61 posts · 35,902 views
Andrew D Wilson & Sabrina Golonka are two psychologists who are interested in developing a more coherent, naturalised approach to the scientific study of human behaviour. Andrew studies the perceptual control of action, with a special interest in learning. Sabrina studies similarity and categorisation. We're both interested in exploring non-representational theories in psychology, including dynamical systems and ecological psychology.
Andrew Wilson
61 posts
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- February 28, 2013
- 09:11 AM
- 193 views
The affordances of objects and pictures of those objects
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
People interested in how perception and action affect cognition have begun talking about affordances. This should be great news; the ecological approach suggests that affordances are the properties of the world that we perceive that enable us to control our actions, so if you are interested in how action can ground, say, memory or language, then discussing affordances should enable real progress. The term 'affordance', however, is a technical term, and it refers to very particular properties of ........ Read more »
Pecher, D., de Klerk, R., Klever, L., Post, S., van Reenen, J., & Vonk, M. (2013) The role of affordances for working memory for objects. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25(1), 107-118. DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2012.750324
- February 12, 2013
- 05:11 AM
- 57 views
'Embodied Cognition Is Not What You Think It Is' - the paper!
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Whoops, we did it again - a paper based on the blog! This time we are in press at Frontiers in Psychology, in a Research Topic on embodied cognition, with a paper we somehow got away with calling 'Embodied Cognition is Not What You Think It Is'. This paper draws from a lot of posts on the blog on embodied cognition, perception-action and language. We have used this opportunity to tackle some key issues head on, and we like this paper a lot :) We cover all the important issues and we set up........ Read more »
Wilson, A., & Golonka, S. (2013) Embodied Cognition is Not What you Think it is. Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00058
- February 8, 2013
- 06:26 AM
- 187 views
Learning the affordances for maximum distance throwing
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Over the last couple of posts, I have reviewed data that shows people can perceive which object they can, in fact, throw the farthest ahead of time by hefting the object. Both the size and the weight of the object affect people's judgements and the distance thrown; however, only weight affects the dynamics of throwing (release angle and velocity are unaffected by changes in size). This rules out the smart perceptual mechanism proposed by Bingham et al (1989), which proposed that both size and we........ Read more »
Zhu, Q., & Bingham, G. (2010) Learning to perceive the affordance for long-distance throwing: Smart mechanism or function learning?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(4), 862-875. DOI: 10.1037/a0018738
- January 24, 2013
- 05:30 AM
- 119 views
Is hefting to perceive the affordance for throwing a smart perceptual mechanism?
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
In the last post, I reviewed Geoff's first paper looking at whether people can perceive the affordance for throwing an object to a maximum distance and a first swing at identifying the information specifying the affordance. People can perceive the affordance. Bingham et al then identified an invariant relation between the timing of the motions of the wrist and elbow when people hefted the balls they chose as optimal for throwing, and showed that this kinematic pattern specified a peak in ........ Read more »
Zhu, Q., & Bingham, G. (2008) Is hefting to perceive the affordance for throwing a smart perceptual mechanism?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34(4), 929-943. DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.34.4.929
Bingham, G., Schmidt, R., & Rosenblum, L. (1989) Hefting for a maximum distance throw: A smart perceptual mechanism. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 15(3), 507-528. DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.15.3.507
- January 21, 2013
- 04:46 AM
- 86 views
Hefting for a Maximum Distance Throw
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
From the task dynamic analysis of throwing for maximum distance, we've identified the fact that for a given release angle and maximum release velocity, there is an object whose size and weight optimises the distance it will travel when thrown. Can people perceive this combination ahead of time? More specifically, can people identify the object which affords throwing to a maximum distance, and if so, how?Bingham, Schmidt & Rosenblum (1989) is the first paper investigating this question. It is........ Read more »
Bingham, G., Schmidt, R., & Rosenblum, L. (1989) Hefting for a maximum distance throw: A smart perceptual mechanism. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 15(3), 507-528. DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.15.3.507
- January 14, 2013
- 04:27 AM
- 141 views
Do our fingers wrinkle in the wet to improve our grip?
