Gibson (1979/1986) argued that exploratory movements generate information about agents’ action-capabilities within a given environment, that is, about the agent-environment system’s affordances. To date, the scant literature on exploratory movements has revealed two important findings. First, restricting exploratory movements degrades the accuracy of affordance judgments (Mark et al., 1990; Yu, Bardy, & Stoffregen, 2011). Second, exploratory movements can be very subtle (Stoffregen, Yang, & Bardy, 2005; Yu, Bardy, & Stoffregen, 2011). However, many questions regarding exploratory movements have yet to be answered. For example, what exploratory movements are necessary to perceive a given affordance, and how do exploratory movements differ from related movements? Our long-term goal is to address such gaps in the literature. We decided to begin by examining what exploratory movements must be executed in order to perceive whether the actor can reach an object. Reaching exploratory movements likely have two key components: 1) head movements and 2) shoulder movements. The former can generate information about the absolute distance between the actor and the to-be-reached object (Bingham & Stassen, 1994), and have been confirmed to be necessary to produce accurate reaching judgments (Mantel, Stoffregen, Campbell & Bardy, 2015). The latter generates information about the actor’s arm length (Anderson & Turvey, 1998; Shibata, Gyoba, & Takeshima, 2012;), but their necessity to the reach-ability judgment has yet to be studied. The current experiment used a restriction paradigm to determine whether exploratory arm movements are necessary to make accurate reaching judgments. Participants (n = 32) judged their maximum reaching ability either while holding their arms behind their backs with their dominant hand grasping their non-dominant wrist (the Restricted condition), or while their arms swung naturally at their sides (the Unrestricted condition). Judgments were made actively, by walking forward or backward, in order to allow participants to generate the exploratory movements they would normally create (with the exception of arm movements in the Restricted condition) when moving toward an object with the intention to perform a reach (Mantel, Bardy, & Stoffregen, 2010). The study utilized a within-subjects design, with starting condition counterbalanced. For each condition, participants completed 1 practice trial followed by 9 experimental trials. Starting distances (from object) and angles were drawn equally and randomly from ranges of 1 – 24”, 25 – 48”, 49 – 72”, and 0 - 29o, 30 - 59o, 60 - 89o, respectively. Distances and angles were not repeated to prevent memorization. In line with previous affordance perception research, the dependent variable, Accuracy, was computed in terms of percentage of absolute error (|[judged maximum reach / actual maximum reach] -1| *100) (Oudejans, Michaels, Bakker, & Dolné, 1996). Accuracy was significantly greater when arm movements were unrestricted as compared to restricted, supporting the theory that exploratory arm movements are a component of reach-ability judgments. Reaching judgments in neither condition were perfectly accurate, which may have been due to the reaching judgment being the focal task (Heft, 1993). The present results have practical implications for operational situations in which actors’ arm movements might be restricted. For example, U.S. police and military personnel sometimes wear body armor that covers their shoulders, mounts ballistic plates to their upper arms, or some combination thereof. To the extent that such body armor restricts arm movements, then our results suggest that their reach-ability judgments would be degraded.
Purpose Nonexperts do not always follow the advice in cybersecurity warning messages. To increase compliance, it is recommended that warning messages use nontechnical language, describe how the cyberattack will affect the user personally and do so in a way that aligns with how the user thinks about cyberattacks. Implementing those recommendations requires an understanding of how nonexperts think about cyberattack consequences. Unfortunately, research has yet to reveal nonexperts’ thinking about cyberattack consequences. Toward that end, the purpose of this study was to examine how nonexperts think about cyberattack consequences. Design/methodology/approach Nonexperts sorted cyberattack consequences based on perceived similarity and labeled each group based on the reason those grouped consequences were perceived to be similar. Participants’ labels were analyzed to understand the general themes and the specific features that are present in nonexperts’ thinking. Findings The results suggested participants mainly thought about cyberattack consequences in terms of what the attacker is doing and what will be affected. Further, the results suggested participants thought about certain aspects of the consequences in concrete terms and other aspects of the consequences in general terms. Originality/value This research illuminates how nonexperts think about cyberattack consequences. This paper also reveals what aspects of nonexperts’ thinking are more or less concrete and identifies specific terminology that can be used to describe aspects that fall into each case. Such information allows one to align warning messages to nonexperts’ thinking in more nuanced ways than would otherwise be possible.
It has been argued that observers perceive actors' affordances via embodied simulation, that is, first perceiving their own affordance, which serves as a model for the actor's affordance, and then adjusting that model to account for differences between themselves and the actor. If so, then preventing observers from picking up information about their own affordances should cause several effects. Specifically, observers should make more errors about the actor's affordance compared to when the observer is free to pick up information about their own affordance. In addition, judgments about the actor's affordance should align better with the observer's affordance than with the actor's affordance, and increase in error as differences between the observer's and actor's affordances increase. The present study tested those predictions. To do so, observers (participants) made judgments about the farthest distance that an actor (a confederate) could reach. The observer's arms were either free to move or were immobilized by having the participant hold them behind their back. The present results did not support the predictions. The present research introduces a novel means for evaluating the Embodied Simulation Hypothesis, provides initial tests of related predictions, and corroborates prior research. In addition, it motivates important questions about embodied simulation and affordance perception.
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.
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