Perceiving children's affordances: recalibrating estimation following single-trial observation of three different...

The adults' ability to perceive affordances for children was investigated in three different tasks. Forty adults made two estimations of the maximum reachability of a 5-year-old boy from a standing position, during a reach-and-jump task and in making a maximum step. A laser light point was displayed on a wall for the estimations of the standing reach and reach-and-jump tasks, or on the floor for the estimations of the step length task. The participants in the experimental group observed the child performing the task between a first and a second estimation, but the participants in the control group did not. In general, the observers were less accurate in estimating the child's maximum step length than in the other tasks. The observation of a single trial was enough to adjust perceivers' estimations, reducing error magnitude to about 50% of the initial error, but only in tasks with a poor first estimation. An absolute error of 5 cm persisted after one-trial observation. The magnitude of the adjustment in the estimation of affordances for others is task-dependent, and is more pronounced in tasks that imply greater action scaling than in tasks that require direct body scaling.