Notion Of Affordance Research Articles

Affordances and distributed cognition in museum exhibitions

Exhibitions are the primary medium for the public communication of science in museums. Recently, there has been an interest in explaining the educational mechanisms of exhibitions in terms of meaning making, interaction and space; however these concepts have not yet been integrated into one consistent framework. Here, we invoke the notions of affordance and distributed cognition to explain in a coherent way how visitors interact with exhibits and exhibit spaces and make meaning from those interactions, and we exemplify our points using observations of twelve visitors to exhibits at a natural history museum. We show how differences in exhibit characteristics give rise to differences in the interpretive strategies used by visitors in their meaning-making process, and conclude by discussing how the notions of affordance and distributed cognition can be used in an exhibit design perspective.

Finding Ways to Get the Job Done: An Affordance-Based Approach

Adapting plans to changes in the environment by finding alternatives and taking advantage of opportunities is a common human behavior. The need for such behavior is often rooted in the uncertainty produced by our incomplete knowledge of the environment. While several existing planning approaches deal with such issues, artificial agents still lack the robustness that humans display in accomplishing their tasks. In this work, we address this brittleness by combining Hierarchical Task Network planning, Description Logics, and the notions of affordances and conceptual similarity. The approach allows a domestic service robot to find ways to get a job done by making substitutions. We show how knowledge is modeled, how the reasoning process is used to create a constrained planning problem, and how the system handles cases where plan generation fails due to missing/unavailable objects. The results of the evaluation for two tasks in a domestic service domain show the viability of the approach in finding and making the appropriate goal transformations.

Space, Place, and Social Justice

This article develops a methodological approach based on the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre to address relationships between space, place, and social justice in education. In understanding the contradictory effects of globalization on local education policies and the continuing effects of historical geographies in education, Lefebvre’s theory foregrounds the multiple scales and rhythms of practice that produce social space. The article illustrates this by sketching the broad patterns of South African education and their spatial production. It suggests that the notion of affordances may be used in analyzing and interrupting the production of inequalities in schooling. In conclusion, the article considers methodological directions that a Lefebvrean rhythmanalysis might entail.

Multimodal Composing in Digital Storytelling

This study explores English language learners’ crafting process of a digital storytelling project in an instructional setting. By analyzing two English language learners’ digital storytelling projects and their personal crafting narratives, the researcher reports how these learners approach multimodal digital story composing, construct hybrid texts to deliver their messages, and assign meanings to the semiotic resources used in their digital story through Gunther Kress’ (2003) notion of design. Three major findings are reported in this study. First, participants approached the development of multimodal digital storytelling with the creation of a hybrid text, and with dialogic orchestration of multimodal resources. Second, participants’ digital story design and orchestration of multimodal resources were guided by author intents. Third, the study participants experienced imagination and re-imagination when assigning meaning to the semiotic resources used in their digital story. The incorporation of digital story composing narratives allows the researcher to develop deep understanding about multimodal designers’ thinking process in constructing their digital stories. The findings of this study, illustrating the complex process of multimodal composing, are discussed in relation to learners’ employment of multimodal resources, Kress’ (2003) notion of design, and Leo van Lier's (2004) notion of affordance.

Affordance and ability

This paper addresses epistemological issues raised by the use of elicited data in linguistic analyses. A common suspicion raised by experimental settings is this: participants in the lab do not replicate their everyday use of language, due to the artificiality of the tasks and of the contexts involved, so that elicited speech should not constitute a reliable source of data. I set out the experimental settings and results of four empirical studies – two studies investigating the pragmatic value of prosodic focalization through the controversial use of elicited data, one study on dative alternations based on a corpus and on a rating task, and one study on the contextual determinants of intonational contours based on a production task – to dispel this methodological suspicion: the artificiality of elicitation protocols does not prevent participants from using language as they do in spontaneous interactions. Careful examination reveals that the biases observed in the first two studies arise because subjects are not provided with sufficient cues concerning the context. I borrow the Gibsonian notion of affordance to characterise the state in which a context provides optimal resources to enable the production of the targeted construction, and argue that elicited data are reliable only when contexts optimise affordances.

