Tackling social differences at

their econiche
Miguel Segundo Ortin
March 13th, 2019
Where I want to arrive…
Sociocultural specializations:

“Social animals live in populations that have specializations (age, gender and social
status-related) in behavior. These specializations produce constraints on what
affordances can be utilized, by whom, and when” (Reed, 1993, p. 52)

I propose to approach social differences from the point of view of Reed’s

specializations

I will sketch an account of how these specializations are learned based through the
ecological theory of perceptual learning
Structure of the talk
(1) Ecological psychology: A primer

(2) On making ecological psychology more cultural

(3) Socio-cultural perceptual learning

(4) Social differences as specializations

Ecological psychology: A
primer
General motto: “Ask not what’s inside your head, but what your head’s inside
of” (Mace, 1977)

Three (main) tenets of EP:

Perception and action are part of the same process

Perception is direct—viz., non-inferential, non-representational

Perception is (primarily) of affordances

Perception and action are part of the same
process
Perception is active and for action:

Perception involves active exploration 

Through action, the organism makes
available information, and this information
specifies further opportunities for interaction
(affordances)

Perceiving is an act of selection 

Perception involves the organism paying
The function of the perception-action cycles is to stabilize the attention to the information available in her
organism’s overall behavior with regards to achieving a particular sensory array
task or goal
Perception is direct
Perception consists of the detection of information over time:
Perception is (primarily) of affordances
A challenge for ecological psychology
Perception is usually explained and investigated in terms of physical laws only (Turvey-Shaw-Mace
approach)

oA particular interaction leads to the detection of certain information which leads to the perception
of an affordance (lawful chain)
oAn affordance is a property of the O-E system, depending on the combination of the bodily
features of the organism, and the properties of the object—e.g., climbability (Warren, 1984)

Sociocultural background is barely considered in the ecological approach

oCanonical studies and presentations of EP rarely acknowledge the fact that our econiche is also
constituted by social institutions (norms, conventions, practices, prohibitions, taboos, etc.)
oOur perception-action cycles are (often) shaped by these social institutions so we
unreflectively act according to them
 On making ecological
psychology more cultural
Some theorists have tried to (re)think perception-action from the point
of view of socio-cultural-historical processes

o “Canonical affordances” (Costall, 1995, 2012)

o “Behavior settings” (Heft, 2001, 2007, 2018)
o “Skilled intentionality” (Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014)
o Ecological psychology + Niche Construction Theory (Withagen &
van Wermeskerken, 2010; Heras-Escribano & de Pinedo, 2018)
Skilled Intentionality Framework
2 main ideas:

o The affordances that are available for a specific individual relate to the practices, conventions
and customs that are shared across the members of her community (forms of life)
o Skilled intentionality: The individual’s expertise in responding adequately to the simultaneous
actions that a niche affords in a particular situation in order to improve the grip on this situation
 The capacity to distinguish relevant from irrelevant affordances in a particular
situation

2 problems:
o SIF lack a developmental story that accounts for how our perception-action cycles can get
attuned to sociocultural norms
o SIF does not recognize “that forms of life […] are structured and assign different positions to
its inhabitants, and each position comes with a different set of affordances” (Ayala, 2016, p. 3)
 Socio-cultural perceptual
learning (from an ecological
standpoint)
Perceptual learning is a process of discrimination, not enrichment (J.
J. Gibson & E. J. Gibson, 1955; E. J. Gibson 1969, 1991; E. J. Gibson &
Pick, 2000;)

“[Perceptual Learning] always involves a change in the relation between

an active organism and some affordance of the environment, specially in
the use of information about the environment in relation to the organism
itself [...] Learning can affect changes in task, in what is perceived, and
in the form of an activity, both exploratory and performatory” (E. J.
Gibson and Pick 2000, p. 50)
Perceptual learning in EP:
oEducation of attention
oCalibration
oEducation of intention

All these aspects are usually studied by considering individuals in

laboratories (e.g., direct learning). We need a complementary social
approach to perceptual learning if we want to explain how perception-action
cycles can be attuned to sociocultural norms

Children are immersed in sociocultural practices from the beginning or

their lives by means of their interaction with parents, care-takers, etc., and
their exposition to social archetypes
The importance of joint action
“[I]t is important to recognize that others function in ways that go beyond solely making objects
available to the developing child, introducing him or her to social structures, and directly guiding
action. During periods of reciprocal exchange with the child, other individuals are partners in
stablishing an “interaction frame” […] and critically, by means of that joint frame possibilities arise
for the child to engage the world intersubjectively as a collaborator in a “we.” The more experienced
individuals in the interaction frame bring with them ways of acting and engaging the world—that is,
styles of comportment—that they have taken on from their own previous years of immersion as co-
actors in social interactions. Like the manner in which their guiding, steadying hand can help shape
the child’s grasp of an object, socially normative ways of acting can be shared between guide and
learner within the frame of a “we.” In this way, social practices are reproduced” (Heft, 2018, p. 116)

