(title courtesy of Robert Burns, and thanks Niamh for setting me straight on the proper wording of the phrase way back when…)
Here’s a first crack at a new research plan for my 2nd year project proposal. It’s entirely unedited and needs work. But I think it’s a step in a better direction, more along the lines of what Ed is looking for.
I would like to conduct an experiment that tells us more about how people make the transition from doing a task with their flesh bodies to doing a task with an extended body. I think event description is a good task domain for studying this. When describing events, people often use their bodies [citation needed]. I would like to create a situation in which the affordances provided by body parts will be taxed to their limits, and participants will be likely to employ additional tools to help them enact events.
Procedure:
Participants are asked to recreate a structure out of blocks. The purpose of this exercise is to give participants “ownership” of the blocks, where they feel like they can use them freely. After the structure is built, they are asked to knock it down so it is not in the way. Participant A is then asked to watch a video of a complex event. Possible examples include multiple car traffic accidents, or football plays. Participant A would be able to watch the video twice, both times having access to the blocks. Participant A would then be asked to explain the event to Participant B. Participant B would then take a quiz about the event.
Analysis:
I expect that participants will use the blocks to help them enact the events. From video footage, I will look for examples of participants using their biological bodies to enact events, and I will attempt to discern the purpose of such enactments, and the affordances provided by their body parts. I will then observe the ways participants use the blocks and the table to enact events, and will similarly discern their purpose and the affordances they provide.
Hypothesis 1:
It is my hypothesis that there will be overlap. I expect that in some cases, if not most, the purpose of the block enactment will fall into a well established category of hand enactment. If this is true, it lends support to the idea that physical objects can play a role similar to biological body parts in cognitive activities, and that the same cognitive structures are likely to be used for physical objects as for body parts.
Hypothesis 2:
By varying the complexity of the events being enacted, I will be able to study the way in which the affordances of the blocks diverge from the affordances of participants’ hands. In particular, I will be able to observe when participants choose to use their hands to enact an event, and when they choose to use blocks. My hypothesis is that participants will opportunistically switch to using blocks instead of hands in cases where they need to represent more than two or three positions simultaneously.
Hypothesis 3:
By offering different shapes of blocks, I will be able to shed some light on the phenomenon of tool choice. When choosing blocks to use to enact an event, participants might choose based on similarity between the block and the entity being represented, they might choose based on ease of grasping, or they might choose based on similarity to other body parts simultaneously being used in the enactment. If participants are re-using cognitive structures meant for their biological parts, then we might expect some preference for blocks with similar structure.
Example stimulus videos:
Car accident: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-r5bClOqhjQ
Football play: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9oWtAsRxR34
Similar video stimuli could easily be created in a video game environment, with varying degrees of complexity. Both driving and football video games exist which could easily be used to create high quality videos of these phenomena.