Towards an Affordance-Based Theory of Collaborative Action (CoAct)

Collaborative Action provides a novel approach to modeling interaction among users and machines and IT-mediated collaboration among people to solve problems. CoAct extends the notions of affordance and moves away from idiosyncratic, subjective mental models of the world to the notion that actors with similar capacities to act can potentially discern similar action possibilities in the world. It changes the direction from discovery and alignment of internal representations to mutual attunement of collaborators to build sufficient capabilities, share informational structures, and calibrate selectivity to achieve shared affordances. CoAct has the potential to influence such diverse areas as usability engineering, information overload, and group decision making. CoAct can be used at multiple levels of granularity, from fine granularity of a single interaction to tracking intermediate progress and results of a set of interactions. Propositions based on CoAct are presented. An initial experiment provides some support for an affordance-based approach to information sharing/design.

Employees' and managers' accounts of interactive workplace learning

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate employees' and managers' accounts of interactive learning and what might encourage or inhibit emergent learning.Design/methodology/approachThe approach taken was a constructivist/social constructivist ontology, interpretive epistemology and qualitative methodology, using grounded theory method. Data collection included semi‐structured interview, “complete this sentence” and “scenarios” from 51 respondents: 22 managers and 29 employees in four private sector organisations. As respondents' theories emerged, these informed the next round of data collection, this process named “theoretical sampling”. Managers and employees were asked about perceptions of their own role and the other's roles in learning.FindingsReciprocity and participative learning involving managers and employees emerged. There was dynamism to the data and evidence of both Billett's notion of affordances and Stacey's patterns of local interactions. Employees encouraged learning through peer discussions, and motivation/personal initiative. Managers encouraged learning through have a go coaching, formal training opportunities and working with company structure and resources. The data support the idea of complex and integrated learning.Practical implicationsThe data informed both managers and employees in such a way as to highlight the dynamic and complex interactions around learning processes. One practical implication is employee and manager training in emergence and complexity as learning environments. Ideas of complex responses and patterns of local interaction resonated with the data more than particular typologies of learning.Originality/valueThis paper captures insights, especially from employees, into the dialogue and dynamism of their learning opportunities, whilst supporting existing theories. The need for managers to “learn” employees' local interaction patterns emerged as a future research agenda, alongside the need to penetrate the social space of employee learning more deeply.

To play a soundtrack: how children use recorded music in their everyday lives

This article looks at how children between three and six years of age use recorded music in their everyday lives. In Norway, where the project is situated, most children in this age group probably have access to CDs and/or Mp3 files, both in their family homes and pedagogical day-care facilities. Thus recorded music and the way it is used by children presumably have an impact on the children's relation to music, their musical tastes and attitudes. Linking up with the research field of children's culture and resting upon qualitative inquiry (observation and interview), a play or listening situation including four children and the soundtrack from a children's TV-series is explored. The notion of affordance serves as an important approach, allowing me to address both what the children do with the music and what the music does for, to and with the children.

Perception of Affordances in Multi-Scale Dynamics as an Alternative Explanation for Equivalence of Analogical and Inferential Reasoning in Animals and Humans

Recent claims of equivalence of animal and human reasoning are evaluated and a study of avian cognition serves as an exemplar of weaknesses in these arguments. It is argued that current research into neurobiological cognition lacks theoretical breadth to substantiate comparative analyses of cognitive function. Evaluation of a greater range of theoretical explanations is needed to verify claims of equivalence in animal and human cognition. We conclude by exemplifying how the notion of affordances in multi-scale dynamics can capture behavior attributed to processes of analogical and inferential reasoning in animals and humans.

Affordances and the Nature of Perceptual Content

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.

