Ed Baggs, assistant professor at the University of Southern Denmark, joins me for a conversation about his research on affordances. I invited Ed to join me after reading his latest (preprint) paper ‘The Affordance Hypothesis. In this paper Ed and his co-author Vicente Raja delve into affordance research, using examples like an African fish eagle hunting bee-eaters to illustrate direct perception. 

Ed discusses his journey from traditional cognitive science to exploring affordances in language and human interactions. Though the paper they reference, among many others, James's Principles of Psychology and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, to contextualise Gibson's work. Ed emphasises the need to move beyond categorisation-based thinking to a field-based approach, using action boundaries to operationalise affordances.

As a key part of the operationalisation problem (how to study affordances without falling back into categorical thinking), Ed explains the long-standing debate over affordances' ontological status, referencing Fodor and Pylyshyn's critique and Turvey et al.'s response. In their paper, Ed and Vicente propose viewing affordances as regions of movement space rather than categories. 

The discontinuity problem addresses how humans use language to categorise things, and therefore perceive affordances differently from other animals. 

The conversation also touches on the practical implications for coaches and athletes, emphasising the importance of shared perceptions and meaningful affordances.

There is so much in here. It is worth listening to Episode 60 with Dr Andrew Wilson for an introduction to affordances, and to Episode 1 with Dr James Stafford and Warren Lampard for a conversation about action boundaries and using affordances in practice.

About my guest

Edward Baggs is assistant professor in humanities at the University of Southern Denmark and a fellow at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study. His work focuses on the problem of scaling up embodied cognitive science beyond the individual mind to encompass collaborative activity as well as cognitive development and language. His current interests include direct social perception theory and developing field-based methods for observing cognition in everyday settings.

Links

Ed Baggs on ‘x’ https://x.com/edbaggs/status/1867584095720779812

Preprint full paper DOI https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/xu4wk

YouTube clip of the African Fish Eagle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW-BSDZ7iqc&pp=ygUWYWZyaWNhbiBmaXNoIGVhZ2xlIGJiYw%3D%3D

Karen Adolph visual cliff research clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanGt1G6ScA

How direct is visual perception?: Some reflections on Gibson's “ecological approach.' J.A. Fodor, & Z.W. Pylyshyn (1981)  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0010027781900093?via%3Dihub

Ecological laws of perceiving and acting: In reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981)  Turvey et al. (1981) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/16000703_Ecological_laws_of_perceiving_and_acting_In_reply_to_Fodor_and_Pylyshyn_1981

Yuji Suzuki, a strength and conditioning coach and chiropractor based in Portland, Oregon, discusses his transition to an ecological approach in his work with youth and remote clients. He explains how the COVID-19 pandemic led him to explore online resources, which introduced him to the ecological principles of human movement learning. 

Yuji emphasises the importance of allowing clients to explore their own movements rather than imposing rigid biomechanical models. He also highlights the benefits of remote coaching, which encourages clients to become more independent and self-regulating in their movement practices.

Yuji and I discuss the evolving understanding of pain, emphasising its complexity and the shift from singular to multifaceted approaches. Yuji highlights the importance of considering individual contexts, histories, and environments in pain management. 

Yuji describes the role of clinicians as guiding rather than just diagnosing, focusing on continuous support. We explore the cultural attitudes towards aging and movement in the UK and US. Additionally, we delve into the role of chiropractic care, with Yuji emphasising a more ecological approach beyond spinal adjustments, and the importance of movement exploration and behavioural adaptation.

About my guest:
Yuji works as a strength and conditioning coach in Portland, Oregon, USA working mainly with the youth population locally. Additionally, he utilises his background as a chiropractor to provide remote coaching for individuals navigating pain and performance related obstacles. He is an advocate for adopting an ecological dynamics approach in performance training, pain management and rehabilitation.

Where to find Yuji:
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/yujgains/

X profile: https://x.com/yujisuzukidc

This is a special edition of the podcast. I'm not only passionate about coaching and learning in adventure and equestrian sports, they are an integral part of my life. In this episode I am joined by the three amazing women with whom I shared a wonderful adventure this summer. 

Sue Couling, Jenna Sanders and Louise Royle join me to capture our summer adventure stand up paddle boarding around the beautiful Isle of Anglesey in North Wales. 

