Abstract

Body movements during perceptual tasks can be considered as exploratory activity that facilitate perception. In the present study we tested whether the complexity of postural sway is related to perception of affordances. Effort-to-compress (ETC), a novel measure of complexity, was shown to be related to perception as compared to gross measures of body sway (mean magnitude and variability). Specifically, complexity was related to perceptual responses in a behavioral task (judge “standonableness” of sloped terrain), but not when numerical angle judgments of slope were solicited. Furthermore, ETC was extreme at the action boundary of standonableness whereas magnitude and variability of body sway were not. This provides further evidence that the purpose of perception is to guide meaningful behavior (perceive affordances) via active exploration, and not to estimate abstract numerical quantities such as slope angles of ramps. We concluded that moving the body in ways that produces complex exploratory activity is necessary to perceive affordances.

摘要

感知任务期间的身体运动可以被认为是促进感知的探索活动。在本研究中，我们测试了姿势摇摆的复杂性是否与对可供性的感知有关。与身体摇摆的粗略测量（平均幅度和可变性）相比，努力压缩（ETC）是一种新的复杂性测量方法，与感知有关。具体来说，复杂性与行为任务中的感知反应有关（判断倾斜地形的“站立性”），但在请求对坡度进行数字角度判断时无关。此外，ETC 在站立性的作用边界处是极端的，而身体摇摆的幅度和可变性则不是。这进一步证明了感知的目的是通过积极探索来指导有意义的行为（感知可供性），并且不估计抽象的数值量，例如坡道的倾斜角。我们得出结论，以产生复杂探索活动的方式移动身体对于感知可供性是必要的。