR approach by generalising two new activities and corresponding principles when designing analytical models. Our findings can also be used to address a class of similar problems and systems in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that in order to understand the events of 6 January we must look at events from a range of perspectives, two of which are identified—the narrow focus of a comparison of a linguistic analysis of the speech and its context, and the broader social and cultural context of a changing sense of American National Interest. It suggests that to understand the events of 6 January we need to conceptualise them as the product of a complex process where both aggregate and specific influences seem relevant, but whilst both offer necessary explanations neither in themselves provide a sufficient explanation of the event. The concept of affordance is suggested to perhaps provide the glue that may bind these and other influences together to facilitate the violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualises the COVID-19 pandemic as a "rare event." Rare events channel managerial attention to magnified issues and foster resource mobilisation and learning. We draw on a case study of a US consumer lender to develop a model explaining how organisations actualise digital affordances as part of their rare event response and, in doing so, leverage the transformative experience towards establishing a "new normal." The model and its instantiation contribute conceptual understanding and advice for how IS managers may effectively address rare events and, in particular, the COVID-19 pandemic, including the aftermath of its lockdown and the transition to the new business status quo. The model emphasises the importance of understanding the evolution of digital affordances as possessing teleological paths where affordances are developed in steps corresponding to where an organisation focuses its managerial attention, with indirect consequences of possibilities to attend to other objectives enabled by digital technologies. Overall, the model contributes to theory by explaining the role of rare events in the evolution of affordances, including some that can be transformative and introducing the rare events literature into the IS discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to discuss physical prerequisites for creativity. Creativity has come to be regarded as one of the most valuable attributes a person can have, at least in today's Western societies. This article builds on and incorporates material from a Swedish project called Entrepreneurship Liminal space, Creativity, and Understanding. The article covers analysis from interviews and video observations from two different milieus especially planned for creativity. Based on observations and interviews, the article's goal is to emphasize and discuss the importance of understanding the physical aspects of creativity. Theoretically, the paper highlights the theory of affordances through an underlying theoretical intention is the way of regarding children as agents. Most significantly, this study contributes to the development of knowledge and understanding about how educators in schools, museums, and other educational institutions can create prerequisites for creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between embodied individuals and the home that they inhabit. Although there has been some work on both the embodied practices in the home and on the material nature of the home itself, this has not been integrated with the majority of research on home which has focused on meaning. It is argued that there is a lack of a unifying framework that can incorporate both use and meaning elements of home. A way of incorporating these elements through adoption of the concept of affordances is put forward. However, the affordance approach needs to be developed to achieve this. The paper does this first by incorporating the concept of intentionality of actions and then through the use of the concept of well‐being. Debates about housing for people with a physical disability and the practical help provided to this group of people are used to illustrate how the approach could work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The research question addressed in this paper is: What specific elements in the outdoor environment draw children's attention? The new approach to Welsh early years education - the Foundation Phase: Framework for children aged 3-7 years in Wales (DCELLS 2008) - requires the inclusion of both teacher-led and child-initiated activities and emphasises the use of outdoor environments for learning and the need to build experience around what interests the child. This paper addresses a gap in the literature pertaining to how an environment can stimulate children's interest and what children choose to talk to their teachers about. Set in a large inner city primary school in South Wales, the research involved audio-visual data collection, transcription and grounded theory analysis. The findings suggest that a natural outdoor space populated with varied and flexible elements, and in particular multiple loose parts, can provide opportunities for teachers to respond to child-initiated interaction and build on children's interests. This is especially pertinent in Foundation Phase settings in Wales at the current time. RESUME: La question de recherche de cet article est: Quels elements specifiques dans l'environnement exterieur attirent l'attention des enfants ? Au Pays de Galles, la nouvelle approche de l'education prescolaire - the Foundation Phase: Framework for children aged 3-7 years in Wales (DCELLS 2008) - exige a la fois des