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Affordances, context and sociality

  • S.I.: Between Vision and Action
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Abstract

Affordances, i.e. the opportunity of actions offered by the environment, are one of the central research topics for the theoretical perspectives that view cognition as emerging from the interaction between the environment and the body. Being at the bridge between perception and action, affordances help to question a dichotomous view of perception and action. While Gibson’s view of affordances is mainly externalist, many contemporary approaches define affordances (and micro-affordances) as the product of long-term visuomotor associations in the brain. These studies have emphasized the fact that affordances are activated automatically, independently from the context and the previous intention to act: for example, affordances related to objects’ size would emerge even if the task does not require focusing on size. This emphasis on the automaticity of affordances has led to overlook their flexibility and contextual-dependency. In this contribution I will outline and discuss recent perspectives and evidence that reveal the flexibility and context-dependency of affordances, clarifying how they are modulated by the physical, cultural and social context. I will focus specifically on social affordances, i.e. on how perception of affordances might be influenced by the presence of multiple actors having different goals.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Luca Tummolini for thoughtful comments on a previous version, and Laura Barca, Chiara Fini, Francois Foerster, Luisa Lugli, Giovanni Pezzulo, Laura Rio and Matt Sims, for discussions on affordances.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Via degli Apuli 1, 00145, Rome, Italy

    Anna M. Borghi

  2. Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy

    Anna M. Borghi

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  1. Anna M. Borghi
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Correspondence to Anna M. Borghi.

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Borghi, A.M. Affordances, context and sociality. Synthese 199, 12485–12515 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02044-1

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