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
If you sit in the bath for more than 10 minutes or so, you'll notice that your fingers get wrinkled like a prune. People thought for a while that this was a local response to the wet conditions, but it turns out the wrinkling is an active, neurally controlled process. In 1936 two scientists observed a boy who had suffered some temporary damage to the median nerve; he lost feeling in his thumb, index and middle finger and, surprisingly, those fingers didn't wrinkle in the wet. There's a great pos........ Read more »
Changizi, M., Weber, R., Kotecha, R., & Palazzo, J. (2011) Are Wet-Induced Wrinkled Fingers Primate Rain Treads?. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 77(4), 286-290. DOI: 10.1159/000328223
Kareklas, K., Nettle, D., & Smulders, T. (2013) Water-induced finger wrinkles improve handling of wet objects. Biology Letters, 9(2), 20120999-20120999. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0999
- January 3, 2013
- 05:41 AM
- 156 views
Using coordination to study learning across the lifespan
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
What happens to our ability to learn new movement skills as we age? There is surprisingly little research on this topic; a relatively recent review (Voelcker-Rehage, 2008) found only 25 articles about learning in old age, and no systematic programme of work. The answer to this question matters a lot; rehabilitation after events such as a stroke pretty much always entail (re)learning movement skills, and if our ability to learn gets worse with age, rehabilitation faces an uphill struggle. I........ Read more »
Coats, R. O., Snapp-Childs, W., Wilson, A. D., & Bingham, G. P. (2012) Perceptuo-motor learning rate declines by half from 20s to 70/80s. Experimental Brain Research. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-012-3349-4
- December 6, 2012
- 05:12 AM
- 165 views
The Task Dynamics of Throwing to a Maximum Distance
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
In my last post I went over the formal concept of task dynamics as a way of analysing a task to identify the affordances in that task. This post will examine the task dynamics of projectile motion and relate these to throwing to a maximum distance.This version of the task has been studied in detail over the last few years. There is another version of the task, namely throwing to hit a target (same dynamic, different parameters, therefore same task) and we will get to that later; we're working no........ Read more »
Runeson, S. (1977) On the possibility of "smart" perceptual mechanisms. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 18(1), 172-179. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1977.tb00274.x
- November 30, 2012
- 09:18 AM
- 99 views
Task Dynamics And The Information They Create
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Over the next weeks I want to turn my attention to a detailed account of the process by which you go about studying affordances (formalised as task dynamics) and the perception of affordances (via the kinematic consequences of those task dynamics) using throwing for maximum distances and for accuracy as the task. This post will introduce the basic research programme. Future posts will work through papers from my colleagues Qin Zhu & Geoff Bingham in order (I've done a couple already), as we........ Read more »
Runeson, S. (1977) On the possibility of "smart" perceptual mechanisms. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 18(1), 172-179. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1977.tb00274.x
Bingham, G. (1988) Task-specific devices and the perceptual bottleneck. Human Movement Science, 7(2-4), 225-264. DOI: 10.1016/0167-9457(88)90013-9
Jacobs, D., Runeson, S., & Michaels, C. (2001) Learning to visually perceive the relative mass of colliding balls in globally and locally constrained task ecologies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(5), 1019-1038. DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.27.5.1019
- November 15, 2012
- 05:36 AM
- 220 views
Psychological Science...meet me at camera 3
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Psychological Science, I think we need to talk. I was reading this farewell from your outgoing editor, and it would all be nice enough if I hadn't also just read your latest offering to the altar of 'embodied' cognition. Frankly, it made me wonder whether you actually read all the things you publish.Robert Kail, the outgoing editor, had this to say about the ideal Psychological Science paper:...the ideal Psychological Science manuscript is difficult to define, but easily recognized — the topi........ Read more »
Kille, D., Forest, A., & Wood, J. (2012) Tall, Dark, and Stable: Embodiment Motivates Mate Selection Preferences. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797612457392
- November 9, 2012
- 09:19 AM
- 198 views
How do we perceive which objects afford throwing the farthest?