The most amazing and special thing about adventure and equestrian sports are the people. I count myself blessed to have been able to spend my time with so many amazing people this year, on the yard, out hiking, and playing on the water. Our nonlinear (of course) circumnavigation around the Isle of Anglesey was the highlight of my year and a chance to get out and immerse myself in the stunningly beautiful seascapes of my home country with some special people.

My guests on this episode:

Louise, Sue and Jenna are all active coaches. If you would like some coaching or coach development with these three amazing women, here are their contacts.

Louise Royle https://www.instagram.com/louise.royle.paddler/

Sue Couling https://www.facebook.com/sue.couling.3

Jenna Sanders https://www.facebook.com/flyinggeckooutdoors

This is a conversation that I have been looking forward to for a long time. We covered a lot of ground especially defining affordances and linking affordances not only to individual movement, but to multi organism and multi species interactions. On the way we connected affordance perception, calibration, flow, and many other importance concepts.

Andrew Wilson, an ecological psychologist at Leeds Beckett University, discusses the concept of affordances, emphasising their central role in skill acquisition and movement. He explains that affordances are properties of the environment that enable or constrain action, and that perception of these affordances is crucial for successful interaction.

Andrew contrasts affordances with traditional stimulus-response models, highlighting their intrinsic meaningfulness and the importance of complementarity between organisms and their environments. He also addresses the application of affordances in human-horse interactions, stressing the need for mutual calibration and adaptability.

The conversation then touched on the potential connections between Gibson's concept of affordances and other emerging frameworks like the free energy principle and predictive processing.

My guest on this episode was Dr Andrew Wilson

Email: [email protected]

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adw.bsky.social

Blog: https://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/

Full episode notes:

Where next

• Explore the concept of affordances further, particularly in the context of skill development and human-animal interactions.
• Consider how the language of affordances can provide a more nuanced and ecologically-valid way of understanding behaviour, compared to traditional approaches.
• Discuss the potential connections between affordance theory and other emerging frameworks like the free energy principle and predictive processing.

In this podcast Eric Brymer discusses the human need for adventure, likening modern life to a metaphorical cage that strips away fundamental human experiences. He explores the motivations behind extreme sports, noting that while initial motivations vary, continued participation is driven by profound relationships with nature, clarity of mind, and ineffable experiences. Eric emphasises the importance of understanding these experiences through phenomenology and the hermeneutic approach, which involve deep reflection and language limitations. He also highlights the benefits of adventurous physical activity in nature for mental health and well-being, advocating for a life that integrates physical activity, nature immersion, and adventure.

About my guest:

Eric Brymer - Associate Professor, Human Sciences, Faculty of Health, Southern Cross University, Australia. Eric's research interests are Performance, Extreme sports and environments, Health and wellbeing, Nature experiences, Learning design, Adventure.

Eric is interested in the psychology of performance, wellbeing and learning in adventure and nature-based contexts. His research is particularly focused on the impact of adventure and the human-nature relationship on health and wellbeing and the design of effective interventions.

Eric can be contacted at Southern Cross University at https://researchportal.scu.edu.au/esploro/profile/eric_brymer/overview

For Eric's publications see his profile on ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric-Brymer

Paper examples:
Adventure and Mental Health:an Ecological Perspective.

‘Leave Your Ego at the Door’: A Narrative Investigation into Effective Wingsuit Flying.

How we do research has a significant impact on the results we get.

Overview:
In this conversation, I had the pleasure of hosting Louise Evans on the podcast to discuss her innovative research paper titled "Whoa, No Go." As the first author, Louise provided valuable insights into her study, which explores horses' use of model-based strategies* during an inhibitory control task.

We started the discussion by delving into the original aims of her research, which was to examine how horses' physiological arousal levels might predict their performance on an inhibitory control task. However, Louise highlighted an unexpected finding: rather than improving their performance over time, the horses were making more errors. This unexpected result led her team to pause and reconsider their approach. 

Louise shared how they introduced a light cue that signalled when the horses should inhibit their learned response of touching a target for a food reward. Intrigued, they explored several hypotheses regarding the horses' behaviour, including the idea that they might not find the light cue salient or could have established that ignoring it did not result in any disadvantage. 

To investigate further, Louise explained how they implemented a time-out penalty for errors, which revealed that the horses significantly reduced mistakes when faced with this consequence. The implications of these findings suggested that horses possess the ability to engage in model-based learning rather than just model-free associative behaviours.