activites menees par l'enseignant et des activites initiees par l'enfant, et insiste sur l'utilisation d'environnements exterieurs pour l'apprentissage et sur le besoin de construire l'experience autour de ce qui interesse les enfants. Cet article comble une lacune dans la litterature en montrant combien l'environnement peut stimuler l'interet des enfants et ce que les enfants choisissent d'en dire a leurs enseignants. Menee dans une grande ecole primaire urbaine du Sud du Pays de Galles, la recherche comprend la collecte de donnees audiovisuelles, leur transcription et leur analyse avec le recours a la grounded theory. Les resultats suggerent qu'un espace exterieur naturel comprenant des elements varies, et notamment de multiples espaces perdus, fournissent des opportunites aux enseignants pour repondre aux interactions initiees par l'enfant et s'appuyer sur ses interets. Ceci est particulierement pertinent dans les structures concernees par la Foundation Phase au Pays de Galles en ce moment. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: Die Forschungsfrage dieses Aufsatzes ist, welche spezifischen Elemente in der Aussenumgebung Aufmerksamkeit auf sich ziehen. Der neue Ansatz der walisischen Fruhpadagogik - die Anfangsphase ('Foundation Phase'), d.h. Rahmenbedingungen fur Kinder im Alter von drei bis sieben Jahren in Wales (DCELLS 2008) - erfordert den Einschluss von sowohl Lehrer gesteuerten als auch Kind initiierten Aktivitaten. Dieser Ansatz betont auch den Gebrauch des Aussenumgebung fur das Lernen und die Wichtigkeit, Erfahrungen zu sammeln, die sich nach den Interessen des Kindes richten. Dieser Aufsatz schliesst eine Lucke in der Literatur in Bezug darauf, wie die Umgebung das Interesse eines Kindes stimulieren kann und woruber Kinder mit ihren Lehrern reden mochten. Die Untersuchung wurde in einer grossen, innerstadtischen Grundschule in Sudwales durchgefuhrt und beinhaltete audio-visuelle Datenerhebung, Transkription und fundierte theoretische Analysen. Die Befunde deuten darauf hin, dass eine naturliche, Aussenumgebung, die abwechslungsreiche und bewegliche Elemente enthalt, Lehrern die Moglichkeit bietet, auf Kind initiierte Interaktion einzugehen und auf den Interessen der Kinder aufzubauen. Dies ist zur Zeit besonders in Einrichtungen der Anfangsphase ('Foundation Phase') in Wales besonders relevant. RESUMEN: La pregunta estudiada en este articulo es: Que elementos especificos del ambiente al aire libre llama la atencion de los ninos? La nueva politica galesa de educacion preescolar - the Foundation Phase: Framework for children aged 3-7 years in Wales (DCELLS 2008) - requiere la inclusion tanto de actividades dirigidas por los maestros como de actividades iniciadas por los ninos, y enfatiza el uso de ambientes al aire libre para el aprendizaje y la necesidad de hacer experiencias en torno a lo que le interesa a los ninos. Este articulo intenta llenar un vacio en la literatura relacionado con como el ambiente puede estimular los intereses de los alumnos y lo que los alumnos elijen hablar con sus profesores. Estudiando una escuela primaria, grande y del centro de la ciudad, en el sur gales, la investigacion involucra recoleccion de informacion audio-visual, transcripciones y analisis de 'grounded theory'. Los hallazgos sugieren que un ambiente exterior natural poblado con elementos flexibles y variables, puede dar a los maestros posibilidades de responder a las interacciones iniciadas por los ninos y de basarse en los intereses de los ninos. Esto es especialmente pertinente en el marco acutal de la Foundation Phase de Gales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method to self-organize object features that describe object dynamics using bidirectional training. The model is composed of a dynamics learning module and a feature extraction module. Recurrent Neural Network with Parametric Bias (RNNPB) is utilized for the dynamics learning module, learning and self-organizing the sequences of robot and object motions. A hierarchical neural network is linked to the input of RNNPB as the feature extraction module for self-organizing object features that describe the object motions. The two modules are simultaneously trained through bidirectional training using image and motion sequences acquired from the robot's active sensing with objects. Experiments are performed with the robot's pushing motion with a variety of objects to generate sliding, falling over, bouncing and rolling motions. The results have shown that the model is capable of self-organizing object dynamics based on the self-organized features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relevance of body memory to Continuing Bonds. Specifically, I argue that an adequately sedimented felt sense of the deceased in inter-corporeal body memory is a condition of possibility for maintaining a continued bond. This felt sense of the deceased, which amounts to a complex embodied sensorium, does not exist in isolation, but is vitally dependent on being maintained through continued enactments, social scaffolding and material affordances. Lacking such a felt sense of a deceased person integral to one's life – either due to inadequate sedimentations or lack of maintenance – does not imply an absence of grief and longing. Rather, it may involve its own kind of profound existential suffering which I shall propose we conceptualise as a longing for concreteness. I argue these points using contrasting single-case studies of persons having suffered early parental bereavement. The cases were obtained through in-depth interviews structured by insights from phenomenological philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has caused unprecedented