The bidirectional control procedure was used to determine whether pigeons (Columba livia) would imitate a demonstrator that pushed a sliding screen for food. One group of observers saw a trained demonstrator push a sliding screen door with its beak (imitation group), whereas 2 other groups watched the screen move independently (possibly learning how the environment works) with a conspecific eit...

In this paper, we consider the influence of Gibson's affordance theory on the design of robotic agents. Affordance theory (and the ecological approach to agent design in general) has in many cases contributed to the development of successful robotic systems; we provide a brief survey of AI research in this area. However, there remain significant issues that complicate discussions on this topic,...

In an ERP study we investigate the time course of the interaction between the lexically specified telic role of a noun and the contextually provided ad-hoc affordance induced by a linguistic discourse. If preceded by a neutral discourse context, a verb inconsistent with the telic role in a sentence elicits an enhanced N400 compared to a congruent verb. However, if the preceding discourse contex...

The purpose of this study was to explore how users perceive the affordances of an object from specific operation tasks. These affordances can be specified in terms of perceptual information. To this end, the eye-tracking technique was employed to capture what product parts uses’ fixation focused on when using a product for specific operational tasks. The results show that, for physical-behavior...

The development of computer technology has created artifacts that have more complex and intelligent functions. Such artifacts need more sophisticated interfaces than primitive artifacts. In this paper, we discuss which characteristics are appropriate for interfaces with artifacts and propose a concept of active affordance. We describe an autonomous mobile chair that we built as a test bed for a...

We present a study that explores the affordance evoked by sound and sound-gesture mappings. In order to do this, we make use of a sensor system with minimal form factor in a user study that minimizes cultural association. The present study focuses on understanding how participants describe sounds and gestures produced while playing designed sonic interaction mappings. This approach seeks to mov...

From the technical point of view, it is possible for a developer to embed and visualize as much information as possible in an open-ended virtual geographic environment, meanwhile, allow the user to interactively query and manipulate the information. However, the design and interpretation hitherto is a more or less blind experiment. In order to raise the awareness of this problem, the author rev...

This paper describes an effort to revise the PMFserv agent architecture in order to implement J.J. Gibson's Affordance Theory. The theoretical justification for this revision is outlined along with the engineering constraints that inspired it. We describe the resulting architectural changes and the impact of those changes on the flexibility, ease of rapid scenario creation, and ability to reuse...

We address the problem of affordance reasoning in diverse scenes that appear in the real world. Affordances relate the agent’s actions to their effects when taken on the surrounding objects. In our work, we take the egocentric view of the scene, and aim to reason about action-object affordances that respect both the physical world as well as the social norms imposed by the society. We also aim ...

This article investigates users’ perceptions of videoconferencing (VC) as a mode of communication in business meetings. The study demonstrates that affordance theory is a fruitful theoretical perspective for understanding what shapes users’ perceptions of how well VC works as a communication technology in business meetings. The article is based on observation and qualitative interviews with VC ...