Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Object concepts and action: extracting affordances from objects parts.

Anna M Borghi1

  • 1Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat, 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy. borghi@psibo.unibo.it

Acta Psychologica
|January 22, 2004
PubMed
Summary

Artifact part salience is driven by action relevance and situational context. Easier-to-derive affordances lead to faster processing and better sense-making, supporting action-based conceptualization.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Gender identity impacts the perception of vocal congruence.

Frontiers in cognition·2026
Same author

Variability and methodological choices in articulatory suppression tasks: a review.

Frontiers in psychology·2026
Same author

Interoceptive grounding of conceptual knowledge: new insight from an interoceptive-exteroceptive categorization task of concepts.

Psychological research·2026
Same author

Abstractness and social interaction through a new lens: the potentialities of hyperscanning in naturalistic settings.

Frontiers in neuroscience·2025
Same author

Thinking climate change through the lens of abstractness: a multi-task and multi-setting investigation into generational differences in the conceptualization of ecology.

Cognitive research: principles and implications·2025
Same author

Evidence of Embodiment-based changes in older Adult Language.

Psychological research·2025

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

  • Understanding how humans conceptualize objects and their parts is crucial for fields like AI and design.
  • Previous research suggests object recognition involves sensory-motor representations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of action relevance and affordances in conceptualizing object parts.
  • To determine if sensory-motor simulations underpin conceptualization.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments used a part-generation task to assess artifact part salience and production order.
  • Three experiments involved participants verifying object parts and evaluating action-object combinations based on sentence descriptions.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Artifact part salience and production order are influenced by relevance to canonical actions and situational context.
  • Parts with easily extractable affordances were processed faster and led to more coherent evaluations.
  • Results indicate that sensory-motor simulations are fundamental to conceptualization.

Conclusions:

  • Conceptualization is primarily action-based, relying on sensory-motor simulations.
  • The way we understand object parts is dynamically influenced by the current situation and potential actions.