challenges to our lives. Many governments have forced people to stay at home, leading to a radical shift from on-site to virtual collaboration for many knowledge workers. Existing remote working literature does not provide a thorough explanation of government-enforced working from home situations. Using an affordance lens, this study explores the sudden and enforced issues that COVID-19 has presented, and the technological means knowledge workers use to achieve their team collaboration goals. We interviewed 29 knowledge workers about their experiences of being required to work from home and introduced the term "enforced work from home". This paper contributes to the affordance theory by providing an understanding of the substitution of affordances for team collaboration during COVID-19. The shifting of affordances results in positive and negative effects on team collaboration as various affordances of technology were perceived and actualised to sustain "business as usual". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a collective of websleuths called the Reddit Bureau of Investigation (RBI) that contains over 70,000 members. Websleuthing, or the investigative practices undertaken online by individuals who are not professional security providers, is an increasing trend. While conducting investigations on Reddit constitutes somewhat of a transgressive practice, the online platform's history is intimately linked with websleuthing since the manhunt that followed the 2013 Boston attacks which received much criticism from its community. Thus, we seek to understand how the RBI organizes its investigative activities against an anti-vigilante backdrop. Drawing from organizational discourse theory, we analyze the discursive practices developed by RBI members to define and enforce the collective's mission and participatory guidelines. Specifically, we focus on the figures (memes, metaphors, rules, affects, etc.) that RBI members invoke in interaction and on the role of Reddit's affordances in the materialization of these discursive entities. Our analysis is threefold. First, we underline how figures associated with retributive vigilantism are invoked by moderators and their propension to circumscribe what (not) to do within the subreddit. Then, we analyze a series of controversial posts to identify the recurring discursive practices developed by users when asking the RBI for assistance. Finally, we explore the ambivalent rapport that RBI members maintain with the police. Overall, our analysis shows that members must overtly recognize police authority over criminal matters yet invoke the institution's limitations to justify their involvement in the RBI, all the while rejecting any association with retributive vigilantism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modelling complex systems poses significant challenges on how one represents the system components and interactions among them. In order to provide a systematic approach to represent human participation as a part of a dynamic system, this paper presents a formal automata model of human-machine cooperative systems that incorporates human capabilities with respect to system conditions. Specifically, we propose a control model for human-involved shop floor systems based on discrete event-based systems (DES) and an environmental concept known as an affordance. When modelling human-involved systems where a human operator is considered a crucial system component, it is necessary to analyse the model complexity that increases significantly due to a human's behavioural patterns. From the perspective of the temporal and physical state domains a human operator's behaviour is usually limited by attention and resource constraints. We investigate these limitations and map them into constrained system affordances, and then construct a formal human-machine cooperative model based on the finite state automaton (FSA) model. The proposed model can provide a framework to combine human activities into systems operations in consideration of human's effectivities and system affordances. A detailed application example is provided to illustrate that the proposed model can effectively be applied to manufacturing control systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual management is much used within operations management practice, particularly in association with process improvement initiatives in diverse areas such as production and healthcare. The practitioner literature abounds with suggested best practice. However, there is little attempt to theorise about why the design and use of ‘visual’ devices for such process improvement works in practice. Within this paper we describe a novel theory of operation which highlights the role that material and visual artefacts proposed by visual management practitioners play within particular ways of organising work. We develop an innovative way of employing the theory of affordances to explain how first- and second-order affordances, situated around the visual devices at the heart of visual management, connect three domains of action, which we refer to as articulation, communication and coordination. Our analysis of three cases from healthcare, clothing manufacturing and software production help ground the theorisation discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Potential interactions between objects affect response selection in action-related object pairs. The present paper aimed to examine whether this effect is conditional on the knowledge about object functionality, or whether action-related structures such as handles are sufficient. This issue was investigated by utilizing a paradigm established previously. They