Information, affordances, and the control of action in sport.

Abstract

The theory of affordances, a conceptual pillar of the ecological approach to perception and action, has the potential to become a guiding principle for research on perception and action in sport. Affordances are opportunities for action. They describe the environment in terms of behaviors that are possible at a given moment under a given set of conditions. Affordances capture the tight coupling between perception and action, and allow for the prospective and moment-to-moment control of activity that is characteristic of fluent, fast-paced behavior on the playing field. We begin with an overview of the ecological approach and the principle of direct perception, using past research on interceptive action to illustrate how this principle has been put to work to capture information-movement relations in perceptualmotor skill. We then review theory and research on body-scaled, action-scaled, and social affordances, highlighting outstanding questions that provide opportunities for new research on affordances in the context of sport. We conclude with consideration of affordances as providing a functional semantics for sports.