Do exploratory arm movements contribute to maximum reach distance judgements?

Exploratory movements provide information about agents' action capabilities in a given environment. However, little is known about the specifics of these exploratory movements, such as which movements are necessary to perceive a given action capability. This experiment tested whether arm movements contributed to judgements of maximum reach distance. Participants made judgements about their maximum reach distance by walking to the point farthest from an object from which they still perceived the object to be reachable. Over the course of two sets of nine judgements, participants' arms either swung naturally by their sides (Unrestricted Condition) or were held together behind their backs (Restricted Condition). Arm movement restriction increased maximum reach distance judgement error when compared with unrestricted judgements. In addition, judgement error improved over trials only when exploratory arm movements were unrestricted, and the improvements did not carry over to subsequent judgements made when exploratory arm movements were restricted. Arm movement restriction did not increase the variability of judgement error when compared with unrestricted judgements. The results indicate that exploration is necessary to generate affordance information, show that restricted exploration degrades affordance perception, and suggest that maximum reach distance exists at the global array level. In addition, they have practical implications for operational situations in which actors' arm movements are restricted, such as when military personnel wear body armour.

Does lacking information about your affordances impact your perception of others' affordances? A test of the embodied simulation hypothesis.

It has been argued that observers perceive actors' affordances via embodied simulation, that is, first perceiving their own affordance, which serves as a model for the actor's affordance, and then adjusting that model to account for differences between themselves and the actor. If so, then preventing observers from picking up information about their own affordances should cause several effects. Specifically, observers should make more errors about the actor's affordance compared to when the observer is free to pick up information about their own affordance. In addition, judgments about the actor's affordance should align better with the observer's affordance than with the actor's affordance, and increase in error as differences between the observer's and actor's affordances increase. The present study tested those predictions. To do so, observers (participants) made judgments about the farthest distance that an actor (a confederate) could reach. The observer's arms were either free to move or were immobilized by having the participant hold them behind their back. The present results did not support the predictions. The present research introduces a novel means for evaluating the Embodied Simulation Hypothesis, provides initial tests of related predictions, and corroborates prior research. In addition, it motivates important questions about embodied simulation and affordance perception.