The Influence of Heightened Body-awareness on Walking Through Apertures STACY LOPRESTI-GOODMAN 1 * , RACHEL W. KALLEN 2 , MICHAEL J. RICHARDSON 2 , KERRY L. MARSH 1 and LUCY JOHNSTON 3 ** 1 University of Connecticut, USA 2 Colby College, USA 3 University of Canterbury, New Zealand SUMMARY The reported study measured the ratio between aperture-width and hip-width that marked the critical transition from frontal walking to body rotation for male and female participants. Half of the participants of each sex wore form-fitting lycra clothes and half loose-fitting jogging suits. Participants wearing the form-fitting clothing reported heightened body awareness relative to those wearing the loose-fitting clothing. For male participants this difference was reflected in a smaller aperture-to-hip ratio in the form-fitting than loose-fitting clothing condition. That is, males walked frontally through smaller apertures when wearing form-fitting than when wearing loose-fitting clothing. For females there was no difference in walking action as a function of clothing style. Results are discussed in terms of the perception of action opportunities in the environment, the influence of body awareness on such perception and sex differences. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Navigating successfully and safely through the environment is a complex skill that involves the detection of action and interaction possibilities by the perceiver. Gibson (1979) introduced the term ‘affordances’ to describe the complementarity of the organism and its environment, as well as that of perception and action (Michaels & Carello, 1981; Stoffregen, 2003; Turvey, Shaw, Reed, & Mace, 1981). Affordances are the sorts of behaviours permitted (and denied) to perceivers by objects, people and places in the environment. An affordance is the action or interaction opportunities available to the individual perceiver. For example, an orange may afford eating, another person may afford dancing with and a gap in traffic may afford crossing the road. Importantly affordances are neither properties of the individual, nor of the environment but are relational properties of the two. An orange is not eatable per se but rather it affords eating to those individuals who have the capabilities (effectivities; Michaels, 2003; Reed, 1996; Shaw & Turvey, 1981; Turvey & Shaw, 1979) to eat it, that is those who have the ability to grasp the orange, to peel and to bite it and to digest it. Accordingly, for some individuals the orange may not afford APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Appl. Cognit. Psychol. (2009) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1568 *Correspondence to: Stacy Lopresti-Goodman, CESPA, Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, Storrs, CT 06269-1020. E-mail: stacyloprestigoodman@gmail.com **Correspondence to: Lucy Johnston, Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand. E-mail: lucy.johnston@canterbury.ac.nz Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.