Disturbance of Ecological Self and Impairment of Affordance Perception.
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2022 Nam-Gyoon Kim, Judith A Effken
Perceiving affordances—opportunities for action that the environment offers relative to an individual's body and abilities—keeps people connected to their surroundings and mentally healthy. When this ability is impaired, meaningful relationships with the environment break down, contributing to irrational behavior seen in self disorders like schizophrenia. Two laboratory studies showed that patients with schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease have a reduced capacity to perceive affordances. This finding serves as contra-positive evidence that supports the affordance concept: if lacking affordance perception leads to mental health problems, then those with such problems should show impaired affordance detection. The results also suggest contra-positive evidence can complement positive evidence for empirically validating concepts like affordance and meaning.