**4. The notion of affordance**

In the construction and maintenance of cognitive niches, the detection of affordances (Gibson, 1979; Norman, 1988; Zhang and Patel, 2000; Hutchby, 2001; Chemero, 2003; Gorniak and Roy 2007; Bardone, 2011) is a result of cognitive actions and emerges from the seek for artefacts available to fulfil specific action goals. They are not previously offered, but subespecified by the aims and/or norms for existing in a given environment.

Apart from the discussion about the source of affordances – whether they are detected via direct perception of objects, taking the line of study of Gibson (1979), or whether they encompass cognitive processing and previous knowledge, according to the alternative proposal of Norman (1988), if we observe them against the premise of the constitutive relationship between person and environment, we can establish that they are not *in things*, nor *in us*:

"Affordances are the primary entities that are perceived, and perceiving affordances is perceiving the meaningful world. Importantly for current purposes, affordances are not merely entities in the environment, and they are also not projections of meaning by animals onto a merely physical environment. Affordances are features of animal– environment systems, and exist in such systems only in virtue of animals that have the appropriate abilities to perceive and take advantage of them" (Anderson and Chemero, 2009, p. 306).

Likewise, considering affordances as an important concept in Cognitive Psychology represents recognizing that cognition is a situated and, above all, qualitative dynamics, based on principles which define the values of things in environments, due to the fact that what is conceptualized as an affordance is something which can be useful to solve some problem and achieve some goal. Thus, in this sense, we can repeat Gibson's words (Gibson, 1979, p. 140), also quoted in Bardone (2011, p. 78): "The perceiving of an affordance is not a process of perceiving a value-free physical object (…) it is a process of perceiving a valuerich ecological object". But we can add that these objects are ecological as well as conceptual, and they are also a reliable source for us to understand, from our choices of what is important in a specific enterprise, what constitute our identities situatedly established in each context of action and thought.

8 Current Topics in Children's Learning and Cognition

and learning, whether or not distributed.

**4. The notion of affordance** 

nor *in us*:

2009, p. 306).

As to the intersubjectivity conditions which are specific to the classroom niche, we still need to stress that the possibility of the success of Acerola in interacting with his colleagues because they all bring together the same previous knowledge does not justify the failure of the teacher. On the other hand, having commom and shared everyday previous knowledge does not guarantee the teacher's success in promoting learning in the classroom. Rather, one of the fundamental actions for minimal conditions of referential intersubjectivity (Sinha and Rodriguez, 2008) is the recognition that the previous knowledge of the learners is a constitutive feature of the didactic practice. This condition allows them to build bridges between what they already know and the new information that the teacher is offering them. This is a basic didactic prescription and keeps its value in all perceptions about cognition

In the construction and maintenance of cognitive niches, the detection of affordances (Gibson, 1979; Norman, 1988; Zhang and Patel, 2000; Hutchby, 2001; Chemero, 2003; Gorniak and Roy 2007; Bardone, 2011) is a result of cognitive actions and emerges from the seek for artefacts available to fulfil specific action goals. They are not previously offered, but

Apart from the discussion about the source of affordances – whether they are detected via direct perception of objects, taking the line of study of Gibson (1979), or whether they encompass cognitive processing and previous knowledge, according to the alternative proposal of Norman (1988), if we observe them against the premise of the constitutive relationship between person and environment, we can establish that they are not *in things*,

"Affordances are the primary entities that are perceived, and perceiving affordances is perceiving the meaningful world. Importantly for current purposes, affordances are not merely entities in the environment, and they are also not projections of meaning by animals onto a merely physical environment. Affordances are features of animal– environment systems, and exist in such systems only in virtue of animals that have the appropriate abilities to perceive and take advantage of them" (Anderson and Chemero,

Likewise, considering affordances as an important concept in Cognitive Psychology represents recognizing that cognition is a situated and, above all, qualitative dynamics, based on principles which define the values of things in environments, due to the fact that what is conceptualized as an affordance is something which can be useful to solve some problem and achieve some goal. Thus, in this sense, we can repeat Gibson's words (Gibson, 1979, p. 140), also quoted in Bardone (2011, p. 78): "The perceiving of an affordance is not a process of perceiving a value-free physical object (…) it is a process of perceiving a valuerich ecological object". But we can add that these objects are ecological as well as conceptual, and they are also a reliable source for us to understand, from our choices of what is

subespecified by the aims and/or norms for existing in a given environment.

This idea allows us to connect the concepts of affordance and cognitive niche in a Distributed Cognition perspective: the possibility of recognizing affordances in a specific setting is directly related to the recognition of this setting as a niche. The opposite can also be said: if the person is placed in a given environment and is not willing to recognize affordances (or something else) in that environment because he/she does not have any purposes to be there, it is quite possible that he/she does not recognize that setting as a real cognitive niche.

This fact reveals the extent to which what we see is tied by our goals of being there. It is in this sense that we construct cognitively the possibilities of affecting environment and being affected by it. In this perspective, the detection of affordances is an activity that, besides requiring and revealing intelligence, improves procedurally the intelligence of those who detect it (Dennett, 2000; Franks, 2011), because it is a procedure closely connected to the semiotization and re-semiotization of things, and is also an action that brings new things into existence.

If we take into account that affordances are built under the functionalities and contingencies of cognitive actions in a given niche, we can assert that material artefacts in the classroom can be affordances, to the extent that they are seen as something functionally useful in specific moments. In this sense, their functions can be re-created as this action becomes necessary to solve new problems.

So as the map used by the teacher and Acerola. The teacher has used the map in its prototipical function, but Acerola, as he delivered his lesson, he brought into existence a new kind of map, which came from the blending of conflicting dimensions: the Western World of the past, and the Rio de Janeiro of the present. It is not possible not necessary to design and manufacture a specific map which can bring these specific information. But it is possible to conceptually build it through the interaction of the determinant features of Acerola's and the teacher's speeches. He did that this way because the teacher's map did not fit his need to adapt the previous knowledge of the students to the information of the lesson.