presented imperative central targets which overlapped with task-irrelevant object pairs and required speeded left/right responses to the targets. With this paradigm, two stable effects of implied actions between objects on response selection have been identified: an inhibitory effect on responses aligned with the passive object (e.g., a bowl in a bowl–spoon pair) and an advantage associated with responses aligned with the active objects (e.g., a spoon). The present paper utilized these two effects as the indexes of response selection in paired-object scenarios, and found that active–passive object pairs without established functionality (e.g., a saw and a bowl, Experiment 1) generated the same effects, suggesting that response selection does not rely on functionality knowledge of given object pairs. Further, the two effects were also observed in passive–passive object pairs with handles (e.g., a cup–nail pair), but not in those without a handle (e.g., a bowl–nail pair, Experiment 2), and remained when the active objects were replaced by novel objects with handle but no known functionality (Experiment 3), suggesting that the action-related structures of objects are sufficient to affect response selection. The present study empirically illustrated the automaticity and directness of the extraction of potential interaction between objects, probably based on the relative location of action-related structure of objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In critical discourse analysis, we have learned much about the nature of the marketized language that now dominates public institutions such as universities, playing a role in changing their identities. But less is known about the processes whereby this language enters the everyday practices of these institutions through documents that are used to manage teaching and research. What is the role of language in the shift to the way these activities are internally organized, managed, run and evaluated in terms of productivity and market-based principles? In this paper we analyse a chain of documents taken from a wider corpus of management documents in Swedish universities to show how this language recontextualizes the practices of teaching and research. Our focus is on the important role played by lists, bullet points and tables and how these are central to decoupling language from work processes and so legitimizing this marketized discourse. The affordances of these multimodal structures allow complex processes and social relations to be abstracted, fragmented and treated as things. They are also important in allowing documents to form a complex self-referential information infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper initially identifies a number of critical distinctions that might help our understanding of the relationship between Internet use and terrorism. It then develops the notion of complex global microstructures as a useful conceptual aid to understanding how people interact with the Internet in general, and to terrorism in particular. Parallels are identified between various inappropriate, risky and dangerous uses of the Internet which are argued to point to a degree of commonality of effect. The paper concludes by suggesting that some forms of user interaction with the Internet suggest the Internet may have criminogenic qualities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper, followed by two responses, discusses the application of ecological theory to an understanding of a number of issues in the aesthetics of music. It argues for an understanding of music as based in event perception, with an expanded conception of the sources that are specified by those events. Building on the theory of affordances, it considers the limitations of an information theoretic conception of musical complexity, discusses the importance of perceptual learning (understood as shaping by a structured environment) in understanding the affordances of music for different listeners, and raises the challenging problem of the terms in which musical materials might be appropriately described. The apparent tension between ecological and aesthetic positions—in which adaptation and accommodation seem to be at odds with a modernist aesthetic perspective which prioritizes the unsettling and defamiliarizing function of art—is confronted, before the paper concludes with some observations about different disciplinary perspectives on aesthetics, and matters of specificity and generality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal depictions are frequently treated by archaeologists either as direct reflections of human-animal relations or as symbolic of social realities. This paper offers a different way of conceptualizing animal depictions, as objects which mediate between society and human relationships with non-human animals. The focus here is on the large number of lions depicted on sealstones from Bronze Age Crete, despite there being no evidence (excluding the depictions themselves) that lions were present on Crete during this period. This paper examines how these depictions change over the course of the Bronze Age, and suggests links between iconographic features and knowledge of, and encounters with, real lions. It considers the interplay between the affordances of lions revealed in the depictions, as dangerous predators, and the affordances of the objects, as a means of social interaction. The Minoan lion is an animal which is neither reducible to its iconographic manifestations nor possible to understand apart from a network of material culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a brief review of affordance research in robotics, with