Learning About Hidden Affordances

 描述（由申请人提供）：本研究的总体目标是促进对运动技能获得的一个关键但未研究的方面的理解-儿童如何学习隐藏的行动启示。以前的研究集中在儿童发现和实施明显的启示，如达到的对象和挤压通过孔。通过视觉和触觉探索，可以很容易地获得明显的启示信息。相比之下，许多日常工件的启示信息是隐藏的，需要发现和实现一个不明显的目标动作。幼儿如何发现容器的可抓握盖需要扭转动作，或者关闭的门需要推拉动作才能打开？事实上，关闭用于自我护理的人工制品，打开橱柜和门等需要一系列非显而易见的动作，但人们对儿童如何发现和实施渗透在日常生活活动中的隐藏启示知之甚少。我们假设幼儿可以通过两种方式学习隐藏的启示通过同样类型的“自己动手学习”，学习显性启示和/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可以发现和实施隐藏的启示，通过（AIM 1）自己动手学习和（AIM 2）社会支持的学习，在一系列的封闭类型，反映了日常生活的几个活动（打开容器，灵活的袋子，橱柜和门）。我们将描述儿童自发产生的行为以及学习如何在真实的时间和整个发展中展开。受母亲对儿童行动的自然社会支持的启发，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发现和实施目标行动来测试各种类型的特定于负担能力的社会信息的有效性。我们将描述儿童何时以及为什么寻求成人的社会支持，并使用头戴式眼动跟踪来确定儿童是否将视觉注意力集中在成人提供的关键信息上。对儿童自己动手学习隐藏的启示的发现将对设计使儿童能够进行日常生活活动的封闭物以及通过限制儿童接触危险物质和危险情况来确保儿童安全产生影响。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独立进行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.