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Previous work has established that people with throwing experience can perceive the affordance of 'throwability'. If you let these people heft objects with a range of sizes and weights, they will confidently select the one they think they can throw the farthest, and they tend to be correct. It's a very natural task, one you have probably done yourself on a beach or lakeside looking for stones to throw into the water. This is only the first, and relatively easy step in any ecological task an........ Read more »
Zhu, Q., Shockley, K., Riley, M., Tolston, M., & Bingham, G. (2012) Felt heaviness is used to perceive the affordance for throwing but rotational inertia does not affect either. Experimental Brain Research. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-012-3301-7
- October 24, 2012
- 09:10 AM
- 258 views
Giving children with movement problems a leg up with robots
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a surprisingly common problem; it's thought that 6-8% of school aged children are diagnosable. DCD is a motor disorder, where children have great difficulty in producing skilled actions, especially anything requiring fine motor control. Handwriting, tying your shoelaces, sports of any kind are all huge problems for these children. One key question about DCD is why does it occur. Part of the problem in answering this is that it is a behavioural di........ Read more »
Snapp-Childs, W., Mon-Williams, M., & Bingham, G. (2012) A Sensorimotor Approach to the Training of Manual Actions in Children With Developmental Coordination Disorder. Journal of Child Neurology. DOI: 10.1177/0883073812461945
- October 16, 2012
- 07:12 AM
- 284 views
Why does linguisitic information mean what it does?
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Sabrina has been working on a series of posts on an ecological analysis of language (here, here and here, plus more on the way). Her focus has been on the nature of the information for language, and the similarities and differences this information has with the information for perception. We're working some of this analysis into a paper, and writing that got me thinking about this in a little more detail.Our main move on language is to reject the assumption that language is a qualitatively diffe........ Read more »
Cummins, F. (2012) Oscillators and Syllables: A Cautionary Note. Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00364
Turvey, M. T., Shaw, R. E., Reed, E. S., . (1981) Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981). Cognition, 9(3), 237-304. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90002-0
- October 5, 2012
- 06:13 AM
- 265 views
A Way Forward on Specification
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
It's been a while since we've blogged; it's been a crazy summer and we've been insanely busy, but things are settling back down. We have a lot planned for the blog, there's much work to be done on a variety of topics in perception, action, embodied cognition and language. First I want to get back on track with my specification project, so that maybe this can start to move forward.*****************************I've been reviewing work that has been undermining the concept of specification in perce........ Read more »
Prinz, A., Bucher, D., & Marder, E. (2004) Similar network activity from disparate circuit parameters. Nature Neuroscience, 7(12), 1345-1352. DOI: 10.1038/nn1352
- August 17, 2012
- 05:38 AM
- 189 views
The Small Effect Size Effect - Why Do We Put Up With Small Effects?
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Small effects sometimes matter - but psychology can do betterOne of the things that bugs me about 'embodied' cognition research is that the effects, while statistically significant, tend to be small. What this means is that the groups were indeed different in the direction the authors claim, but only slightly, and that the authors had enough people showing the effect to make it come out on average. The problem with small effect sizes is that they mean all you've done is nudge the system. Th........ Read more »
Eerland, A., Guadalupe, T., & Zwaan, R. (2011) Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation. Psychological Science, 22(12), 1511-1514. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611420731
Gehringer, W., & Engel, E. (1986) Effect of ecological viewing conditions on the Ames' distorted room illusion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 12(2), 181-185. DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.12.2.181
Lee YL, & Bingham GP. (2010) Large perspective changes yield perception of metric shape that allows accurate feedforward reaches-to-grasp and it persists after the optic flow has stopped!. Experimental brain research, 204(4), 559-73. PMID: 20563715
Miles, L., Nind, L., Macrae, C. (2010) Moving Through Time. Psychological Science, 21(2), 222-223. DOI: 10.1177/0956797609359333
Runeson, S. (1988) The distorted room illusion, equivalent configurations, and the specificity of static optic arrays. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14(2), 295-304. DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.14.2.295
Wilson, A. D., & Bingham, G. P. (2008) Identifying the information for the visual perception of relative phase. Perception , 70(3), 465-476. DOI: 10.3758/PP.70.3.465
