LAUSR

The present study investigated differences in priming perceptions of target objects via affordance or semantic primes. Affordances denote possibilities for action in relation to objects (e.g., chair - sit), whereas semantic primes describe related concepts and features of objects (e.g., chair - legs). In Experiments 1A/1B the effects of affordance and semantic priming were compared via a semantic-categorization task using a normed word list of objects. In Experiments 2-4 we investigated affordance priming on object identification of pictures using a shoebox-classification task. In Experiment 1A participants were asked to respond by categorizing the presented word as concrete or abstract. Experiment 1B was similar to 1A, but with a 1000 ms response deadline. Experiment 2 presented target objects as words or photographs. Experiment 3 presented target objects as photographs degraded at three levels (clear, medium blur, extreme blur). Experiment 4 presented target objects as photographs that began degraded and slowly became clear. Experiment 1B found word priming for semantic primes, but not affordances. In contrast, Experiments 2-4 found object priming was facilitated by both affordances and semantic primes. Collectively, our results indicate that affordances facilitate object classification.