The Affordance Directive: Affordance Priming Facilitates Object Detection Similar to Semantic Priming

The present study investigated differences in priming perceptions of target objects via affordance or semantic primes. Affordances denote possibilities for action in relation to objects (e.g., chair – sit), whereas semantic primes describe related concepts and features of objects (e.g., chair – legs). In Experiments 1A/1B the effects of affordance and semantic priming were compared via a semantic-categorization task using a normed word list of objects. In Experiments 2–4 we investigated affordance priming on object identification of pictures using a shoebox-classification task. In Experiment 1A participants were asked to respond by categorizing the presented word as concrete or abstract. Experiment 1B was similar to 1A, but with a 1000 ms response deadline. Experiment 2 presented target objects as words or photographs. Experiment 3 presented target objects as photographs degraded at three levels (clear, medium blur, extreme blur). Experiment 4 presented target objects as photographs that began degraded and slowly became clear. Experiment 1B found word priming for semantic primes, but not affordances. In contrast, Experiments 2–4 found object priming was facilitated by both affordances and semantic primes. Collectively, our results indicate that affordances facilitate object classification.