{"id":2084,"date":"2010-06-13T17:14:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T15:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?p=2084"},"modified":"2024-02-24T11:00:30","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T10:00:30","slug":"a-psychological-theory-of-human-tool-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/icci-blog\/a-psychological-theory-of-human-tool-use\/","title":{"rendered":"A psychological theory of human tool use"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting and ambitious article by Fran\u00e7ois Osiurak, Christophe Jarry,and Didier Le Gall: &#8220;Grasping the affordances, understanding the reasoning: toward a dialectical theory of human tool use&#8221; in Psychological Review, (2010 -117(2):517-40) freely available <a href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/OSIURAK_PSY_REV_revised_manuscript_2009-0082.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of the most exciting issues in psychology is what are the psychological mechanisms underlying human tool use? The computational approach assumes that the use of a tool (e.g., a hammer) requires the extraction of sensory information about object properties (heavy, rigid), which can then be translated into appropriate motor outputs (grasping, hammering). The ecological approach suggests that we do not perceive the properties of tools per se but what they afford (a heavy, rigid object affords pounding). This is the theory of affordances. In this article, we examine the potential of the computational view and the ecological view to account for human tool use. To anticipate our conclusions, neither of these approaches is likely to be satisfactory, notably because of their incapacity to resolve the issue of why humans spontaneously use tools. In response, we offer an original theoretical framework based on the idea that affordance perception and technical reasoning work together in a dialectical way. The thesis we defend here is that humans have the ability to view body action as a problem to be solved. And it is precisely at this point that technical reasoning occurs. But, even if the ability to do technical reasoning gives humans the illusion of constantly doing less (e.g., TV remote control), they are still forced to use body action \u2013 and to perceive affordances \u2013 to operate the product of the reasoning (pushing buttons with the fingers). This is the principle of dialectic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting and ambitious article by Fran\u00e7ois Osiurak, Christophe Jarry,and Didier Le Gall: &#8220;Grasping the affordances, understanding the reasoning: toward a dialectical theory of human tool use&#8221; in Psychological Review, (2010 -117(2):517-40) freely available here. Abstract: One of the most exciting issues in psychology is what are the psychological mechanisms underlying human tool use? The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A psychological theory of human tool use - International Cognition and Culture Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/a-psychological-theory-of-human-tool-use\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A psychological theory of human tool use - International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An interesting and ambitious article by Fran\u00e7ois Osiurak, Christophe Jarry,and Didier Le Gall: &#8220;Grasping the affordances, understanding the reasoning: toward a dialectical theory of human tool use&#8221; in Psychological Review, (2010 -117(2):517-40) freely available here. Abstract: One of the most exciting issues in psychology is what are the psychological mechanisms underlying human tool use? The [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/a-psychological-theory-of-human-tool-use\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-13T15:14:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-02-24T10:00:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The ICCI Team\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/\",\"name\":\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/a-psychological-theory-of-human-tool-use\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/a-psychological-theory-of-human-tool-use\/\",\"name\":\"A psychological theory of human tool use - International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-06-13T15:14:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-02-24T10:00:30+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/3663e04874ff7df2f070d2982a1474ad\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/scary-committee.localsite.io\/blogs\/icci-blog\/a-psychological-theory-of-human-tool-use\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/3663e04874ff7df2f070d2982a1474ad\",\"name\":\"The ICCI Team\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cdc7166b2c4c44441b1c2c13cea716e8?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fcognitionandculture.local%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fbelle%2Fuser.png&r=g\",\"caption\":\"The ICCI Team\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/685"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18575,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions\/18575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}