special concentrations on its applications in grasping and manipulation of objects. The concept of affordance could be a key to realize human-like advanced manipulation intelligence. First, we discuss the concept of affordance while associating with the applications in robotics. Then, we intensively explore the studies that utilize affordance for robotic manipulation applications, such as object recognition, grasping, and object manipulation including tool-use. They obtain and use affordance by several ways like learning from human, using simulation, and real-world execution. Moreover, we show our current work, which is a cloud database for advanced manipulation intelligence. The database accumulates various data related to manipulation task execution and will be an open platform to leverage various affordance techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite being increasingly popular within broader educational discourse, place-responsive pedagogy is less apparent in science teacher education. This paper investigates the perspectives of pre-service teachers in a science education course informed by place-responsive pedagogy in a Bachelor of Education (primary) program at an Australian regional university. The place-based study belongs to longitudinal research that examined the impact of the modified science course hallmarked by university–school partnerships and science lessons conducted by pre-service teachers with children from rural and regional schools in Gippsland, Victoria in a wetland and school ground setting. The study and science course were framed by a place pedagogy framework. Using this framework, we examine how pre-service teachers view and understand the affordance of places for teaching science. The study employed a document analysis of coursework essays as well as follow-up semi-structured interviews with two pre-service teacher cohorts (wetland and school ground). Findings indicate that pre-service teacher's exposure to place-responsive frameworks helped build their awareness about the affordance of place for science teaching. Challenges associated with taking science beyond the conventional classroom are also identified and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of affordances is rapidly gaining traction in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. Affordances are opportunities for action provided by the environment. An important open question is whether affordances can be used to explain mental action such as attention, counting, and imagination. In this paper, we critically discuss McClelland’s (‘The Mental Affordance Hypothesis’, 2020, Mind, 129(514), pp. 401–427) mental affordance hypothesis. While we agree that the affordance concept can be fruitfully employed to explain mental action, we argue that McClelland’s mental affordance hypothesis contain remnants of a Cartesian understanding of the mind. By discussing the theoretical framework of the affordance competition hypothesis, we sketch an alternative research program based on the principles of embodied cognition that evades the Cartesian worries. We show how paradigmatic mental acts, such as imagination, counting, and arithmetic, are dependent on sensorimotor interaction with an affording environment. Rather than make a clear distinction between bodily and mental action, the mental affordances highlight the embodied nature of our mental action. We think that in developing our alternative research program on mental affordances, we can maintain many of the excellent insights of McClelland’s account without reintroducing the very distinctions that affordances were supposed to overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some of the learning of a young child from the age of 8–23 months and considers how identifying schemas or repeated patterns of actions can inform our pedagogic responses. Gabriella was observed using naturalistic observation methods, at home, at her grandparents' home, at parks and using early childhood services. Narrative observations were made using a diary method, her parents and grandparents took photos and she was filmed during periods of deep involvement. Her interest in wholes and parts is explored as is the affordance of each environment for her learning. Gabriella seemed to use a cluster of schemas from early in the study, the most dominant being separating and connecting, which fitted with her interest in wholes and parts. She clearly led her own learning and often set herself challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study focuses on the social actions taken around English language by a 12-year-old Finnish schoolboy, Simo, and his family members in the course of living their everyday life at home. The paper asks how everyday life learning opportunities are related to both in-class and out-of-class English-language learning. The multiple data (e.g. media diary, video recordings, discussions, interviews, drawings and observations) come from two contexts, an online language learning project and Simo’s home. The research approach draws upon nexus analysis and the results suggest Simo’s everyday life learning affordances cross geographies of English-language learning. The results have implications for pedagogic design and teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Archaeological data is always incomplete, frequently unreliable, often replete with unknown unknowns, but we nevertheless make the best of what we have and use it to build our theories and extrapolations about past events. Is there any reason to think that digital data alter this already complicated relationship with archaeological data? How does the shift to an infinitely more flexible, fluid digital medium change the character of our data and our use of it? The introduction of Big Data is frequently said to herald a new epistemological paradigm, but what are the implications of this for archaeology? As we are increasingly subject to algorithmic agency, how can we best manage this new data regime? This paper seeks to unpick the nature of digital data and its use within a Big Data environment as a prerequisite to rational and appropriate digital data analysis in archaeology, and proposes a means towards developing a more reflexive, contextual approach to Big Data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks whether the slow process of divesting Indian native schoolteachers of their traditional authority was only about new concepts and representations of education and knowledge. Following the methodological idea of constellations of affordances, emphasising a relational ontology, the article discusses whether changes in the shape and the relations of objects in Indian classrooms together with the arrival of new objects may have played a silent role in the process of erosion of schoolteachers' authority. Based on a wide range of official and missionary sources, but also referring to individual native voices, the article reconstructs more pervasive and subtle transformations of native elementary classrooms, focusing on surfaces for writing and on "books". The article argues that shifts in the materialities of elementary native schooling took place that repositioned old "gurus" in an unfavourable light before the take-off of teacher training institutions would provide for new definitions of their role as schoolmasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are (at least) two ways to think of the differences in basic concepts and typologies that one can find in the different scientific practices that constitute a research tradition. One is the fundamentalist view: the fewer the better. The other is a non-fundamentalist view of science whereby the integration of different concepts into the right abstraction grounds an explanation that is not grounded as the sum of the explanations supported by the parts. Integrative concepts are often associated with idealizations that can successfully set the stage for different phenomena to be compared or for explanations of different phenomena to be considered as jointly increasing our understanding of reality beyond that which each explanation provides separately. In this paper, our aim is to argue for the importance of the notions of an “affordance” and “scaffolding” as integrative concepts in the cognitive sciences. The integrational role of the concept of affordance is closely related with the capacity of affordances to generate the scaffoldings leading to the integration. The capacities of affordances that turn them into (stable) scaffoldings explain why such notions are often used interchangeably (as we shall see). On this basis, we aim to show that the concepts of affordance and scaffolding provide the sort of epistemic perspective that can overcome common complaints about the limits and unity of the cognitive sciences once claims about extended cognition are taken seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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

Studies on lexicon acquisition systems are gaining attention in the search for a natural human–robot interface and a test environment to model the infant lexicon acquisition process. Although various lexicon acquisition systems that ground words to sensory experience have been developed, existing systems have clear limitations on the ability to autonomously associate words to objects. This limitation is due to the fact that categories for words are formed in a passive manner, either by teaching of caregivers or finding similarities in visual features. This paper presents a system for lexicon acquisition through behavior learning. Based on a modified multi-module reinforcement learning system, the robot is able to automatically associate words to objects with various visual features based on similarities in affordances or in functions. The system was implemented on a mobile robot acquiring a lexicon related to different rolling preferences. The experimental results are given and future issues are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study on COVID-19 warning designs in a Swedish context illustrates how a unified affordance approach may contribute to an understanding of the meaning-making in reminders, instructions, cues and prompts that communicate the message "keep your distance." The analysis combines semiotic and ecological affordance categories, taking both Gibson's original theorizing on affordances and more recent affordance-informed research efforts into consideration. In so doing, the study aims to bridge a knowledge gap in the study of visual instructions and warning designs as well as in a more comprehensive way delineate the multimodal design strategies associated with COVID-19 warning designs. The analysis shows that Swedish COVID-19 warning designs of the keep-your-distance-kind belong to a non-standardized and emerging genre that is marked by great variation and ad-hoc design solutions, several of which combine physical blocking functions with verbally based messages. The analysis also highlights the tension between verbal and visual recourses, on one hand, and the signage placement and choice of materials, on the other hand. It is concluded that communication resources do not always appear to convey the same basic message, but in incongruent ways weaken what might be considered the intended main message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]