title: Can perception of aperture passability be improved immediately after practice in actual passage? Dissociation between walking and wheelchair use.
abstract: Perception of the fit between a person's action capabilities and relevant environmental properties (i.e., affordances) is often fine tuned gradually through experience performing a behavior. However, the immediate effect of such practice on the improvement of affordance perception is unclear. The present study was designed to examine whether a critical factor in the immediate effect of such practice is the opportunity to detect very fine differences between possible and impossible behaviors [i.e., high-resolution (HR) practice]. Participants reported whether apertures of various widths were passable when walking while holding a 69-cm horizontal bar (Experiment 1) or when using a wheelchair (Experiment 2). When practicing passing through apertures, seven different aperture widths, including their minimum passable width (70 cm for both experiments) were presented around the affordance boundary with 1- or 5-cm increments for the HR or low-resolution (LR) conditions, respectively. Accuracy of perception of passability improved following both HR and LR practice when walking. In contrast, no improvement was observed in any condition when using a wheelchair. These findings suggest that the immediate effect of practice was mediated by the form of locomotion but not the resolution of the practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Promotion Science, Graduate School of Human Health Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University, 1-1 Minami-Ohsawa, Hachioji, Tokyo, 192-0397, Japan.
authors.forename: Masaaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yasuda
authors.forename: Jeffrey B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Wagman
authors.forename: Takahiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Higuchi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D034941:Upper Extremity / Q000502:physiology; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*; D014910:Wheelchairs; D055815:Young Adult