By hypothesis, we can explain joint action without requiring the novices to have sophisticated
cognitive abilities—e.g., the capacity to conceptualize other mental states—by appeal to
mechanism for social conformism, coordination, and our ability to perceive other’s
approval/disapproval (see Satne & Salice, 2016)
Education of attention
Attention = Control over detection

Attention is optimally educated whenever the individual has learned to detect those
informational variables that specify the affordances that are relevant to accomplish a
particular task (E. J. Gibson, 1969)

Often, joint action is often accompanied by joint attention (Marsh, Richardson &
Schmidt, 2009; Schmidt & Richardson, 2008)

Through recursive interaction and collaboration with other (more expert) practitioners,
novices learn how to detect the informational variables that specify the relevant
affordances  Attention get trained by means of vis-à-vis collaboration and social
feedback (both implicit and explicit)
Calibration
Calibration refers to the process by which perceivers adjust their
behavior to an informational variable

Calibration involve two main aspects:

oLearning what affordances I can/cannot use. Not all the affordances I

perceive are equally acceptable
oLearning how to take advantage of an affordance in a way that it is
socially acceptable  Modulate by bodily comportment to adequate to
sociocultural norms (e.g., how to sit on a chair)
Education of intention
As said before, perception usually requires the active exploration of the
environment. This exploration is goal-oriented:
“[W]hat about the “intentionality” of perception
when an observer is seeking information instead of
simply having it presented to him? . . . What to me
sounds promising is to begin with the assumption
that active perception is controlled by a search for
the affordances of the environment and that active
behavior is controlled by perceiving these
affordances” (J. J. Gibson, 1974/1982, pp. 387-
388)
What informational variables are relevant to us in a particular moment depend on
what we aim to achieve. Therefore, “intentions are central determinants of what
is perceived and acted on” (Michaels & Palatinus, 2014, p. 21)
 “Intention formation is itself shaped by the affordances offered by the
environment—it’s a mentality shaped by the environs, which may also be guided
or informed by others, and may in fact take place through intersubjective
discussions. […] That means that intention formation is embedded, not only in a
an individual’s life history, but in an individual’s relations with others, in her
cultural milieu, and, in effect, in the world” (Gallagher & Ransom, 2016, p. 340)

Experts (parents, caregivers) encourage some actions while repress others.

This process of encouraging and repressing leads the children to learn what
behaviors are expected from them (what they can/cannot do and what they
ought/ought not do)  “Expedient” vs. “Proper” behavior (J. J. Gibson, 1950)

This affects how children interact with the environment (what affordances they
look for, and what information they attend) both reflectively and unreflectively
Perceptual-Motor habits
Perceptual learning leads to the establishment of perceptual-motor habits (as understood in
the pragmatist, phenomenological, and enactivist traditions)

“The essence of habit is an acquired predisposition to ways or mode of response […] Habit
means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections
and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts” (Dewey, 1922, p. 42)

“Habits in this tradition are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web
of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In
addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as
transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality” (Barandiaran & Di
Paolo, 2014, p. 1)

Habits constitute an essential part of my identity (Dewey, 1922; Di Paolo et al. 2017)
Social differences as
‘Specializations’
The proposal – An overview
Understanding social differences in terms of sociocultural specializations (Reed, 1993)  Normative constraints
on what affordances can be used by whom and when

These social specializations are enacted in learned perceptual-motor habits (but they are seldom verbalized and
reflected upon!)

When we partake in a community, we do it by playing specialized roles in it (namely, depending on our age,
gender, socio-economical status, etc.), and these roles are manifest in our perceptual-motor habits

oWe learn how to be a woman, a man, a PhD student, a university professor, a mother, a father, etc.  We develop specialized
dispositions to detect and take advantage of some affordances instead of others
oThese specializations are also manifest in expectations that serve as the basis for self- and external correction
oMost likely, specializations also have a phenomenological dimension (e.g., inhibited intentionality, sense of agency, sense of
discomfort)

Acknowledging this uneven distribution of specializations can help us to understand “why some individuals, but
not others, regularly perceive and exploit certain affordances in certain contexts, and why this is not exclusively
dependent on their intrinsic properties” (Ayala, 2016, p. 4)
 “It is a mistake to construct a behavior theory without reference to social
interaction, and then to attach it only at the end” (J. J. Gibson, 1950, pp. 154-155)

Cheers!
Miguel Segundo Ortin
https://uow.academia.edu/MiguelSegundoOrtin