Throughout the conversation, we considered the broader implications of giving horses agency in their interactions. Louise emphasised the importance of curiosity in understanding equine behaviour, advocating for a shift away from merely fixing issues to exploring why certain behaviours occur. 

We also discussed the high welfare standards maintained for the study's horses, which allowed them to engage fully in the learning tasks. Louise illustrated how this positive environment likely contributed to the horses' eagerness to participate.

As we moved towards the conclusion, Louise shared her excitement about future research directions, including studies on reward sensitivity and the physiological impacts of learning tasks on horses. Overall, this enlightening conversation underscored the significance of understanding equine cognition and raised important questions about how we can enhance horse-human relationships through better training practices. I left the discussion feeling inspired by the potential for further research and the new perspectives it could bring to the equestrian field.

*I will add a short blog article about how a model-based theory links to direct-perception vs representation based theories.

Free to access - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159124001874

About my guest: 
Louise Evans.
I've been working with and studying horses for about twelve years; what started as a hobby has developed into the beginnings of an academic career in animal and equine science. I recently passed my PhD VIVA exam at Nottingham Trent University where, with my wonderful supervisors and co-authors Dr Carrie Ijichi and Dr Heather Cameron-Whytock, I conducted the "Whoa, No Go" study. My PhD was on equine cognition, physiology and welfare and the paper we're discussing formed part of my thesis. I'm currently working at the University of Bristol as a Research Technician in Professor Mike Mendl's Animal Welfare and Behaviour group.

I can be contacted via email at

In this episode of the River Tiger podcast, Dr. Alex Lascu joins me to discuss nonlinear pedagogy and its practical applications. Alex explains that nonlinear systems lack proportionality, meaning small changes can have unpredictable impacts, and emphasises the importance of understanding stability and noise in movement. We explore how these concepts challenge traditional coaching methods, advocating for adaptability and responsiveness over rigid plans. Examples include cricket coaching, where focusing on head movement rather than footwork enhances agility, and the slow development of tendon strength in climbing. The conversation highlights the need for coaches to embrace uncertainty and foster adaptable, meta-stable states in their athletes.


About my guest:
“Dr Alex Lascu is a learning scientist working in coach development for grassroots cricket in Western Australia. Their recent PhD in talent development and skill acquisition was all about how to design pathways and training to better support athlete development and inspire a lifelong love of learning and sport. Now, they spend their days thinking about how we can help coaches explore their learning too, by translating research and practice into real world experiences for coaches. You can find their work at skillacqlascu.com across podcasts, social media, newsletters, and consultancy services.”

In this second part of me conversation with  David Farrouk we explore the intricate relationship between ecological psychology, constraints, and the practical implications for coaching and learning. The discussion delves into the differences between behaviourism and ecological psychology and systems approaches, emphasising how the latter offers a more dynamic understanding of behaviour by considering wider time frames, nested events, broader environmental contexts and the fluidity of various interacting scales.

Key themes arise around the concept of constraints, highlighting how both broad laws of nature and local constraints influence behaviour. David points out that effective coaching requires an understanding of these interactions, enabling practitioners to manipulate constraints to promote desired outcomes.

The conversation address the nature of learning and its measurement, advocating for an integrated perspective where learning leads to measurable changes, reflecting a deeper understanding of environmental interactions.

The role of theories is examined as tools that help practitioners navigate their environments and facilitate learning. As theories evolve through practical application, they bring new insights into how constraints affect behaviour and performance.

Through a metaphor of building a dam in a stream, David illustrates how constraints shape dynamics in movement. This conversation invites listeners, particularly coaches and practitioners in sports and animal learning, to re-examine their understanding of learning and leans into a more ecological viewpoint that considers the fluidity of interaction between an organism and their environment in skill acquisition and performance.

This blog post provides an overview to support the main themes of the conversation https://dynamics-coaching.com/learning-and-pedagogy/learning-theories-behaviourism-and-ecological-psychology/


My guest on this episode: David Farrokh is a PhD candidate in the College of Health, Wellbeing and Life Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University. His research adopts an ecological dynamics perspective to investigate multiscaled properties of flow experiences, context-sensitivity, and co-adaptation in sport.

