The Theory of Affordances As Applied to Infants
Date
2002
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
When do infants perceive the relationship between affordances of objects and their own bodies (i.e. - when do infants begin to assimilate objects to action patterns such as squeezing, reaching, pulling?) Research has shown that around the first year of life infants begin to perform actions that resemble certain types of tool-use. In this study infants aged five to fifteen months were observed as they played with specific toys. There was a total of seven toys: three of Type A which had an additional property for a specific affordance, three of Type B which were identical to the first three in all aspects except for the additional property, and one toy which did not have a match. The results showed that all infants were better able to perceive the affordances of rhythmic movement, swinging, pushing-pulling, and squeezing in the toys that had the additional properties for these affordances than in the toys that did not. The older infants of ten to fifteen months were better able to detect these offerings of the objects than the younger group of infants aged five to nine months. This means that affordance behavior may develop earlier in life than previously thought and that tool-use is a continuous and gradual process that begins very early with these behaviors.