Learning by doing: Action performance facilitates affordance perception

We investigated the effect of action performance on perceptual judgments by evaluating accuracy in judging whether doorways allowed passage. Participants made judgments either before or after walking through doorways of varying widths. Participants in the action-first group benefited from action feedback and made more accurate judgments compared to a perception-first group that judged doorways before walking through them. Action feedback aided perceptual judgments by facilitating scaling to body dimensions: Judgments in the action-first group were strongly related to height, weight, and torso size, whereas judgments in the perception-first group were not.

Research highlights► Participants judged whether they could walk through doorways of varying width. ► Participants with prior experience walking through the doorway made significantly more accurate decisions than those without prior experience, highlighting the role of action feedback in facilitating judgments. ► Participants with action feedback made judgments that were closely attuned to their body dimensions, whereas participants without prior experience did not.