Affordances in a simple playscape: Are children attracted to challenging affordances? Bj € orn Prieske, Rob Withagen * , Joanne Smith, Frank T.J.M. Zaal Center for Human Movement Sciences, University of Groningen, University Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands article info Article history: Available online 4 December 2014 Keywords: Action capabilities Affordances Children Children's environments Playing Playgrounds abstract Environmental psychologists have used Gibson' concept of affordances to understand the playing behavior of children. This concept refers to the action possibilities the environment offers the animal. The present study examined whether children are attracted to challenging affordances in a simple playscape. Thirty children aged between 7 and 10 years old played freely in a playscape consisting of blocks that varied in height and were placed at different distances from each other. After the playing, several perceived and actual action boundaries of the children were measured. The further the child can jump, the wider the gaps jumped across. Yet, overall the children tended to actualize affordances that were not challenging for them. Moreover, especially in going down and in crossing gaps of certain widths, children preferred to jump even when stepping was possible. The implications of these findings are explored for both theories of playing and the design of playgrounds. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Over the last decades, many environmental psychologists have found inspiration in the concept of affordances (e.g., Clark & Uzzell, 2002; Cosco, Moore, & Islam, 2010; Jansson, 2010; Sandseter, 2009; Storli & Hagen, 2010; Ward Thompson, 2013). In the 1960s and 1970s, the ecological psychologist Gibson developed this concept to refer to the action possibilities of the environment. “The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or for ill” (Gibson, 1979/1986, p. 127; emphases in original). Gibson argued that the environment consists of affordances and that these action possibilities are the primary objects of perception. That is, we perceive the environment in terms of what behavior it affords (i.e. the floor affords walking, a chair affords sitting, etc.). Developing an ecological approach to the behavior of children, Heft (1988), following Gibson, suggested that we need to describe their environments not in terms of forms but in terms of affor- dances. After all, for the playing child it is not the form of the environmental furniture that counts, but its functional significance, that is, what behaviors it affords. Drawing largely upon Barker and Wright's (1951) detailed observational study of the activities of a seven years old boy on an ordinary day, Heft provided a preliminary taxonomy of affordances in children's outdoor environments. Over the years this taxonomy has been used and extended by environ- mental psychologists who study children's playing behavior (e.g., Sandseter, 2009; Storli & Hagen, 2010). Kytt€ a (2002), for example, used an extended version of the taxonomy to evaluate the differ- ences in playing possibilities in urban and rural settings in Finland and Belarus (see also Kytt€ a, 2004). Similarly, Fjørtoft and Sageie (2000) used the concept of affordances to describe the natural environment “as a playground for children” (p. 83). And recently, Broberg, Kytt€ a, and Fagerholm (2013) defined the child-friendliness of environments in terms of independent mobility and the actual- ization of affordances. In the present study we aim at extending this work in the context of playgrounds, focusing on the invitational character of affordances, an aspect that has recently been brought to the fore in the ecological literature. 1.1. Affordances as invitations Over the last few years, it has been suggested that affordances can have the potential to invite behavior (e.g., Heft, 2010; Withagen, de Poel, Araujo, & Pepping, 2012). That is, the environment is not a manifold of neutral action possibilities the acting animal inten- tionally chooses from; rather, affordances can attract or repel an animal and thus have an impact on which behavior is performed. * Corresponding author. Center for Human Movement Sciences, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, P.O. Box 196, 9700 AD Groningen, The Netherlands. Tel.: þ31 503638978; fax: þ31 503633150. E-mail address: r.g.withagen@umcg.nl (R. Withagen). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jep http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.11.011 0272-4944/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Environmental Psychology 41 (2015) 101e111