What Perceivers Know About Their Own Affordance Perception: Post Hoc Evaluations of Perceptual Processes Do Not Relate to Accuracy

In 2 studies, we sought to investigate participants’ awareness of their own cognitive process when perceiving affordances (i.e., action capabilities) and whether their evaluations of this process relate to affordance perception accuracy. In Study 1, we combined data from 8 experiments and created a coding scheme designed to capture the unique features of different affordance perception theories within these post hoc evaluations. We then tested whether the perceptual process that participants reported was related to the accuracy of their judgments. We found that evaluations were distributed fairly evenly across the themes. We also found no relationship between the evaluations and accuracy. In Study 2, we conducted an experiment that specifically addressed our hypotheses about awareness and affordance perception accuracy, while controlling for confounds in Study 1. The greater detail participants gave about their cognitive strategy produced reports that largely did not relate to affordance perception theories. Participants used one of a few strategies aimed at estimating their body dimensions. Our results suggest that awareness of the perceptual process has no influence on the accuracy of affordance perception. It is likely that subjective reports of affordance perceptual process, though clear to the perceiver, are not related to the process itself.