Notes for “The Theory of Affordances”
From: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception Chapter 8
by James J. Gibson
Gibson firstly proposed the concept of affordances in his book “The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception”. Here are the notes from the chapter 8 of the book where Affordances is proposed.
The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.
Affordances cannot be measured as we measure in physics.
There could be other examples. The different substances of the environment have different affordances for nutrition and for manufacture.
Gibson suggests that man changes the environment for the purpose of to change what it affords him, making life easier for them.
He also separated the environments into three, the substances(materials), the medium(air, water), and the surfaces. He breaks down the affordance into different kinds of items/objects, to discuss the affordances provided by those different objects.
The medium:
Air affords breathing. it also affords unimpeded locomotion, and visual perception.
The Substances:
More substantial than water, have characteristic surfaces.
The surfaces and layout:
A horizontal, flat, extended, rigid surface affords support
The objects
The affordances of what we loosely call objects are extremely various.To Perceive An Affordance Is Not To Classify An Object.
The other persons and animals:
Animals and persons also provide affordances.
When touched they touch back, when struck they strike back; in short, they interact with the observer and with one another. Behavior affords behavior, and the whole subject matter of psychology and of the social sciences can be thought of as an elaboration of this basic fact. Sexual behavior, nurturing behavior, fighting behavior, cooperative behavior, economic behavior, political behavior-
— all depend on the perceiving of what another person or other persons afford, or sometimes on the mis-perceiving of it.
Of course, misinformation can be picked up and result in false affordances.
According to the theory being developed, if information is picked up perception results; if misinformation is picked up misperception results.
He also points out that affordances is not something that person needs to learn.
Nevertheless, however true all this may be, the basic affordances of the environment are perceivable and are usually perceivable directly, without an excessive amount of learning.
