Learning About Hidden Affordances

 描述(由申请者提供)：这项研究的总体目标是促进对运动技能获得的一个关键但未被研究的方面的理解--儿童如何学习隐藏的行动负担。以前的研究主要集中在儿童发现和实现显性负担方面，比如伸手拿东西和挤过孔洞。通过视觉和触觉探索，可以很容易地获得显性负担的信息。相比之下，许多日常物品的负担信息是隐藏的，需要发现和实现一个不明显的目标操作。幼儿如何发现容器的可握持盖子需要扭转动作，或者关闭的门需要推拉动作才能打开？事实上，关闭用于自我护理、打开橱柜和门等的文物需要一系列不明显的行动，但人们对儿童如何发现并实施渗透到日常生活活动中的隐性负担知之甚少。我们假设幼儿可以通过两种方式了解隐性负担--通过与学习公开负担相同类型的“自己动手学习”和/或通过知识渊博的成年人提供的社会支持学习。我们将测试儿童是否能够通过(AIM 1)自己动手学习和(AIM 2)社会支持学习，在一系列反映日常生活活动(打开容器、灵活的袋子、橱柜和门)的封闭类型中发现和实施隐藏的负担能力。我们将描述儿童自发地产生哪些动作，以及学习是如何实时和跨发展展开的。受母亲对儿童行为的天然社会支持的启发，我们将通过系统地改变社会支持并询问这些操纵如何影响儿童对目标行动的发现和实施，来测试各种负担能力特定的社会信息的有效性。我们将确定儿童何时以及为什么向成人寻求社会支持，并使用头盔眼球跟踪来确定儿童是否将他们的视觉注意力引导到成年人提供的关键信息上。对儿童自己动手学习隐藏的负担能力的研究将对设计使儿童能够进行日常生活活动的封闭器以及通过限制儿童接触危险物质和环境来确保儿童的安全产生影响。关于社会支持学习的研究结果将对父母、教师和职业治疗师如何帮助儿童进行独立的日常生活活动产生影响。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this research is to advance understanding of a critical but unstudied aspect of motor skill acquisition-how children learn about hidden affordances for action. Previous work has focused on children's discovery and implementation of overt affordances such as reaching for objects and squeezing through apertures. Information for overt affordances is readily available through visual and haptic exploration. In contrast, information for affordances of many everyday artifacts is hidden, and requires discovery and implementation of a non-obvious target action. How do young children discover that the graspable cap of a container requires a twisting action or that a closed door requires a pushing or pulling action to open it? Indeed, the closures on artifacts used for self-care, opening cabinets and doors, and so forth require an array of nonobvious actions, but little is known about how children discover and implement the hidden affordances that permeate activities of daily living. We hypothesize two ways that young children can learn about hidden affordances-through the same types of "do-it-yourself learning" that characterize learning about overt affordances and/or through socially supported learning provided by knowledgeable adults. We will test whether children can discover and implement hidden affordances through (AIM 1) do-it-yourself learning and (AIM 2) socially supported learning across a range of closure types reflecting several activities of daily living (opening containers, flexible pouches, cabinets and doors). We will describe which actions children spontaneously generate and how learning unfolds in real time and across development. Inspired by mothers' natural social support of children's actions, we will test the effectiveness of various types of affordance-specific social information by systematically varying social support and asking how these manipulations affect children's discovery and implementation of the target action. We will characterize when and why children seek social support from adults, and use head-mounted eye tracking to determine whether children direct their visual attention to critical information offered by an adult. Finding on children's do-it-yourself learning about hidden affordances will have implications for designing closures that enable children to perform activities of daily living and for ensuring children's safety by limiting their access to dangerous substances and situations. Findings on socially supported learning will have implications for how parents, teachers, and occupational therapists can help children to perform activities of daily living independently.