Social Affordances and Interaction II: Autism and the Affordances of the Human Environment

Humans perceive a very rich set of affordances, many of them culturally selected, that can be conceptualized in the following nonexclusive categories: (a) affordances for physical interactions with the environment; (b) culturally deter- mined affordances that reflect preferred but not necessary interactions; and (c) social and communicative affordances that reflect the meaning of human activity for other humans. Discovery of these uniquely human affordances allows us to behave in human ways. What would be the result if a developing child does not discover the affordances of the human environment or does so only imperfectly? It is argued that autism is a disorder of development in which the ability to perceive the meaning of some aspects of the human environment is impaired. The importance of the concept of social affordances for understanding development, including abnormal development, is discussed.