Andrew D Wilson

LATEST ARTICLES ( 199 )

• How Do We Perceive Which Objects Afford Throwing the Farthest?

  

  Previous work has established that people with throwing experience can perceive the affordance of 'throwability'. If you let these people heft objects with a... Read more

  Posted on 09 November 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Giving Children with Movement Problems a Leg up with Robots

  

  Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a surprisingly common problem; it's thought that 6-8% of school aged children are diagnosable. Read more

  Posted on 24 October 2012 HEALTH, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Does Linguisitic Information Mean What It Does?

  Sabrina has been working on a series of posts on an ecological analysis of language (here, here and here, plus more on the way). Read more

  Posted on 16 October 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Breaking the (ecological) Law: Why Illusory Sounds Don't Make for Safer Cars

  

  Electric cars are great for the environment, but they come with a problem - they're too quiet, and this makes them dangerous to pedestrians used to the loud... Read more

  Posted on 07 October 2012 SCIENCE

• A Way Forward on Specification

  It's been a while since we've blogged; it's been a crazy summer and we've been insanely busy, but things are settling back down. Read more

  Posted on 05 October 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Small Effect Size Effect - Why Do We Put Up With Small Effects?

  

  Small effects sometimes matter - but psychology can do betterOne of the things that bugs me about 'embodied' cognition research is that the effects, while... Read more

  Posted on 17 August 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• 'Embodied Cognition', by Lawrence Shapiro

  

  'Embodied Cognition', by philosopher Lawrence Shapiro, is not a book advocating for any particular brand of embodiment. Instead, Shapiro has performed an... Read more

  Posted on 27 July 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Cracking the Tough Nut of Chimp Tool Use

  

  A paper just out in PLoSOne reports that chimpanzees, given some experience and enough of a weight difference, prefer to use heavier hammer stones when... Read more

  Posted on 20 July 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Evolution vs.Specification (Specification V)

  One of Gibson's key contributions was to reveal that it was possible for the optic array to specify a meaningful property of the world. Read more

  Posted on 06 July 2012 PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Sabrina & I Were Interviewed for 'The Psych Files Podcast'

  Michael Britt (@mbritt on Twitter) runs the popular Psych Files podcast, which is downloaded by thousands of students and interested people. Read more

  Posted on 04 July 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Individual Variation in the Use of Perceptual Information (Specification IV)

  If it is the case that perception requires the use of specifying variables, then there should be no individual variation in what information variables people... Read more

  Posted on 23 June 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Non-Specifying Variables in the Perception of Collisions (Specification III)

  

  Part of Withagen's critique of specification and whether it's necessary to underpin direct perception is a brief review of some empirical literature that shows... Read more

  Posted on 15 June 2012 PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• 4 PhD Studentships in Psychology

  We are advertising four, fully-funded studentships in Psychology over here at Leeds Metropolitan University. I've got two projects listed on embodied... Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How Information Gets Its Meaning (Specification II)

  

  Gibson proposed that specification was required in order for perceptual information to have meaning that was tied to the world in a manner an organism could use. Read more

  Posted on 10 June 2012 LANGUAGES, PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Specification: What It Is, and Why We Need It (Specification I)

  The first thing I need to do in a discussion of specification is explain what it is and why it's important to ecological psychology. Read more

  Posted on 07 June 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Specification & Its Discontents

  A topic that has been flying under the radar a little in Sabrina's language posts is the issue of specification. Sabrina's ecological analysis of language... Read more

  Posted on 06 June 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Inaugural 'Name Our New Blog' Competition

  

  We have recently accepted an offer to blog on Psychology Today, where we will have an opportunity to talk to a wider popular science audience about the various... Read more

  Posted on 04 June 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Language: A Task Analysis (kind Of)

  In the last post, I discussed the similarities and differences between language and other types of information. From the first person perspective, spoken... Read more

  Posted on 25 May 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Language Isn't Magical (but It is Special)

  One of the most common comments about ecological psychology is that it's hard to imagine how it could apply to things like language. Read more

  Posted on 19 May 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• An Ecological Approach to Language

  Language is often held up as an example against the possibility of the radical (non-representational) psychology we advocate for. Read more

  Posted on 18 May 2012 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE