Learning to perceive the affordance for long-distance throwing: Smart mechanism or function learning?

Abstract

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

Exploratory behaviors and recalibration: What processes are shared between functionally similar affordances?

“…Accordingly, the information required to perceive complex affordances (involving both body size and the dynamics of body compression) may be equally complex. There is precedent for affordance calibration depending on feedback: Visual feedback from throwing actions was needed to calibrate perception of throwability (Zhu & Bingham, 2010). Practicing throwing is the only way to generate feedback about throwing distance.…”

“…Like friction (Joh, Adolph, Campbell, & Eppler, 2006;Joh, Adolph, Narayanan, & Dietz, 2007), compression is an emergent property: How much the body (or the body while modified by a backpack or pregnancy pack) compresses can only be understood given the opposing surface (like a doorway) and the amount of force applied. When squeezing through doorways, the body may compress by as much as 3-8 cm (Franchak, van der Zalm, Hartzler, & Adolph, 2009, July (Bingham & Pagano, 1998;Zhu & Bingham, 2010 Comparing different exploratory behaviors-locomotor experience versus practice-will test the function generalization hypothesis. However, a confound in past work is that visual information about the object used to alter participants' body dimensions in fitting tasks was always permitted.…”

“…The range of affordances available to humans is vast. Accordingly, researchers have investigated a wide array of affordances, including fitting through doorways (Fath & Fajen, 2011;Higuchi et al, 2011;Petrucci, Horn, Rosengren, & Hsiao-Wecksler, 2016; Thomas & Riley, 2014;Warren & Whang, 1987;Yasuda, Wagman, & Higuchi, 2014), navigating under barriers (Franchak, Celano, & Adolph, 2012;Stoffregen, Yang, Giveans, Flanagan, & Bardy, 2009;Wagman & Malek, 2009;Yu, Bardy, & Stoffregen, 2011), sitting on seats (Mark, 1987;Mark, Baillet, Craver, Douglas, & Fox, 1990;Stoffregen, Yang, & Bardy, 2005), reaching (Thomas & Riley, 2014;Thomas, Wagman, Hawkins, Havens, & Riley, 2016), leaping and stepping (Cole, Chan, & Adolph, 2013;Day, Wagman, & Smith, 2015), throwing (Bingham, Schmidt, & Rosenblum, 1989;Zhu & Bingham, 2010), and catching (Oudejans, Michaels, Bakker, & Dolne, 1996). Such studies reveal great diversity in the types of information that support affordance perception.…”

“…Such studies reveal great diversity in the types of information that support affordance perception. For example, optic flow generated by postural movement allows observers to determine whether barriers of different heights are navigable (Stoffregen et al, 2009;Yu et al, 2011), haptic information from hefting balls of different sizes and densities supports perception of 'throwability' (Bingham et al, 1989;Zhu & Bingham, 2010), and optical time-to-contact information allows observers to detect if fly balls are catchable (Michaels & Oudejans, 1992).…”

A geometric and dynamic affordance model of reaches-to-grasp: Men take greater risks than women.

“…Pisoni and Remez, 2007), throwing (e.g. Bingham, Schmidt & Rosenblum, 1989;Zhu & Bingham, 2010;2011) and reaches-to-grasp (e.g. Jeannerod, 1984;Wing, Haggard & Flanagan, 1996).…”