Affordances: Attention, Learning, and Culture

• In Event: Motivation and Learning: What Is Provocative and/or Novel?

Abstract

In our presentation we consider how motivated attention affects neural plasticity and learning with special consideration of cultural impacts on attention.

The primary purpose of the brain is to (1) allow accurate perception and understanding of the world around us and (2) allow functional behavior in that world to stay alive and reproduce. Our understanding of the world is derived from Gibson’s (1979) conception of affordances. The environment affords information and action possibilities that may be perceived and acted on. Attention, however, can be directed to only a sample of the totality of information available in affordances, due to limited cognitive capacity. Through neural plasticity the brain records a history of the attended samples of experienced affordances. Statistical learning, via the Law of Large Numbers, dictates that repeated information in the attended samples will ultimately produce accurate knowledge needed to realize the two primary brain purposes. Motivation directs volitional attention. Cultural differences produce differences in motivation and attention that lead to distinct sampling of affordances even within similar physical environments. This culturally driven motivation can affect volitional and automatic attention.

This perspective suggests at least 3 provocative insights:
1. Statistical learning is sufficient to explain learning at the neurological and cognitive levels.
2. Motivated attention dictates what aspects of available affordances are sampled and hence learned.
3. Differences in the attended samples of available environmental and socio-cultural affordances account for individual and cultural differences in knowledge, motivation, learning, and behavior.

Although statistical learning is recognized as a pervasive learning mechanism, our argument is that statistical learning is robust enough to explain all learning both cognitively and neurologically. Motivated attention can explain the emergence of cultural differences in knowledge and the impact of culture on subsequent perception, learning, and behavior.

Authors

• Terri L. Flowerday, University of New Mexico

• Duane F. Shell, University of Nebraska - Lincoln