X @bigpicsoccer

Further reading

Fultot et al What are nervous systems for

Polanyi Life's irreducible structure

Johnston & Turvey A sketch of an ecological metatheory for theories of learning

In this episode of the River Tiger Podcast, I’m delighted to welcome David Farrokh, who is currently finishing his PhD at Sheffield Hallam University. Our conversation takes a deep dive into various learning theories, including behaviourism, cognitivism, and ecological psychology, with a focus on how they shape our understanding of human (and animal) learning and behaviour.

In part 1 David shares insights from his research on the concept of flow in sports and highlights interesting points of tension he encountered during his literature review. We discuss the historical evolution of psychological thought, particularly the significant shift from behaviourism to cognitivism sparked by critiques like Noam Chomsky's evaluation of B.F. Skinner’s work.

A key point of discussion is the limitations of behaviourism, especially its simplistic stimulus-response framework. David argues that behaviourism fails to account for the complexities of language acquisition and the arbitrary nature of symbols. We also explore the 'symbol grounding problem' in cognitivism, which struggles to connect abstract symbols to real-world experiences.

David advocates for ecological psychology as a more nuanced approach, emphasising the dynamic interaction between organisms and their environments. This theory offers valuable insights into how we perceive affordances, opportunities for action based on our capabilities. We highlight how ecological psychology integrates agency and context, providing a comprehensive view of learning and behaviour over multiple scales.

As we conclude, I’m excited about the potential for ecological psychology to inform practical applications in areas like education and animal training. I hope this episode inspires you to reflect on the diverse theories of learning and their implications for understanding ourselves and others. Enjoy listening!

This is just the first of 2 parts of the conversation!

This blog post provides an overview to support the main themes of the conversation https://dynamics-coaching.com/learning-and-pedagogy/learning-theories-behaviourism-and-ecological-psychology/


My guest on this episode: David Farrokh is a PhD candidate in the College of Health, Wellbeing and Life Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University. His research adopts an ecological dynamics perspective to investigate multiscaled properties of flow experiences, context-sensitivity, and co-adaptation in sport.

X @bigpicsoccer

Further reading

Fultot et al What are nervous systems for

Polanyi Life's irreducible structure

Johnston & Turvey A sketch of an ecological metatheory for theories of learning

In this episode of the River Tiger podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Rebecca Williams, a clinical psychologist and climbing coach. Our discussion centred on the vital interplay between fear management and performance in adventure sports. Rebecca shared her nearly 25 years of experience in psychology and how her passion for climbing shaped her coaching approach.

We tackled the misconception that fear and confidence are opposites. Rebecca clarified that fear is a natural emotional response essential for survival, and learning to manage it—rather than eliminate it—is crucial. She emphasised that fear conveys important information, encouraging athletes to recognise and understand their unique responses to fear.

We also discussed societal pressures that can affect women's confidence in sports, sharing personal stories about empowerment through peer support. Rebecca highlighted the importance of understanding that skill development isn't linear, especially during significant life changes like puberty and menopause.

Our conversation addressed coping with traumatic experiences in sports, underscoring the need for a compassionate, gradual return to activities after such events. We also examined the roll of “falling practice,” advocating for a focus on a holistic approach rather than simply overcoming the fear of falling.

Rebecca concluded by discussing her books, "Climb Smarter" and the "Fear of Falling Workbook," which provide essential tools for athletes to navigate anxiety and boost their confidence. This episode serves as a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand and manage fear in high-stakes environments.

My guest on this episode
Dr Rebecca Williams BSc D ClinPsy is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and performance psychology coach, working with climbers for the last 18 years.  She’s trained and experienced in psychotherapy, including CBT and ACT, holds a level 7 certificate in coaching and mentoring, and is a qualified climbing instructor (RCI).

Rebecca has delivered thousands of hours of individual coaching, group workshops, coach education and lectures, for climbers and coaches interested in improving their headgame for climbing.  She has facilitated workshops for Mountain Training Association, the Diploma in Mountain Medicine, NICAS, the British Mountaineering Council (BMC), and many climbing and mountaineering clubs.  In 2018, she delivered the psychology keynote speech at the International Rock Climbing Research Association Congress in Chamonix, and is a founder member of the International Association of Psychologists in Climbing.  She is passionate about using making psychology accessible and practical, and translating psychological research into mainstream techniques and coaching practices.

www.smartclimbing.co.uk

Author: Climb Smarter: Mental Skills and Techniques for Climbing

https://www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/climb/