- July 20, 2012
- 08:58 AM
- 389 views
Cracking the Tough Nut of Chimp Tool Use
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
A paper just out in PLoSOne reports that chimpanzees, given some experience and enough of a weight difference, prefer to use heavier hammer stones when cracking hard nuts. This is apparently quite exciting: this is the first study to isolate weight as a property relevant to the task of cracking open a nut. This caught my attention because weight is not actually the only key property that determines nut cracking success. A heavy hammer is great, but it will eventually become too heavy to lift, an........ Read more »
Schrauf, C, Call, J, Fuwa, K, & Hirata, S. (2012) Do Chimpanzees Use Weight to Select Hammer Tools?. PLoSOne, 7(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041044
- July 6, 2012
- 10:08 AM
- 331 views
Evolution vs.Specification (Specification V)
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
One of Gibson's key contributions was to reveal that it was possible for the optic array to specify a meaningful property of the world. Gibson insisted that specification existed between the world and optics (each property produced one unambiguous pattern, and thus the mapping is 1:1). Specification, said Gibson, meant direct perception was possible, because picking up that one variable meant perceiving the one property that caused it. Turvey, Shaw, Reed & Mace (1981) formalised this id........ Read more »
Turvey, M. T., Shaw, R. E., Reed, E. S., . (1981) Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981). Cognition, 9(3), 237-304. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90002-0
Withagen, R., & Chemero, A. (2009) Naturalizing Perception: Developing the Gibsonian Approach to Perception along Evolutionary Lines. Theory , 19(3), 363-389. DOI: 10.1177/0959354309104159
Withagen, R., & van der Kamp, J. (2010) Towards a new ecological conception of perceptual information: Lessons from a developmental systems perspective. Human Movement Science, 29(1), 149-163. DOI: 10.1016/j.humov.2009.09.003
- June 23, 2012
- 09:08 AM
- 240 views
Individual Variation in the Use of Perceptual Information (Specification IV)
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
If it is the case that perception requires the use of specifying variables, then there should be no individual variation in what information variables people use. However, as we've already seen, such variation exists: the dynamics of a collision event produces multiple kinematic patterns in the optic array, and people judging the mass ratio of colliding balls use all of these, only one of which actually specifies which ball is heavier. Even with training, people do not always find the specifying........ Read more »
Withagen, R., & van Wermeskerken, M. (2009) Individual differences in learning to perceive length by dynamic touch: Evidence for variation in perceptual learning capacities. Perception , 71(1), 64-75. DOI: 10.3758/APP.71.1.64
- June 15, 2012
- 08:55 AM
- 357 views
Non-Specifying Variables in the Perception of Collisions (Specification III)
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Part of Withagen's critique of specification and whether it's necessary to underpin direct perception is a brief review of some empirical literature that shows people using non-specifying variables. I want to spend a few posts reviewing these, because all good potentially sensible ideas need data to confirm whether they're right or not.First up, the perception of relative mass after a collision. Events in the world are dynamic, that is, they involve motion caused by a pattern of underlying force........ Read more »
Jacobs, D., Michaels, C., & Runeson, S. (2000) Learning to perceive the relative mass of colliding balls: The effects of ratio scaling and feedback. Perception , 62(7), 1332-1340. DOI: 10.3758/BF03212135
Jacobs, D., Runeson, S., & Michaels, C. (2001) Learning to visually perceive the relative mass of colliding balls in globally and locally constrained task ecologies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(5), 1019-1038. DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.27.5.1019
- June 10, 2012
- 05:36 AM
- 343 views
How Information Gets Its Meaning (Specification II)
by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists
Gibson proposed that specification was required in order for perceptual information to have meaning that was tied to the world in a manner an organism could use. The concept of specification has been placed back under the microscope by recent theoretical and empirical work. Here I want to briefly summarise the theoretical argument put forth by Withagen & van der Kamp (2010), who worry that specification places too strong a constraint on what a perceiving-acting organism might find informativ........ Read more »
Turvey, M. T., Shaw, R. E., Reed, E. S., . (1981) Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981). Cognition, 9(3), 237-304. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(81)90002-0
Withagen, R., & van der Kamp, J. (2010) Towards a new ecological conception of perceptual information: Lessons from a developmental systems perspective. Human Movement Science, 29(1), 149-163. DOI: 10.1016/j.humov.2009.09.003
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