Birds, frogs, blue skies and sheep: an investigation into the cultural notion of affordance in children’s meaning making

This article draws on an ethnographic research study of children’s text making in the home, as well as interviews with visual artists in South Yorkshire, to explore the idea of affordance as cultural (Kress 1997; Kress and van Leeuwen 2001). The article draws on Kress and van Leeuwen’s concept of the affordance of a mode, and argues that in the case of children’s meaning making, affordance has to be seen as being shaped by culture. This means attending to children’s cultural and physical spaces, their worlds, in order to trace back and understand meanings inside their texts. The article takes particular instances of practice and then traces back their meaning, in order to show how cultural meanings sediment into texts. The article argues that English teachers can use this lens of texts as traces of practice to make sense of the multimodal texts children produce in classrooms.

Understanding and using technological affordances: a commentary on Conole and Dyke

The paper by Conole and Dyke sets the context by pointing to a number of problems that inhibit the widespread, effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support learning. They argue that this situation highlights the need to explore a theoretical basis for the use of ICT to support learning. The central argument of the paper is that the notion of affordances can make a significant contribution to this endeavour. The paper aims to articulate the potential impact of these affordances primarily through the development of a taxonomy. It draws on social constructivist theory to help understand and articulate the impact of these affordances. The concept of affordances is potentially both rich and provocative. Conole and Dyke provide a refreshing and diverse look at the theoretical basis for the use of ICT to support learning. We have structured our commentary around six questions that are provided by Conole and Dyke in their Discussion section. Whilst examining these questions we highlight various issues raised by the paper, which we believe, need further consideration and clarification.DOI: 10.1080/0968776042000259591

Understanding and using technological affordances: a commentary on Conole and Dyke

The paper by Conole and Dyke sets the context by pointing to a number of problems that inhibit the widespread, effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support learning. They argue that this situation highlights the need to explore a theoretical basis for the use of ICT to support learning. The central argument of the paper is that the notion of affordances can make a significant contribution to this endeavour. The paper aims to articulate the potential impact of these affordances primarily through the development of a taxonomy. It draws on social constructivist theory to help understand and articulate the impact of these affordances. The concept of affordances is potentially both rich and provocative. Conole and Dyke provide a refreshing and diverse look at the theoretical basis for the use of ICT to support learning. We have structured our commentary around six questions that are provided by Conole and Dyke in their Discussion section. Whilst examining these questions we highlight various issues raised by the paper, which we believe, need further consideration and clarification.DOI: 10.1080/0968776042000259591

The greenhouse effect: Damages, costs and abatement

The buildup of so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere — CO2 in particular-appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate. This paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects, their potential costs to society, and likely costs of abatement. For a “worst case” scenario it is impossible to assess, in economic terms, the full range of possible non-linear synergistic effects. In the “most favorable” (although not necessarily “likely”) case (of slow-paced climate change), however, it seems likely that the impacts are within the “affordable” range, at least in the industrialized countries of the world. In the “third world” the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance, making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible. We tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate-induced damages at $30 to $35 per ton of “CO2 equivalent”, worldwide, with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea-level rise. The non-quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded. The costs and benefits of (1) reducing CFC use and (2) reducing fossil fuel consumption, as a means of abatement, are considered in some detail. This strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers. The indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil-fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from $20 to $60 per ton of CO2 eliminated. In addition, there is good evidence that modest (e.g. 25%) reductions in CO2 emissions may be achievable by the U.S. (and, by implication, for other countries) by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits (savings) to energy consumers of the order of $50 per ton of CO2 saved. A higher level of overall emissions reduction — possibly approaching 50% — could probably be achieved, at little or not net cost, by taking advantage of these savings. We suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction (or a carbon tax) as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and CO2 emissions. To minimize the economic burden (and create a political constituency in support of the approach) we suggest the substitution of resource-based taxes in general for other types of taxes (on labor, income, real estate, or trade) that are now the main sources of government revenue. While it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the “optimal” tax on extractive resources, we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy-making. In fact, we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles, and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria.