Understanding affordances: history and contemporary development of Gibson’s central concept

Gibson developed the affordance concept to complement his theory of direct perception that stands in sharp contrast with the prevalent inferential theories of perception. A comparison of the two approaches shows that the distinction between them also has an ontological aspect. We trace the history and newer formalizations of the notion of affordance and discuss some competing opinions on its scope. Next, empirical work on the affordance concept is reviewed in brief and the relevance of dynamical systems theory to affordance research is demonstrated. Finally, the striking but often neglected convergence of the ideas of Gibson and those of certain Continental philosophers is discussed

A Demonstration of the Transition from Ready-to-Hand to Unready-to-Hand

The ideas of continental philosopher Martin Heidegger have been influential in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, despite the fact that there has been no effort to analyze these ideas empirically. The experiments reported here are designed to lend empirical support to Heidegger's phenomenology and more specifically his description of the transition between ready-to-hand and unready-to-hand modes in interactions with tools. In experiment 1, we found that a smoothly coping cognitive system exhibits type positively correlated noise and that its correlated character is reduced when the system is perturbed. This indicates that the participant and tool constitute a self-assembled, extended device during smooth coping and this device is disrupted by the perturbation. In experiment 2, we examine the re-organization of awareness that occurs when a smoothly coping, self-assembled, extended cognitive system is perturbed. We found that the disruption is accompanied by a change in attention which interferes with participants' performance on a simultaneous cognitive task. Together these experiments show that a smoothly coping participant-tool system can be temporarily disrupted and that this disruption causes a change in the participant's awareness. Since these two events follow as predictions from Heidegger's work, our study offers evidence for the hypothesized transition from readiness-to-hand to unreadiness-to-hand

Zrozumieć afordancje: przegląd badań nad główną tezą Jamesa J. Gibsona

Gibson rozwinął koncepcję afordancji, uzupełniając za jej pomocą swoją teorię percepcji bezpośredniej, która stoi w wyraźnej opozycji do popularnych teorii percepcji pośredniej. Porównanie ze sobą tych dwóch podejść pokazuje, że różnice pomiędzy nimi dotyczą również ontologii percepcji. W artykule tym przedstawiamy zarówno historię pojęcia afordancji, jak i późniejsze jego formalizacje, omawiając przy tym konkurujące ze sobą sposoby rozumienia tego terminu. Następnie przechodzimy do krótkiego przeglądu badań empirycznych nad zagadnieniem afordancji, wskazując na znaczenie teorii układów dynamicznych w tychże badaniach. W niniejszym tekście nie zabrakło również odniesienia do często pomijanego wątku, czyli do powiązań myśli Gibsona z wybranymi przestawicielami filozofii kontynentalnej

Multi-scale coordination of distinctive movement patterns during embodied interaction between adults with high-functioning autism and neurotypicals

Funding We acknowledge financial support from DGAPA-PAPIIT projects of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: IA105017 (RF and LZ-F) and IA104717 (TF), Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT) projects 167441 (RF and LZ-F), the scholarship 638215 to LZ-F granted by the CONACyT, the Newton Advanced Fellowship awarded to RF by the Academy of Medical Sciences, through the UK Government’s Newton, and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship “SOCIAL BRAIN” awarded to BT. Acknowledgments We thank Charles Lenay and Dominique Aubert from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne for making the TACTOS hardware and software available to the University Hospital Cologne, and for providing technical support. LZ-F would like to specially thank Jesús Naveja and Lilia Fonseca for interesting discussions. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02760/full#supplementary-materialPeer reviewedPublisher PD

BeatWalk: Personalized Music-Based Gait Rehabilitation in Parkinson’s Disease

Taking regular walks when living with Parkinson’s disease (PD) has beneficial effects on movement and quality of life. Yet, patients usually show reduced physical activity compared to healthy older adults. Using auditory stimulation such as music can facilitate walking but patients vary significantly in their response. An individualized approach adapting musical tempo to patients’ gait cadence, and capitalizing on these individual differences, is likely to provide a rewarding experience, increasing motivation for walk-in PD. We aim to evaluate the observance, safety, tolerance, usability, and enjoyment of a new smartphone application. It was coupled with wearable sensors (BeatWalk) and delivered individualized musical stimulation for gait auto-rehabilitation at home. Forty-five patients with PD underwent a 1-month, outdoor, uncontrolled gait rehabilitation program, using the BeatWalk application (30 min/day, 5 days/week). The music tempo was being aligned in real-time to patients’ gait cadence in a way that could foster an increase up to +10% of their spontaneous cadence. Open-label evaluation was based on BeatWalk use measures, questionnaires, and a six-minute walk test. Patients used the application 78.8% (±28.2) of the prescribed duration and enjoyed it throughout the program. The application was considered “easy to use” by 75% of the patients. Pain, fatigue, and falls did not increase. Fear of falling decreased and quality of life improved. After the program, patients improved their gait parameters in the six-minute walk test without musical stimulation. BeatWalk is an easy to use, safe, and enjoyable musical application for individualized gait rehabilitation in PD. It increases “walk for exercise” duration thanks to high observance.This research was supported by a European grant: BeatHealth: Health and Wellness on the Beat for VC, DD, CL, AGi, VD, RV, EH, ED, ML, BB, and SB (EU FP7-ICT contract #610633)

The visual playground environment.

<p>A single frame (a) captured during the course of a trial is shown and visible inside it are the pen, the gray center, and blue and green dots for the target and pointer objects, respectively. Representative pointer and target object trajectories on the screen from three-second excerpts with a normally behaving (b) and impaired (c) mouse are portrayed.</p

DFA results per block for a representative trial.

<p>The x-component of the lines stands for the time coordinates of the analyzed block and the y-component is the scaling coefficient obtained for that particular block. The red lines in the middle are the ones that cover the perturbation section of the trial.</p

Means of the main measures used in the two experiments.

<p>Counting rates are averaged across consecutive 6-second-long blocks. Error bars are standard errors.</p